English Speaking Christians

In Defense of Monarchy (Guest: Charles Coulombe) : Should Catholics be monarchists?

  The Oxford Book of English Verse   1250–1900  https://www.bartleby.com/101/   Chosen and Edited by A. T. Quiller-Couch   From Arthur Quiller-Couch’s 1919 Introduction to this extensive collection: “For this Anthology I have tried to range over the whole field of English Verse…. To bring home and render so great a spoil compendiously has been my capital difficulty. It is for the reader to judge if I have so managed it as to serve those who already love poetry and to implant that love in some young minds not yet initiated.”

  https://www.bartleby.com/101/275.html Robert Herrick.  1591–1674    275.   Litany to the Holy Spirit    I N  the hour of my distress,   When temptations me oppress,   And when I my sins confess,         Sweet Spirit, comfort me!     When I lie within my bed,          5 Sick in heart and sick in head,   And with doubts discomforted,         Sweet Spirit, comfort me!     When the house doth sigh and weep,   And the world is drown'd in sleep,   10 Yet mine eyes the watch do keep,         Sweet Spirit, comfort me!     When the passing bell doth toll,   And the Furies in a shoal   Come to fright a parting soul,   15       Sweet Spirit, comfort me!     When the tapers now burn blue, ...

 https://www.bartleby.com/101/342.html Richard Crashaw.  1613?–1649    342.   An Epitaph upon Husband and Wife Who died and were buried together    T O  these whom death again did wed   This grave 's the second marriage-bed.   For though the hand of Fate could force   'Twixt soul and body a divorce,   It could not sever man and wife,          5 Because they both lived but one life.   Peace, good reader, do not weep;   Peace, the lovers are asleep.   They, sweet turtles, folded lie   In the last knot that love could tie.   10 Let them sleep, let them sleep on,   Till the stormy night be gone,   And the eternal morrow dawn;   Then the curtains will be drawn,   And they wake into a light   15 Whose day shall never die in night.

A Weimar Moment for America : When do you know it’s over? When do you know that civilization has collapsed inwardly to such an irreparable extent that the next stop is barbarism? When is that Weimar moment? Certainly, the legalization of abortion was one such moment, as barbarism is defined as the inability or unwillingness to recognize another person as a …

Black Lives Matter Undermines Catholic Social Teaching : The Black Lives Matter movement undercuts the legitimate—and consistent with Catholic Social Teaching—role of the police in our communities.

  What Happens in Vagueness Stays in Vagueness https://www.city-journal.org/html/what-happens-vagueness-stays-vagueness-13366.html

We're Ignoring a Root Cause of Our Problems : The single greatest contributor to our social pathologies such as addiction, mental illness, suicide, and violent crime is the breakdown of marriage and the family.

Facing the Rising Barbarism : By Regis Martin - The rising barbarism we see all around us cannot be ignored, nor can we withhold the medicine to cure it.

Post-Dobbs Vasectomies on the Rise : The new limitations on abortion access has moved Democrats to put the pressure back on men to get permanently sterilized. Post-Dobbs Vasectomies on the Rise https://www.crisismagazine.com/2022/post-dobbs-vasectomies-on-the-rise

Language as a Political Tool : I always recall the statement by the renowned international anti-euthanasia activist Rita Marker that “verbal engineering precedes social engineering.” Even a quick examination of current controversies in the socio-political arena provides abundant confirmation of this. One obvious current example is how the defenders of virtually uninhibited immigration or open borders choose readily to ignore that …

The Church of England’s Imminent Death Brings Opportunities : The Church of England’s demise was caused by putting the kingship of the individual above that of Christ. APRIL 20, 2021 The Church of England’s Imminent Death Brings Opportunities DAVID LARSON Canterbury Cathedral Voiced by Amazon Polly The Church of England is crumbling so quickly it may barely reach its 500th birthday, in 2034. This is not just my opinion—it’s the opinion of the church itself, which in the United States is known as the Episcopal Church and in Canada and elsewhere is typically known as the Anglican Church. Here in the U.S., the Episcopal Church’s numbers are rapidly spiraling to zero. Seminary president Kristine Stache reported to the Episcopal hierarchy in 2019 that their 2008-2018 data showed a 24.9% drop in attendance over the decade, and if trends continue, in 30 years they will have no Sunday attendance at all.  It depicts a church that appears to be dying,” she said. An Episcopal priest and exper...

