In the Fall 1991 issue of New Perspectives Quarterly , which is very usefully devoted to the problems of unity and diversity in the contemporary world, Isaiah Berlin observes that the twentieth century is “the worst century that Europe has ever had.” Certainly there is widespread . . . . Continue Reading »
Many great novelists have had intricate, even prickly, personalities. But in Evelyn Waugh, nature and grace worked overtime to produce an extraordinary character, a full understanding of whose complexities would require the combined skills of an archaeologist, a psychiatrist, and a Jesuit confessor . . . . Continue Reading »
In the beginning, Charles Darwin explained how human beings evolved from animals by natural selection. One might have expected that this revelation would have a profound effect on disciplines like psychology and anthropology, and that the newly established link to animals would become the foundation . . . . Continue Reading »
In primal garden the tree stands laden, splendor consummate, grace-rooted, owned by him who warns, don’t eat or sure you’ll die. Yet you, arrogant Adam in us all, grasp prerogatives never due. Thrust out, . . . . Continue Reading »
I trust it did not escape your notice that I have eliminated an affectionate diminutive in my greeting. I am just a bit annoyed that those undamned Smiths in Fremont, Nebraska—whom I have placed in your keeping—persist in tithing. You did succeed in staying Mr. Smith’s hand . . . . Continue Reading »
Whenever there is a contest between etiquette and acknowledged virtues, etiquette loses. Hardly anyone would dispute the proposition that morals are more important than mere manners, and the assertion that etiquette can and should be jettisoned for a higher good is commonly made and accepted in . . . . Continue Reading »
What is it that Christians ought to say and do about the issue of sexual relations between single people? This question currently presses most painfully upon the life of the churches. The real issue is not whether the churches ought to adopt a new sexual ethic, but whether the new sexual ethic they . . . . Continue Reading »
To grow up in Canada is to inherit a privileged position for understanding modernity—sufficiently distant from that hurtling spaceship of “the republic to our south,” while retaining (perhaps from connections to nature, to the history of France, and to Catholicism) a sharp, intuitive sense . . . . Continue Reading »
The greatest challenge the biographer faces is to grasp and reveal the inner life of his subject. His task is simplified when he chooses a subject visibly engaged in great public events of his time—wars, politics, social reform, for example. If the biographer is good at what he does, he will . . . . Continue Reading »
A few years ago I appeared on “Firing Line” with my Notre Dame colleagues Gerhardt Niemeyer and Ralph McInerny for a discussion of natural law. My memory of that occasion is vivid: our attempt to discuss the possibilities for the theory of natural law in the contemporary intellectual climate was . . . . Continue Reading »
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