“If I forget thee, Jerusalem,” cries the Psalmist, “may my right hand forget its skill!” (Ps 137:5). “Men have forgotten God,” Solzhenitsyn observed of the Soviet regime; “that’s why all this has happened.” In his 1982 article “Ship of Fools,” P.J. O’Rourke described sailing up the River Volga with a group of Western journalists and…
Of sexual immorality and impurity, St. Paul says, “Let them be not so much as named among you” (Eph. 5:3). He further counsels that we think on those things that are noble, pure, lovely, and admirable (Phil. 4:8); but there comes a time to look into the Abyss and call it by name. The specific…
Strength without leverage is nothing. Even Samson at his power’s peak could not have budged a massive object in a vacuum: he’d simply push himself backwards into empty space. Likewise, an intellect ungrounded in history can only bounce aimlessly off the ineluctable marble of facts (“stubborn things,” John Adams said). I recently remarked, by way…
In the end—as in the beginning—every rational precept, every logical connection, every possible system of human or angelic thought, is predicated on a single truth: A is A. This ultimate and absolute equivalency is not merely inspired or revealed by the Divine Reason; it is the actual Name of God Himself. When He proclaimed to…
