The example of the 21 Coptic Martyrs of Libya, poor, simple, faithful men, can strengthen us. Let their example give us fortitude to follow Him wherever He leads, and if it costs nothing less than everything, so be it.

If nationalism engenders a sense of loyalty and devotion as it did in the case of John Paul II, it might be worth asking, to whom (or what) are those who have no sense of loyalty or devotion to their nation devoted?

For those who love Lebanon and its people, the apparent indifference of the West to this unique nation and its struggles is incomprehensible.

In 1989, with the fall of what Ronald Reagan rightly called the “evil empire,” this magnificent Church of martyrs emerged from the catacombs of communism, not liquidated, not re-educated, but forged like gold in the furnace of persecution.

Pilgrims came because Blessed Karl of Austria lived those virtues and qualities contemporary society longs to see in its leaders, in Church and State. He was a man of integrity, a ‘whole’ man; his inner and private life was the same as his public life. He believed in the virtue of duty: to be dutiful, even to the point of losing his country, his Empire, his worldly goods and ultimately his life, makes him a man worthy of admiration and imitation.

At the very moment when the Christian Gospel, with its life-giving and hopeful message of the triumph of life over death, and of light defeating darkness, so desperately needed to be heard, there seemed to be silence from those charged with preaching that Good News.

Tim Stanley is often seen as a ‘moderate’ conservative, but in his new book, he argues convincingly that the moral confusion and historical amnesia of the West can be traced back to the loss of an understanding of the place of tradition in society.

A good chair can be ‘conservative’ because it speaks of ‘home’—the place that Roger Scruton said “defines us, that we hold in trust for our descendants, and that we don’t want to spoil.”

The conversion of Michael Nazir-Ali, at this point in the life both of the established Church of England, the Catholic Church in England, and the wider Catholic Church, is plausibly the most significant conversion since the now St. John Henry Newman knelt at the feet of Bl. Dominic Barberi in Littlemore, Oxford, in October 1845, and asked for reception into the Catholic Church.

When Pope Francis visited Hungary recently, he couldn’t leave fast enough. But the Hungarian Prime Minister used the occasion to remind the Pontiff that the defense of national borders is neither unprecedented nor “immature.”

After ten years of war, with hundreds of thousands of deaths and the mass displacement of millions of civilians, the Syrian people are desperate for peace and stability.