Terminal care no longer encourages us to balance the pursuit of treatment with emotional and spiritual support. Rather, the conversation turns continually back to, “What do we do next?” as though the body were a computer with a glitch in the programming. No heed is paid to the reality–that the time will come when we do nothing.
The first generation of human rights promulgation after World War II sought to guarantee freedoms to the individual against the state. Now, we are in a situation where we are suppressing other rights, such as the right to freedom of expression, in the name of the “right to a safe environment.”
The life of the mind is fundamentally dangerous when divorced from the world. Indeed, intellectuals have a moral duty to seek out ways of encountering reality—the thing out there—if they are to avoid becoming a tremendous nuisance to others, a trait so common among their kind.
While Charles’ Centennial did not feature ritual obeisances by the successors of those who so cruelly wronged him and all whom he loved, one may hope for something different from the quasqui- or sesquicentennials. It may be that young people living today, by taking to heart the lessons he taught by his life and sacrifice, shall live in a world where this injustice is at last put to rest.
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.
One of Christian theology’s most radical moments came early in its history. It happened through the person of St. Gregory
What many globalist idealists cannot accept is that it is in man’s nature to love more strongly according to proximity. There are bonds that run deeply within the human heart and mind and are the center of community and cultures.
Miguel de Cervantes presents us with the mirrored vices of savagery and civilization. Like Tacitus, he celebrates indigenous prerogative to resist foreign excess, even as he asserts the imperial principle.
More than 500 years ago Antoine Brumel wrote a 12-part Mass that allows us to experience the uninhibited spirituality of the pre-Reformation world of the early 16th century. Its construction from a tiny motif of Gregorian chant from the Easter Lauds is nothing less than awe-inspiring.
What the nine worthies provided was a thematically unified account, a sweeping narrative, from Homer through the Bible and into Christendom, which western Europeans could use to understand and in some wise enshrine the canon of their history. The question we may venture to ask, in whose answer we might come to understand our era and its place, is whether it is possible to discern modernity’s worthies.
The attendance of a performance of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion during Holy Week has long been a staple of the educated bourgeoisie. But what once used to be a reverent experience, is in danger of becoming increasingly demystified. A plea for awe.
That is what the world is desperately yearning for, which is why people still flock to their churches to kneel down and kiss the Cross on Good Friday. Most may not fully understand why they are there, but they know that Christ did not give his life so that we would remain the same. He gave his life so that, having crucified the old self, the burden of bondage would be lifted forever.
