May/June 2017: The World’s a Stage: The Drama of Faith

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“Reverence for the Gods in Antigone: Beyond Greek Humanism” – by Veronica A. Arntz

“Give me glory! What greater glory could I win than to give my own brother decent burial? These citizens here would all agree, they would praise me too if their lips weren’t locked in fear.”1 Sophocles’ Antigone boldly argues against her tyrant uncle, Creon, who, after assuming the throne of her father, Oedipus, proceeds to give a proper burial to only one of her brothers who fought in the war. Creon’s reasoning is that Eteocles died fighting for him, while Polynices fought on the opposite side, making him a traitor. Creon goes further and forbids anyone from burying the body of Polynices, but Antigone, bolder than her sister Ismene, proceeds to bury her brother despite the law. After disobeying Creon’s law, Antigone fearlessly faces her uncle’s anger and his threat of death.

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March/April 2017: Wounded Beauty: Suffering & the Arts

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“A Note on the Problem of Evil” by John Beaumont

“The recent air crash in Colombia that resulted in the death of seventy-five people, including most of the Brazilian football team, Chapecoense, was a terrible tragedy. There was a little team triumphing against the major clubs and reaching the final of a continent wide competition for the first time. Now, such understandably great joy has been wiped out at a stroke. I watched a television news program dealing with the crash and its aftermath. There in the center of the screen was a young man, a supporter of the team, his arms raised skyward in supplication. The words he spoke, undoubtedly from the heart, were, “How could God allow this to happen?” He was voicing what is probably the most commonly raised objection to the existence of God, namely what is usually referred to as the problem of evil. Even more recently there has been the loss of life resulting from the crash of the Russian military plane carrying members of an army orchestra. Many people will be voicing similar sentiments at this time to the one reported above. Nevertheless, it is important to contest the implication behind them, which is that God does not exist.”

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January/February 2017: The Baptized Imagination

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“The Narrow Way of the Catholic Writer” by Kevin Bezner

“For the many who consider themselves a Catholic writer today, Catholic and writer is a duality when what is required is a unity. The Church and the world needs writers who make the great effort it takes to seek the spiritual unity pursued by the Church Fathers as described by Irénée Hausherr in his classic work Penthos: “As long as they had not arrived at total peace through unification of instincts with will, of imagination with mind, then of will and mind with the divine will and truth, they persisted in blaming themselves and feeling themselves far from the health at which they aimed.”1 If you think this is only a path for clergy, religious, or monastics, consider also these words from Hausherr: “The monk . . . is not a special person. He merely claims to be taking Christianity seriously.”2 The health of Catholic writing and writers will not be restored until writers take their Catholicism as seriously as Hausherr’s monk.”

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June/July 2016: The Catholic World of J. R. R. Tolkien

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“A Sacramental View of the World: Tolkien and My Conversion” by Daniel Bennett

I have finally discovered the answer to what
struck me at the time, many months hence,
as an evasive, yet undeniable fact: J. R. R.
Tolkien, without saying one word about the
Catholic Church per se, had played no small
part in my conversion. C. S. Lewis lucidly
describes this method of teaching Christian
doctrines through fairy tales in
a letter to the Anglican nun
Sister Penelope: “Any amount
of theology can now be smuggled
into people’s minds under
cover of romance without their
knowing it.”

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January/February 2016: Evelyn Waugh Revisited

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“Waugh Mistaken and Brideshead Unvisited” by Frank Brownlow

Reading Evelyn Waugh’s collected journalism more than fifty years after he wrote it, one realizes how accurately he prophesied the long-range consequences of radical egalitarianism in all the departments of life.

Consider the disappearance of the word “gentleman”. A fight breaks out between two young men in their late twenties in the parking lot of a neighborhood bar in a depressed city. The police arrive, restore order, and ask questions. One of the combatants says, “I don’t know why the gentleman approached me. I don’t know him.”

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