July’s Child: Hilaire Belloc's Path to Rome : The Path to Rome is one of the most delightful and well-beloved travel books in the English language — the story of Hilaire Belloc, age 31, on a walk from southern France to the far-off city of Rome. Or perhaps of Hilaire Belloc on a romp through the English language. Or perhaps of Hilaire Belloc …

Wendell Berry's Community : Wendell Berry, novelist, essayist, poet and farmer, is a central contributor to the growing renaissance of Christian culture. Although he does not, in his lean careful writing, broach religion directly, he writes as one completely at home with the Christian tradition. His readers are numerous and ever growing, drawn to his scriptural and Aristotelian-Thomistic view …

What is Multiculturalism and Should We Embrace It? : Multiculturalism is a thorny topic. It is also a topic on which any truly rational discussion is very difficult. The problem is that many people equate criticism of multiculturalism with racism. Since nobody wants to be accused of racism (quite rightly), it is easier and safer to avoid talking about anything that might get one …

Clark Whelton Archives - Crisis Magazine https://www.crisismagazine.com/2011/the-new-language-vagueness

We Won't Because We Will: Moral Doublethink in the Nuclear Age : Of all the pleasures of the intellect, one of the very keenest — I admit that it’s a slightly perverse sort of pleasure — is that provided by the spectacle of a first-class lawyer arguing a manifestly bad case. I am deeply grateful to Mr. Michael Novak, therefore, for the delight I took in his …

Growing Up Irish in America : St. Patrick’s Day in our home was a quiet, subdued affair—no appurtenances of green, no consumption of green beer. We wore no stovepipe hats, nor any buttons of boasting Irishry. However, it was a special day, my saint’s day, the day when St. Patrick passed from the discord of time to the mystery of eternity. My …

Fearless: How John Paul II Changed the Political World : John Paul II was a shaker of world events. He regraded the political landscape of the 20th century and was counted among the few who were responsible for the relatively peaceful demise of the Evil Empire. Pundits were busy assessing his impact in this realm and wondering about his broader political legacy. They were having …

A Catholic View of Poetry and Civilization : Humans are language animals; this is why poetry has always had the power to move the very core of humans from its inception to today.

Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Abortion Newspeak : Seventy years ago in June 1949 George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four was published. On June 7, 2019, the day prior to Nineteen Eighty-Four’s 70th anniversary, The Guardian, the United Kingdom’s leading socialist newspaper, announced: “Why the Guardian is changing the language it uses to describe abortion bans.” What follows in this pronouncement would have …

The Sexual Revolution and Its Victims, Part Two : One thing that defenders of the sexual revolution will not understand is that, although the act of intercourse is private (or better be), everything else about sex is public.  I don’t simply mean that people will know that John and Mary are in a “relationship,” horrid denatured word, or that sexual intercourse results in those …

It's Nineteen Eighty-Four All Over Again : It was a good year for many of us. An economy that had sustained a heavy blow under President Jimmy Carter was recovering under Ronald Reagan. Aside from the skirmishes in Lebanon, the nation was at peace. And as a college freshman away from my mother’s scrupulous gaze, I was at last free to leave …

The Babel Story Is About Speaking the Truth : Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves…” (Gen 11:4) As a small child the tale of Babel’s tower seemed a large story, one filled with men who were wicked and a god who was powerful. …

