A satirical comedy opens our eyes to ourselves and our society, and in laughing at our foibles, foolishness, and failures, we will also see the serious side, the dangerous implications of our idiocy. In Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend, the character Betty Higden compliments her child Sloppy who reads the newspaper to her. She says, “And I do love a newspaper. You mightn’t think it, but Sloppy is a beautiful reader of a newspaper. He do the police in different voices.” T.S. Eliot chose Betty’s quip about Sloppy as a subtitle for two sections of The Waste Land—a detail that fell to Ezra Pou ..read more

In one of his last writings, Pope Benedict XVI afforded a key insight into the conservative ideal. Though he was writing as a Catholic about Catholic problems, the late pope’s reflections are truly universal. Speaking directly to the sexual abuse crisis that reached fever pitch during his pontificate, Benedict observes: “The crisis caused by the many cases of clerical abuse drives us to regard the Church as a failure, which we must now decisively take into our own hands and redesign from the ground up.” This, he warns, is dangerous. If the Church can be “redesigned from the ground up,” it cann ..read more

In making a case for the property rights of the American clergy, Bishop John Carroll made a revolutionary case for the nature of the American Church’s relationship with Rome. In these United States our Religious system has undergone a revolution, if possible, more extraordinary than our political one. —John Carroll, 1783 John Carroll and his fellow priests did not go so far as to declare independence in the religious sphere as the American patriots did in the political realm. Doing so would have obliterated their identity as Catholics. To the contrary, Carroll would always prove himsel ..read more

No survey of contemporary literature can call itself complete today which ignores Catholic literature. And this not only because of the promise it holds out for a complete renovation of the arts, but also because of its many distinguished writers and its not inconsiderable critical and creative work in all departments of literature. The Catholic Literary Revival, by Calvert Alexander, S.J. (368 pages, Cluny Media) The history of the Catholic Revival during the past three or four generations presents a number of sharp contrasts such as this, which to those who have not followed its developmen ..read more

One of the most astonishing aspects of the Incarnation mystery is that Christ, while being “God from God, Light from Light,” can withal be spoken of as a human being among human beings. In studying Jesus’ personality, background, concerns, and interests, we touch divinity itself, and learn something of divinity’s plan for humanity as expressed in the forms and structures that make up a civilized life. Studying theology at university, I was particularly drawn to Christology, the study of the nature, person, and attributes of the Lord Jesus—both in his relation to the Heavenly Father and in r ..read more

Here are recommended essays regarding Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) on The Imaginative Conservative: Looking for Mr. Jefferson by Clyde Wilson Thomas Jefferson’s Birthday by Clyde Wilson The Jeffersonian Conservative Tradition by Clyde Wilson Thomas Jefferson, Conservative by Clyde Wilson From Union to Empire by W. Winston Elliott III Was Thomas Jefferson a Philosopher? by Eva Brann The Declaration of Independence: Translucent Poetry by Eva Brann Thomas Jefferson & the American Declaration of Independence by Ross Lence Thomas Jefferson ..read more

The sanitizing of Thomas Jefferson has played a role in the crippling of public discourse. Nowadays, anyone who would discuss something so anodyne as political decentralization or states’ rights has to walk on eggshells, lest he find himself attacked and stigmatized by enforcers of political orthodoxy. We should question an American political establishment that obfuscates the inconvenient facets of Jefferson’s complex career. At times pundits—even conservatives—treat Thomas Jefferson as if his whole legacy were reducible to the phrase “all men are created equal.” And admittedly, Jefferson’s ..read more

I’ll continue to honor Lent in my heart all the year. The reason is neither “Catholic guilt” nor “Jansenism.” It is that Jesus rose from the dead so that we might imitate him, take up our own crosses, and experience truly what it means to be an Easter people, freed to love and serve God no matter the cost. It sounds mildly heretical. No doubt some would call it, without historical accuracy, Jansenist. Most people would say it’s masochistic or perhaps a sad manifestation of that great modern bogeyman, “Catholic guilt.” But I’ll say it anyway. I’m glad for the bacon and the other goodies of Ea ..read more

Like their British counterparts, the American Jacobites bitterly criticized the damage done to the working class and cities by the industrial system and listening to their neo-feudal critiques one sees similarities with Progressivism and Populism. While these latter movements analyzed from the perspective of the political left, the Jacobites did so from the political right. America needed less democracy, not more, and a liberty rightly understood as the pursuit of the good and true. Jacobitism in Britain and the United States, 1880–1910, by Michael J. Connolly (184 pages, McGill-Queen’s Univ ..read more

Joseph Pearce’s “The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful” is a perfect textbook for history classes in Catholic schools, homeschoolers, and anyone concerned to transmit an overview of Catholic history and culture. The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful: History in Three Dimensions, by Joseph Pearce (300 pages, Ignatius Press, 2023) The best way to study the history of the West is through the lens of Church history, because the political, military, economic, and cultural history of the West is invariably built on, and interwoven with, the fortunes and failures of the Church. Some years ago I produ ..read more