Grief is a gift, not given for its own sake, but to lead us to an ever-deeper peace. It’s often said that saints beget saints. August 27th the Church honors Saint Monica, and the 28th Saint Augustine, her son. But what we now celebrate in joy Monica first sought with tears, with sorrow that begot [...]| The Imaginative Conservative
Critical theorists seek to confuse concepts through the manipulation of language and promote ideas that fail to correspond to reality. Academic theories designed to confuse rather than to clarify must be confronted with calm reason. This is the most charitable thing we can do for those who will come after us. Self-evident Truths It can [...]| The Imaginative Conservative
It is an intimate art, the translation business. But it is the art of creatures like we humans, who live always on the border of matter and spirit, trying to marry together the infinite and the finite, the spiritual and the earthly, the eternal and the temporal. On January 11, 1940, the Italian writer and [...]| The Imaginative Conservative
We are so accustomed to regarding the fine arts as simply a means to pursue or attain the beautiful in the abstract, that we forget that for long centuries there was a close connection between the arts and some public purpose... (essay by Thomas Storck)| The Imaginative Conservative
Only by recognizing the divine mystery that predicates existence in the world can one reclaim his individuality. Only then will he be capable of searching for meaning generated outside the human intellect. Humans can never be gods, but they need God to live meaningful lives. (essay by John Gist)| The Imaginative Conservative
Beauty has an important place in the central activities of Catholic education. Learning requires discipline but deep down is a feast for the mind and heart. (essay by Andrew Seeley)| The Imaginative Conservative
All nations need reminders that even their best ideals, though worth defending, do not earn them chosen nation status. Reading C.S. Lewis’ "That Hideous Strength" and Langston Hughes' “Let America Be America Again” in light of each other could rouse those in need of both a restoration of confidence in the goodness of the American dream and a renewal of national humility. (essay by Bethany Getz)| The Imaginative Conservative
The tiresome cant about the work ethic notwithstanding, Americans do not celebrate, or even recognize, the dignity of labor. Although they profess to disdain both the idle rich and the idle poor, they do not at the same time esteem those who must work for a living, even as most count themselves among that number. (essay by Mark Malvasi)| The Imaginative Conservative
There is dignity and value in work. You who live in America once knew this. You did not think lesser of a man because he got his hands dirty with honest toil. To the contrary, you thought it a grand thing to build and to create. But all that has changed. (imaginative letter from Homer by Louis Markos)| The Imaginative Conservative
As we dispense with religious institutions, beliefs, and practices—as we dispense with God Himself in the ridiculous belief that we are enough on our own—we leave ourselves open to barbarism within and a more overt barbarism from without. (essay by Bruce Frohnen)| The Imaginative Conservative
The Enlightenment may well be the end of an old story rather than the beginning of a new one. The philosophy of insatiable appetites changed the Christian-Aristotelian moral order into the modern world, but now that the change is just about complete, what purpose does its catalyst serve? (essay by Daniel McCarthy)| The Imaginative Conservative
For Dawson and Kirk, St. Augustine served as both the lodestar in confronting the evils of the world and as a means by which the modern traditionalist should navigate in turbulent ideological waters. (essay by Bradley Birzer)| The Imaginative Conservative
Was Albert Jay Nock correct in saying that the educated man is a superfluous man in modern society? (essay by Bradley J. Birzer)| The Imaginative Conservative
Surely it is a noble desire to try to create a heaven on earth, to make a paradise in this valley of tears, but that is an end that ultimately requires the denial of the reality of human existence. We are fallen, we are mortal, we are not meant to end in perfecting this created world that begins to decay at first touch. (essay by Steven Jonathan Rummelsburg)| The Imaginative Conservative
In Mary’s body, we see the total gift of God’s grace in raising and glorifying our lowly bodies to that “lofty goal” unattainable by our own efforts. All the evil which eats up our bodies—our diseases, discomforts, lusts, and addictions—will be trampled upon not by abandoning the body, but by glorifying it. (essay by Bro. Thomas Nee)| The Imaginative Conservative
To what extent are literary epics the children of their own times, expressions of their own particular zeitgeist, and to what extent are they expressions of perennial truths that transcend fads, fashions and other temporal ephemera? Considering the epics of Homer and Virgil will enable us to understand these questions and to move towards answering them. (essay by Joseph Pearce)| The Imaginative Conservative
