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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.

The Master of Machiavelli

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Machiavelli

The Master of Machiavelli

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Mansfield’s Machiavelli’s primary goal is to subvert and overturn Christianity. It is important to note, as Professor Mansfield does himself, that this reading of a secular, indeed anti-Christian, Machiavelli is not the only reading of the Italian philosopher.
The intellectual life

The Intellectual Life: Hope for the Rest of Us

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Welcoming human imperfection in its manifold expressions is a boon for those of us who lack the privilege of full-time scholarship. It is not in spite of, but thanks to, the inherent inefficiencies of our rich and often chaotic lives that so many of us can enjoy the pursuit of intellectual enrichment.
C. S. Lewis birthday appreciation

C. S. Lewis and the Populists: A Birthday Appreciation

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At a moment when the values Lewis cherished often seem endangered as much by their supposed friends as by their proclaimed enemies, we would do well to remember his prescriptions.
Collège de France

Raymond Aron: Political Philosopher 

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Aron is one of a few who never let the ideologies and catastrophic events of the twentieth century get the better of him. Ready to face those critiques and recognize their share of truth, he always refrained from taking the practical conclusions that so many cravenly or imprudently derived from them.
communitas

Inclusion and Recognition: The Ancillary Values of Institutional DEI

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Lamenting the violations of our past and celebrating the achievements of the present, the ancillary role of DEI would serve to exalt personhood and the communion of culturally rich community without qualification as the life of any institution.
Thanksgiving table

The Bookshelf: November Is for Gratitude

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November is a month for looking back in gratitude at where we have been, where we come from, who has trod the boards of our stage before us. Gratitude is the proper spirit to lift us up during these shorter, colder days (at least in these latitudes), while the seasonal life of nature turns with the leaves and falls with them to the ground.
Pope Benedict XVI

The Soul of the Sower

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Joseph Ratzinger looked at reality straight on, without blinders, neither a pessimist nor an optimist; with trepidation but always with Christian hope. He persevered, trusting in the promises of Christ as we must. He did so as almost all of us have to, without benefit of any special grace.
Critical race theory

Critical Race Theory for the Rest of Us

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In his book All One in Christ, Edward Feser provides a succinct but comprehensive treatment of Critical Race Theory, its logical flaws and lack of basis in social science, and the Catholic Church’s alternative solution to racism: love for each person as made in God’s image and purchased by the blood of Jesus Christ.
faith and fiction

Jon Fosse’s Septology and Faith in Fiction

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The phenomenon now arising around Fosse’s work, crowned by his widely honored and beloved Septology, supports the thought that the novelistic tradition’s centuries of exploring this tension have not yet come to an end. Fictionists of faith in the twenty-first century—far from being marginalized, suppressed, or silenced—face a wider horizon for hope and for endeavor than many may have ever dreamed of seeing. What remains to be seen is what writers will choose to do with such a vista of freedom.
Children's books

The Bookshelf: Impressionable Minds

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What young readers need and deserve are models of virtue they can aspire to emulate.
the cellophane cross

The Cellophane Cross

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If we love someone, we must be willing to correct his errors. We should fiercely debate, that debate may refine our intellects and help us fiercely seek truth.
Confederate statue

The Legacy of White Supremacy: Why Confederate Monuments Should Come Down

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It is a natural thing for southerners to be drawn to Lee’s memory and to look up in admiration at a statue in his likeness. But the fact remains: such statues say to black Americans, in the voice of the unreconstructed white majority, “We’re back in charge, and don’t you forget it.”
Being human in the modern world

Being Human in the Modern World: Why Personalism Matters for Education and Culture

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How would you answer the basic question of philosophical anthropology: What does it mean to be human? How does that answer affect your life?
modern couples

The Truth about Men, Women, and Sex

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Recent revelations about sexual harassment, assault, and abuse underscore certain blunt realities about men, women, and sex. How can we confront those realities in a way that leads to less sexual violence?
Public Discourse

Public Discourse at 15: Resisting Evil without Losing Our Souls

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In the past fifteen years, we’ve published articles on the moral, cultural, religious, and political issues of our time, including the most controversial and sensitive; but we have done so in a manner of which we can be proud, respecting the intellect and personhood of our readers, interlocutors, and intellectual contestants.
Jonathan Edwards

Sinners in the Hands of a Beautiful God

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In this new book—intended to bring Edwards “into the twenty-first century”—Marsden has returned to the Edwards he first discovered in his twenties. The New England thinker’s “invigorating emphasis on the dynamic beauty of God at the heart of reality” grabbed him then and has not let him go. As Marsden says, “You don’t get tired of beauty.”  
Francis of Assisi

Francis of Assisi, Father of Modernity

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Francis of Assisi teaches us that those who want to embrace the joys of this life must also embrace suffering. Our forgetfulness of this truth could explain the current crisis of our civilization.
Christian nationalism

A Gentler Christian Nationalism: Social Scientific Correctives to a Reductionistic Theory

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Various trends in American religion and right-wing politics further indicate that as the political influence of Christian nationalism is waxing, that of religious conservatism is waning. This need not be a fixed situation, but it does mean religious conservatives will have ample need of God’s grace as they consider how to avoid moral and spiritual compromise while navigating a particularly treacherous political landscape.
The Iliad

A New Iliad

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The first word of Emily Wilson’s new translation of the Iliad signals that this is not quite the Homer we’re used to. You may well ask whether anyone today can be used to an epic, conventionally attributed to a blind bard named Homer, that was composed some 2,750 years ago in a stylized form of Greek that no one spoke natively. But surprisingly, there have been more than a dozen translations into English in the past thirty-five years alone.
American schools

If We Want Better Schools, We Need to Be a Serious People

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Our schools are failing not because of what happens in the classroom, but because of what happens—or more to the point, what doesn’t happen—at the dinner table. If we wish to be a serious people, then we must bolster our institutions with the power to humanize and domesticate the bedlam within us all.
Cafe and discussion of art and politics

Art and Politics in Roger Scruton’s Conservative Philosophy

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Hörcher adeptly elucidates how Scruton’s belief in the intertwining of aesthetics, morality, and politics stands as a bulwark against the often fragmented worldview of today’s modern thinkers.
Don Quixote and Sancha Panza statues

Don Quixote and Our Quixotic Youth

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The scope of the crisis of masculinity is unchartered territory for America and the broader West. Yet many of the most exaggerated masculine traits have an ancient ancestry and can be traced back to one of the greatest works of the Western canon.
Civic education for two cities

Civic Education for Two Cities

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A parallel challenge exists in preparing active participants for life as citizens and as members of church communities. Similar strategies can help both.
Art as virtue

The Art of Virtue and the Virtue of Art

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By co-creating with God, we imitate his goodness, participate in his governance, and bring more of creation into the divine unity.
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