Pillar

Education & Culture

The fourth pillar, education and culture, is built upon the recognition of two essential realities. First, the Western intellectual tradition requires a dedication to and desire for truth. Second, education takes place not only within colleges and universities but within our broader culture, whose institutions and practices form us as whole persons.

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Before we indulge in more time online, it is worth considering whether the images flashing on that screen are ultimately pointing us toward the humanity and healing power of Christ or a disfigured version of the kind of body a technocratic culture wishes us to have.
Thomas Aquinas can be celebrated by the peoples of both oceans.
Religion needs the power of government, but not in the way some think. 
Right-wing young men see a politics and culture that celebrates every identity but theirs, cultivates a totalitarian ideological culture that directly undermines their beliefs, desires, and life goals, and is set to leave them significantly worse off—socially, economically, culturally, spiritually—than their grandparents. Any successful attempt to reach these young men will need to seriously address these deeply rooted sentiments. 
A pair of essays about the state of war, and of peace, in Israel
Let us do our duty. Let us slam shut and then nail shut the Overton Window on anti-Semitism and thereby help give our country a new birth of freedom rightly understood.  
A spiritual and intellectual dialogue with John Henry Newman
There is no one factor that can explain our polarization, nor any one solution. But Newman can still teach us. Without speculating about what Newman would say or do in this situation, let us instead consider some key principles and arguments that Newman sought to establish in his own day, which are just as applicable today. 
The recent growth of the celebration of Halloween may not simply reflect nostalgia for an enchanted past. 
What is the nature of human dignity? What is it to act justly towards another human being? For Augustine, the answer is that justice towards another human being is a matter of recognizing God’s image in them, and all that follows from that, the deep solidarity and communion that arises from this.
If we can fix our society’s marriage problem, our literary taste may well improve as a result. In the meantime, we can expect spicy necromancer novels to continue to climb bestseller lists. 
I continue to believe that our best path forward is to respect one another and to avoid the constant temptation to engage in emotional and political manipulation from the left and right.
Chernow’s biography denies us the gift that Mark Twain would so generously bestow on his fellow Americans. For her 250th birthday, America deserves better. 
As institutions examine their DEI initiatives and consider what to keep and what to eliminate, they should do so with the purpose of the university in mind. If they do, they’ll see that, consistent with public opinion, DEI has a role to play. Properly ordered, it should focus on goals like promoting access to the life of the mind and ensuring that people from all walks of life feel welcome on campuses.
Death must never be reduced to content. To promote the general welfare in our age means to place the soul of the nation above the gatekeepers of the algorithm.  
In the end, Siraganian’s seven theses mostly collapse from their own structural inadequacy as arguments. Sneers, exaggerations, false comparisons, and non sequiturs are what her theses have going for them. In these respects, she neatly illustrates the need for the intellectual challenge viewpoint diversity promises, on her own campus and others.
Art is useless, and perhaps that is why it’s meaningful.
In a culture that has forgotten the sacred, to see with the eyes of moral imagination is a quiet revolution. And it is one my generation desperately needs. 
My generation needs help discerning what the good life truly is.
I wish my elders knew that, in the face of what seems to be an increasingly frightening technocratic reality, we want to live free from deceit and as true humans. 
I have been strongly drawn to pick up several recent books of history and historiography that tackle anachronisms and reifications, because such clarifying works can keep us from making facile conclusions about the past—and about its effect on the present.
Lewis is needed, now more than ever, to help men and women of faith move “further up and further in.” Jews will be much better off for the journey with him. 
The Holy Spirit is still reliably and certainly at work in aiding the selection of the successor to the Chair of Saint Peter. That the process of getting there often leans on friendships, acquaintances, impressions, hope, and trust should not concern us. We’re human, after all. It couldn’t be otherwise. 
Many of us find it difficult to be forced to revise our assumptions and change our views, but for Brown, it seems to be one of the great joys in life.

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