Podcast: Blind Faith in Science
Science is not the problem but the blind faith in science that is the religion of Secularism.
The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary
A Humble and Modest Search for Clarity
I do not believe that I am the only American who has been put off by hysterical rants about the end of the American way of life. Almost everything I have come across, from articles in so-called conservative publications to blogposts to conversations with friends strikes me as based on very limited understanding, not just of history but of the basic meaning of words.
A Christmas Story of Anterus Smith, as told to Chad Rayson, Part III
“How about a Bible story, kiddies?”
The children were overjoyed to escape from their monotonous captivity, and their mother was too beaten down to impose her will. Down from the loft they plummeted, stumbling on the steps of the ladder, like three half-grown squirrels on the first day of spring. Evelina started to send them back up but stopped
Announcement: Return to Work
My absence from Fleming.Foundation was initially due to Christmas and the arrival of two our our children, but the prolongation of inertia was the result of an intestinal disease that left most of the family fairly wasted. It matches pretty well the classic symptoms of a noro-virus. The departure of the virus–and the children–has made it possible to return to my labors
Poetry: Four Christmas Poems by St. Robert Southwell
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.
A Christmas Story from Anterus Smith, as told to Chad Rayson, Part II
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...
Wednesday’s Child: Christmas with the Borgia
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...
A Christmas Story from Anterus Smith, as told to Chad Rayson, Part I
A Christmas story as told to Chad Rayson. Mr. Rayson sketched this story out some some six or seven years ago, but, when the first draft aroused no interest in the few readers he showed it to, he shelved it and forgot all about it until his memory was triggered by the mention of Sam McGee.
Poetry: “Noel”
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.
Blessed are the Courteous by Vince Cornell
For they shall get a gold star on their forehead from the CDC.
