I’m tired of cynicism. Now, to be clear, I am not speaking specifically of the Cynical philosophy of Antisthenes and certain ancient Greeks. I am talking about the modern cynicism which believes people and institutions are generally selfish and dishonest. To borrow from Flannery O’Connor’s insight about nihilism, cynicism is the air we breathe. It is everywhere. Looking back, as a young man I had an unshakeable idealism. I believed that our leaders were honest, our country was upright,... Read more

I had never heard the term before. Opera Omnia. But, boy, did it sound impressive. It was in the Fall of 2008. Pope Benedict XVI was in the third year of his papacy and the first volume of his Opera Omnia was being presented at the Vatican. I would soon learn that Opera Omnia, literally translated, means “all (or complete) works”. And this Pope’s works go deep. Sixteen volumes deep to be exact. From his earliest formative years as a fledgling priest to his... Read more

Today, guest columnist Ben Conroy wrote a piece (at Elizabeth Scalia’s The Anchoress blog) titled ‘Sense’ and Sensibility (In Defense of Donald Rumsfeld). In it he astutely probed and considered the former Defense Secretary’s (in)famous and perhaps not uniquely original insight: “As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns... Read more

   “That quiet conversation was by far the most terrible thing that has ever happened to me in my life.” G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) was a celebrated British journalist, detective novelist, artist and Catholic apologist. He wrote over one hundred books, thousands of newspaper columns, innumerable poems, a several plays. He gleefully debated society’s intellectual luminaries such as George Bernard Shaw, H.G Wells, Clarence Darrow and Bertrand Russell. It is easy to estimate that he engaged in hundreds of thousands of... Read more

“The endless cycle of idea and action, Endless invention, endless experiment, Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness; Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word. All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance, All our ignorance brings us nearer to death, But nearness to death no nearer to GOD. Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the... Read more

  “When I think of the beaches of Normandy choked with the flowers of American and British youth and when, in my mind’s eye I see the tides running red with blood, I have my doubts, Ike. I have my doubts.” – British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower on the eve of D-Day It is hard to imagine these words were ever uttered by the jowly, defiant, cigar-champing lion of resistance, Winston Churchill. But they... Read more

   “Our hearts are with those in the front line, with those who get killed.” – Georges Bernanos It is said that when Georges Bernanos was asked why he became a writer, he answered quite plainly,”I began to write to escape from this disgusting era”. Alive for merely sixty years (1888-1948), the French Catholic Bernanos spent his life in Europe during the darkness of World War I and the Spanish Civil War . Subsequently, he endured the evisceration and emasculation... Read more