What is the purpose of the Christian life? Or of any life? Ephraim Radner proposes an answer: “mortal goods.” These he defines as “the sustained realities and possibilities of birth, growth, nurture, generation, weakening, caring and dying.” The tending and conservation of these goods, . . . . Continue Reading »
Disappearance is usually felt as something bad. When things disappear, we sense the pull of death, the call of the dust, the loss of the palpable good. I have recently been moving house after many years in one place, with all its accumulations. Things, often intimate things, are left behind, given . . . . Continue Reading »
As has become distressingly clear, many people blame the Israelis for the atrocities that Hamas terrorists perpetrated on Saturday, October 7, against hundreds of civilians, including women and children, across southern Israel. The Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee, along with many . . . . Continue Reading »
Russell Kirk was haunted by the past. Ghosts prowled his house, peering through windows, moving furniture, startling guests. Far from resenting these presences, Kirk welcomed them. For he regarded society as “a spiritual union of the dead, the living, and those yet unborn.” He propounded this . . . . Continue Reading »
When Cormac McCarthy died in June at age eighty-nine, the news touched off grief and adulation such as contemporary literary authors rarely inspire. Musicians, scientists, conservatives, Catholics, all have claimed him. One man circulated and posted the notes he’d taken after a series of phone . . . . Continue Reading »
Readers would be hard-pressed to find a religious creed in the often dark works of Cormac McCarthy. But the writer's depictions of darkness are never devoid of light, however tragic or precarious its place in the narratives. Continue Reading »
What I care most about, along with many other fans, is whether The Rings of Power fits with the spirit of Tolkien’s legendarium. My answer, so far, is a tentative yes. Continue Reading »
Aldous Huxley was in certain respects a modern disenchanted intellectual, and he had no use for actual demons; but there are persons as serious and sane as he was who can state with authority that demons and demonic possession are real. Continue Reading »
Advent announces the coming of the Lord who breaks the arms of the sex traffickers, the drug lords, the arms dealers, and all their respectable collaborators. Continue Reading »
The idea of intrinsic evil may look harsh and punitive. But to those struggling to stay afloat, it can be a lifeline. Continue Reading »
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