William Park (InsideCatholic.com) lists, in his judgment, “the fifty best Catholic movies of all time” . Some readers, myself included, were surprised by the absence of The Mission . A magnificent cast (including Robert DeNiro, Jeremy Irons, and Liam Neeson); a screenplay by Robert Bolt . . . . Continue Reading »
In our ongoing roundup of commentary on Pope Benedict’s social encyclical Caritas in Veritate , the Distributists and Austrians weigh in, and renegade liberation theologian Leonardo Boff believes the Pope could use a good dose of Marxism (little surprise, there). . . . . Continue Reading »
Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of Miles Daviss Kind of Blue , the biggest-selling jazz album of all time. As the NPR jazz profile noted on the fortieth anniversary : To the musicians who recorded it, Kind of Blue was just another session when it was released in August, 1959. But the . . . . Continue Reading »
Andrew Klavan examines the intriguing political evolution of one of England’s greatest Romantic poets: It seems to me that the last several decades in America have been a weird echo of the decades in Europe around the coming of the nineteenth centuryand that no figure can serve as a . . . . Continue Reading »
We’re back, after an eventful few days. On Friday, you might remember, I was to have driven a group of boys — the Holy Crusaders from our parish — to the U.S. Army Chaplain Museum in Columbia, South Carolina. This plan did not materialize. I had lost my van’s registration . . . . Continue Reading »
We have been told repeatedly by Obamacare supporters and media alike, that worries about seniors being pushed by end of life counseling into voluntary rationing are all so much fear mongering. Indeed, all it does (despite Compassion and Choices being at the table helping to . . . . Continue Reading »
Two decades ago the Islamists in Gaza thought the PLO was too moderate. Matthias Kuntzel puts it this way in his book Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11 . The Islamists, he said, . . exerted especially strong pressure on the PLO by adopting their own Charter. In every . . . . Continue Reading »
The “public option” aspect of Obamacare—the provision that would likely result eventually in a socialized health care financing system—may be about to be abandoned. From the story:Bowing to Republican pressure and an uneasy public, President Barack Obama’s . . . . Continue Reading »
So I have to give a talk at the American Political Science Association in a few weeks on Strauss. Here are some tentative thoughts for your consideration. In his essay on Kurt Riezler in WHAT IS POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY? Strauss writes “If we are permitted to say that historicism is the view . . . . Continue Reading »