In 1909 the academic economist and former Marxist Sergei Bulgakov, a priest’s son who had recently and very publicly returned to Christian faith, published a long essay on the crisis of Russian culture and the mentality of the Russian intelligentsia. It is important to recognize that this . . . . Continue Reading »
Music is a divine balm in the midst of the world’s sorrows. Music is also a sorrow in search of a balm. It offers a sui generis grace, one that we may wish to approach carefully. Most of us understand the two sides of music’s power intuitively. Balm in the midst of sorrow is what we love. . . . . Continue Reading »
Those who seek to advance the Catholic Church’s teaching regarding the sanctity of life confront both new challenges and opportunities in the wake of the June 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. On the one hand, many people in the U.S. and in other developed nations have . . . . Continue Reading »
My grandfather died before I was born, and he remains to me a mostly mysterious figure. As is true of many people born poor who are committed to bettering their lot, his hours were taken up with work, family, and church; not much was left for that luxury item we call personality. A big man with paws . . . . Continue Reading »
Sometimes life is stranger than art. Suppose you were a novelist, and your book's protagonist is the genderqueer founder of a web start-up who calls herself Sebastian. Suppose the novel charts this character’s further transformation into a stay-at-home mom now going by her birth name of Mary and . . . . Continue Reading »
Exactly a century ago, in his encyclical Studiorum Ducem commending the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, Pope Pius XI drew a biblical analogy: Just as it was said to the Egyptians of old in time of famine: “Go to Joseph,” so that they should receive a supply of corn from him to nourish . . . . Continue Reading »
The nineteenth century, for all but the most literal-minded, begins with the French Revolution and ends with the First World War. Or in the words of one influential overview of nineteenth-century Germany: “In the beginning was Napoleon.” At the end were trenches, tanks mired in mud, mustard gas, . . . . Continue Reading »
Matthew Dal Santo’s “Theopolitics of Ukraine” (August/September 2023) is a welcome counterweight to “What Ukraine Means” from the May 2023 issue. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church is the largest Orthodox church in Ukraine by number of parishes with more than 12,000. Before the start of the . . . . Continue Reading »
The rising generation of leaders knows next to nothing about the great thinkers who have shaped our history. Who can blame them? They have been educated during the Great Forgetting. We have embarked on a remarkable experiment: a society governed by those who have little knowledge of the humanities, . . . . Continue Reading »
. . . If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there. —Psalm 139: 8 It takes a while for you to know what nought is.You answer Thou shalt not with your unless . . .You sell your birthright for a mess of pottage. You dream of mansions, settle for a cottage,but end up with the pigs a sloppy . . . . Continue Reading »
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