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December 31, 2022

Pope Benedict XVI: 1927-2022

“I would like to ask you all for a special prayer for Pope Emeritus Benedict, who is supporting the Church in silence. Remember him—he is very ill—asking the Lord to console him and to sustain him in this witness of love for the Church, until the end.” Continue Reading...
December 29, 2022

Sunset Blvd. Is Your New Year’s Sanity Test

Last New Year’s Eve, I wrote about Billy Wilder’s The Apartment. It’s the best movie on the ambivalence with which we welcome the end of one year and the coming of a new one, worrying whether it promises that our dreams will come true, whether we will live up to our resolutions to be better. Continue Reading...
December 22, 2022

Sinners, Saints, and Grace in We’re No Angels

Michael Curtiz, famed director of Casablanca, made a Christmas movie in 1955, starring Humphrey Bogart, called We’re No Angels, about the power of innocence and moral decency to transform even hardened criminals—of whom Bogart is one, the other two played by the famous British actor-director Peter Ustinov and the American son of Italian immigrants Aldo Ray. Continue Reading...
December 21, 2022

The Myths of American Individualism

Americans are an individualistic bunch. Our popular culture makes heroes of outsiders, loners, and disrupters. Our politicians emphasize their independence of entrenched institutions, party discipline, and special interests. In economic affairs, we assume that success is within the grasp of anyone who really tries—and harshly judge those who don’t appear to meet the challenge. Continue Reading...
December 20, 2022

C.S. Lewis: How ‘Medieval’ Was He?

When it comes to evaluating C.S. Lewis’ engagement with medieval authors, Jason Baxter performs the heavy lifting with ease, almost with wings. The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind comprises, in effect, a sequence of primers on major and minor figures—Boethius, Pseudo-Dionysius, Calcidius, Dante, Nicholas of Cusa, Bernard Sylvestris, inter alios—while it traces their imprint on Lewis’ writings. Continue Reading...
C.S. Lewis
December 15, 2022

King Jesus and Political Discipleship

Our current political reshuffling has been dizzying, perhaps even more in the Christian community than among Americans in general. The conservative shift toward populism under Trump empowered both a push for real nationalism—blood, soil, industrial policy—as well as even more fringe movements such as the medieval romanticism of the Catholic integralists. Continue Reading...
December 14, 2022

Jimmy Lai Trial Adjourned Until September 2023

Entrepreneur and freedom fighter Jimmy Lai’s fight for justice will now drag on for nine more months as the Hong Kong High Court adjourns his trial. The delay comes as Hong Kong waits for Beijing to rule on allowing King’s Counsel Tim Owen, a British lawyer and internationalist specialist, to join Lai’s defense team in his fight against the country’s draconian National Security Law. Continue Reading...
December 14, 2022

Art as Spiritual Journey

In his essay “The Philosophy of Medieval Art,” Bishop Fulton Sheen opens with the statement, “There is no such thing as understanding the art in any period apart from the philosophy of that period.” Continue Reading...