Richard Wagner’s grand operatic drama The Ring of the Nibelung is rightly celebrated as one of the finest accomplishments of modern art. The story that Wagner tells, with the unfolding music meant to convey a primordial sense of enchantment forever lost to us, is about the tension between love and lust; the sacred and profane; […]
Ora et labora.… “Pray and work.” This is the motto of the Rule of St. Benedict, written in 516 by the famous founder of Western monasticism, Benedict of Nursia. For fifteen centuries Benedictine monks have lived their lives according to this motto, performing manual labor and praying to God. Many laypeople have similarly taken this […]
In taking his autobiographical protagonist through hell, Winston Brady does many things that would, I believe, have pleased Dante Alighieri. Like Dante’s “Inferno,” Brady’s “Inferno” tests the will and courage of its hero, forcing him to wrestle with his American identity and legacy, to understand the grave nature of sin, and to seek repentance from […]
Abraham Lincoln never was a doctrinaire; he rose from very low estate to very high estate, and he knew the savagery which lies so close beneath the skin of man, and he knew that most men are good only out of obedience to routine and convention. Whatever the result of the convulsion whose first shocks […]
The current practice of the Roman Church reflects that Lent is both penitential and baptismal. The penitential themes are predominant during the first two weeks. The baptismal elements are emphasized in a three-week Lenten period. The final two weeks are dominated by preparation for the celebration of the passion. At first glance, the season of […]
If the “Vita Nuova” had been the only major work Dante had made, this work alone would have earned him the reputation as a great poet of Western Civilization. It is well-known that Dante is one of the greatest poets in Western Civilization. His magnum opus, The Divine Comedy, is considered one of the crowning […]
As for human institutions that have gone astray, my view is that they are only dead branches hanging on to the trees of education, religion, and society to which my real loyalty lies. I would rather the dead wood of such institutions be pruned away so that the true wood can grow. I am nothing […]
Eva Brann’s latest book, “Pursuits of Happiness,” is a collection of essays which range from Aeschylus to Austen, with topics spanning the nature of time itself to Sacred Scripture. Interspersed here are two parts constituting the whole of an ideal education. Pursuits of Happiness: On Being Interested by Eva Brann (640 pages, Paul Dry Books, […]
Even in God’s majesty as bridegroom on the other side of death, beyond the light of the stars, the deep humility also present in Charity presents itself. If we cannot recognize the Good, we cannot recognize Love when we meet Him beyond the liminal, the threshold of death into eternity. Death is a part of […]
Yuval Levin’s “The Great Debate” does a valuable service in working toward promoting more reflection in our political debates, by examining the all-too-often unspoken assumptions implicit in our political discourse. The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Left and Right, by Yuval Levin (296 pages, Basic Books, 2013) When Russell Kirk […]
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