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  • When the film Into Great Silence came out in American theatres back in 2007, a student of mine, who is a high school religion teacher, took some of his students to see it. They had to leave about half way through. The students, accustomed to fast paced entertainment, couldn’t handle the presentation of the life of the Carthusian monks of…

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    The Literacy Crisis in American Public Schools

    by Steven Jonathan Rummelsburg

    The bumper sticker that reads “If you can read this, thank a teacher,”  implies several bold propositions: If you can read this, then you are literate. If you are literate, then the efficient cause of your literacy is a teacher.…

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    Worship Service pic

    Five Ways to Ruin the Mass

    by Jeffrey Tucker

    We are getting ever closer to an improved liturgy in the English-speaking world. The new Missal gives us a more dignified language that more closely reflects the Latin standard. The hippy-dippy rupturism of the past is finally giving way to…

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    Venner pic

    Suicide at Notre Dame a Warning to the West

    by Marjorie Jeffrey

    The mainstream American right has remained almost entirely silent about the recent suicide of the French historian, Dominique Venner. The reasons for this, I do not know—perhaps it is a squeamishness about the symbolism of his final act, or a…

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    Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining

    Welcome to the Mental Ward

    by Anthony Esolen

    Chesterton once wrote that the madman is not the fellow who has lost his reason, but the fellow who has lost everything but his reason.  Such a person, seized by a single monomaniacal idea, loses his balance, as if under…

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    Francisco Vera Mexican Martyr Cristero War

    Keeping Score: The Divine Meaning of Success

    by Regis Martin

     Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend  With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.  Why do sinners’ ways prosper?  and why must  Disappointment all I endeavor end?                — Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. If success in…

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    Tolkien pic

    J.R.R. Tolkien: Husband and Father

    by Philip Kosloski

    Best known for his fantasy novels The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien is probably better known by members of his family for his profound example of true fatherhood. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on January…

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    Like flaming demons, Wallachians rushed out of the night and into the Turkish camp, striking terror in an army of terrorists. Leading the charge was a gore-spattered chieftain—hewing and hacking a path to the central tents where the Sultan huddled…

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    Politics
    Admiral Halsey Sign
    Admiral Halsey Sign

    Diversity is Not a Military Virtue

    by R. Cort Kirkwood

    When American sailors, soldiers and Marines landed on Tulagi in the Solomon Islands in 1943, a billboard greeted them with his message: Admiral Halsey says “Kill Japs, Kill Japs, Kill More Japs”! You will help kill the Yellow bastards if…

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    Economics
    monopoly
    monopoly

    Faith and the Employer

    by Bruce Frohnen

    The diocese of Lansing, where I currently attend mass, is a pretty good one, as such things go in the contemporary United States.  Our parish has a very good priest and I’m confident we won’t soon be joining in on…

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    Church
    St. Francis Marrying Poverty 1633 Andrea Sacchi
    St. Francis Marrying Poverty 1633 Andrea Sacchi

    Pope Francis on the True Meaning of Poverty

    by Samuel Gregg

    “How I long for a poor Church for the poor!” With these words spoken after being elected pope, Jorge Bergoglio underscored a theme that continues to be front-and-center of his papacy. Not surprisingly, many have concluded such statements demonstrate that…

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    Culture
    thomas-kuhn
    thomas-kuhn

    The Paradigm of Revolt in Public Education

    by Steven Jonathan Rummelsburg

    In 1962, historian of science Thomas S. Kuhn shocked the academic world with his book The Structures of Scientific Revolution. He asserted that scientific communities are closed minded and promote convergent thinking as a function of dogma in scientific work.…

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    Catholic Living
    Father-and-Son-in-Church-Norman Rockwell
    Father-and-Son-in-Church-Norman Rockwell

    The Sheer Joy of Fatherhood

    by Arland K. Nichols

    Recently I ran into my former advisor at Texas A&M University whom I hadn’t seen for nearly a decade. While I held my son Thomas in my arms, I shared with him the details of my pro-life work for Human…

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