Vulgar Speech Leads to Coarseness of Soul : A colleague recently asked me to write for our students about what is euphemistically, and rather incorrectly, known as “swearing.”  We have all perhaps heard our younger siblings yell, “Muuuum! Jimmy swore!” Yet Jimmy did not really “swear,” unless he is beyond his years, or brought into a court of law.  Swearing literally is taking …

School Watch: Immigrants and Catholic Schools : I recently debated bilingual education at a Washington, D.C., area public magnet school. My opponent, an English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) teacher, said that Spanish-speaking children in her school district were being moved from first grade to second grade, and even to third grade, without sufficient English skills. Her solution was to give …

Words, Words Everywhere : … And Not a Thought to Think A recent issue of Boston College Magazine contained an article entitled, “Writing Catholic,” in which several Catholic writers were asked to describe how their faith affects their work. One of the respondents, Mary Helen Washington, noted toward the end of her contribution that, some years ago, an essay …

One Mass, One People : The Traditional Latin Mass can be a unifying force among diverse cultures.

A Remedy for the Abuse of Language : The line between medicine and poison is a fine one. The same drug can cure when administered by an expert and harm, if not kill, when misapplied. Some drugs always cause harm, but are consumed for some apparent benefit; they, too, are pseudo-medicinal. This is true for souls as much as it is for bodies. …

Loss of Language, Loss of Thought : Loss of language among the younger population — that is to say, the ability to formulate and enunciate properly constructed sentences that reflect clear thought — is growing at a staggering rate in the United States. Even among students whose academic aptitude is well above the national average, my years as an undergraduate business professor …

The line of cleavage throughout the world lies between what is with, and what is against, The Faith . Hilarie Belloc says our choices are a return to Catholicism or chaos and "the crisis ... does not permit of indefinite delay." He shows in his work's that ever since the disaster of the Protestant Reformation, our civilization has been coming apart. Catholicism built the Western World - from Roman times through the Dark Ages to the High Middle Ages - but the false doctrine and social philosophy of Protestantism, based on Calvin, is causing a steady and continuing breakdown of that world. Belloc shows the Reformation's evil results in the economic sphere, through the dissolving of Catholic restraints on usury and on unbridled competition. He states that "Calvin opened the door to the domination of the mind by money." Belloc concludes that the return of Catholicism is the only remedy for our crumbling world, because our basic principles of civilization are Cat...

The battle is between the Church and the anti-Church the Church of God and anti-God the Church of Christ and anti-Christ. There is a battle on between the retention of Catholic morals, tradition, and authority on the one side, and the active effort to destroy them on the other. The attack will not tolerate us. It will attempt to destroy us. Nor can we tolerate it. We must attempt to destroy it as being the fully equipped and ardent enemy of the Truth by which men live. The duel is to the death. p146-148 The new advance against the Church, what may prove to be the final advance against the Church, what is at any rate the only modern enemy of consequence--is fundamentally materialist. It is materialist in its reading of history, and above all in its proposals for social reform. Being Atheist , it is characteristic of the advancing wave that repudiates the human reason.. The great Modern Attack (which is more than a heresy) is indifferent to self-contradiction. It merely a...

"Those who think that the subject of heresy may be neglected because it sounds to them old-fashion are thinking in words instead of ideas". Hilarie Belloc The battle is between the Church and the anti-Church the Church of God and anti-God the Church of Christ and anti-Christ. There is a battle on between the retention of Catholic morals, tradition, and authority on the one side, and the active effort to destroy them on the other. The attack will not tolerate us. It will attempt to destroy us. Nor can we tolerate it. We must attempt to destroy it as being the fully equipped and ardent enemy of the Truth by which men live. The duel is to the death. p146-148 The new advance against the Church, what may prove to be the final advance against the Church, what is at any rate the only modern enemy of consequence- -is fundamentally materialist . It is materialist in its reading of history, and above all in its proposals for social reform. Being Atheist, it is characterist...