“We tend to think of Scotland as a Calvinist country but a glance at history reminds us that it was once a very Catholic country. In “Once deeply Catholic, modern Scotland needs a theological revival” ( why the lower case letters I have no idea ), Tracey Rowland …… channeling George Mackay Brown ….. sets the [...]
Mirabile dictu… just as we need to have read widely before attempting to write, so too for the incomparable Shakespeare. His preference : mostly the classics and other canonical works by early English authors (e.g., Edmund Spencer and Sir Philip Sidney). The English Philosopher Thomas Spencer Baynes of the University of St. Andrews takes a shot [...]
What is it about the South that produces such fascinating , eccentric, quasi weird, genius characters….Flannery O’Connor, Huey Long, William Faulkner, Shelby Foote and of course Walker Percy….and a host of others? There is this sardonic, self deprecating and desultory manner in so many (although not across the board in Long) which captivates . Percy had [...]
The Catholic Herald calls Sir James MacMillan "the holy warrior with a baton" and has chosen him to receive its "Catholic of the Year 2015" award. He is a modern day Braveheart fighting for the faith in his native Scotland. He says: "if you aren't consciously counter cultural you aren't going to be Christian for long." [...]
In the passage of history, there are certain periods during which great issues and principles are arrayed in stark contrast. Thus Henry VIII’s England, thus the American founding and thus the 20th century struggle against communism. Throughout the world , everyone seemed to take one side or the other during the Spanish Civil War. Loyal Catholics [...]
We tend to believe the times we live in are uniquely bad. They are not ....although we may be forgiven for thinking so in that it may well be true that we are living in the last gasp of a once great ( western ) civilization. We have been living off spiritual and cultural capital for [...]
There's been for the past 50 years or so a cottage industry built around attacking Pope Pius XII for alleged sins of omission with regard to the Nazi death camps during WWII. But Jewish Prime Minister Golda Meier, Albert Einstein, the American Jewish Committee and the World Jewish Congress had all praised the good Pope for his extraordinary [...]
Lesser minds , for some reason, have a hard time distinguishing between true martyrdom and the craziness of fanatics who seek out death. It should not be that difficult to separate the wheat - Edmund Campion - from the chaff - today's jihadist killers. Gerard Kilroy's " When English Catholics Were Considered As Today's Jihadis " [...]
I am reading a fairly obscure book, All My Road Before Me, 1922-27: The Diary of C S Lewis. It is surprisingly dull ( albeit getting better toward the end) given that Lewis was such an interesting character. What is fascinating though is this: I always found Lewis a very likable soul…..great guy to have a [...]
In the 20th century, one of the turning points in the battle between the west and communism was the publication of Whittaker Chambers’ epic, Witness. Chambers was an odd sort ....a journalist who turned from communism as he discovered faith ...... but he was , in the end, a giant of man . He wrote: “Economics [...]