The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary

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Brownlow / Poetry

25 Dec, 2020

Poetry: Four Christmas Poems by St. Robert Southwell

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St. Robert Southwell (1561–95) was born to a well-to-do Norfolk family.  At fourteen he was sent out of England to receive a Catholic education at the new English school founded by William Allen at Douai in Flanders.  He soon made his way to Rome, where he became a Jesuit and a teacher at the English College.  In 1586 his superiors sent him to back to England, where a new statute made it treason to be a priest.  Waiting to take ship, he wrote that he was “on the threshold of death.”  He survived for six years before he was captured, interrogated, tortured, imprisoned, tried, convicted for being a priest “against the statute,” and executed the next day, 21 February 1595.   The Church canonized him in 1970.

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Uncategorized

23 Dec, 2020

A Christmas Story from Anterus Smith, as told to Chad Rayson, Part II

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My father used to say, always with a note of sadness in his voice, that the curse of politics had even come between the two Sons of Zebedee.  Their father—who would be my great-grandfather—had been strongly influenced by his mother, a Scottish woman from Canada, who had communicated some of her reverence for the British Empire to her older son.  She had died when James was only eight, and all the boy could recall of his mother was a sickly old woman who complained of the noise he made.  When his wife died, her husband lost his loyalty to the...

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All Paid Subscribers / Andrei Navrozov / Wednesday's Child

22 Dec, 2020

Wednesday’s Child: Christmas with the Borgia

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The identity of the Aragonese noble family associated with mafia style poisonings in Renaissance Italy – as well as with incest, larceny, and simony, among other lesser crimes – is incidental to the story here.  I can easily replace the name of Cesare Borgia with that of Claudius of Denmark, likewise known, at least to readers of Shakespeare, for murdering his brother: “My father’s brother, but no more like my father/Than I to Hercules.”  Prince Hamlet, in fact, was very much on my mind when, a couple of weeks ago, I watched Alexei Navalny’s investigation into his own murder. “I...

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Poetry

21 Dec, 2020

Poetry: “Noel”

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I received from Robert Peters this Christmas gift:  a newly discovered Christmas poem by J.R.R. Tolkien, which I am sharing with our readers.

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Free Content

17 Dec, 2020

Cruel to Be Kind

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Wisdom comes from knowledge which comes from painfully acquired information about reality—facts.  Since, as you say, you have little knowledge of the current political scene and even less of history,  your concerns do not really involve rational thought but are a reflection of depression, and unfortunately, this is a mental condition that leads the sufferer to be happy to see, as the French say, “tout en noir”, all in black.

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Clyde Wilson

16 Dec, 2020

The Trump Legacy

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That so many Americans are interested in Presidential “legacies” and are personally and emotionally involved with “my President” and “my  “leader” is unhealthy.  After all, the President was supposed to be a Constitutional public official.