St. Austin Review: Reclaiming Culture

Welcome to the Ink Desk

Enjoy the ponderings of the Star's contributors and add your own thoughts. As this section develops, we hope it may become a medium for an exchange of ideas among those who are working towards the cultural revival.

• February 23rd, 2011A Review of “The Church and the Libertarian”by Richard Aleman

  "[W]hat was the matter with the doctrine of laissez-faire was not that it believed that liberty could preserve equality, where there was none to preserve. It was that it preached liberty, or rather license, to increase an inequality that was already hopelessly unequal."

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• February 20th, 2011Just Say Knowby Kevin O'Brien

  Well, people are trumpeting Peter Kreeft's argument on the "Lying for Jesus" issue, in which he comes down on the side of lying-if-we-really-want-to, because we have a "moral common sense" that, in some cases, to do so is right.

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• February 18th, 2011Answer to Objection Number Nineby Kevin O'Brien

  I've discovered another one. Objection Number Nine - Scripture, especially the Old Testament, condones lying.

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• February 17th, 2011Moral Theology? Bah! Humbug!by Kevin O'Brien

  Yesterday I posted what ended up being my most controversial post in two years on Facebook. It was simply a quote from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

  "A good intention (for example, that of helping one's neighbor) does not make behavior that is intrinsically disordered, such as lying and calumny [slander], good or just. The end does not justify the means" (CCC 1753).

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• February 16th, 2011Lies, Falsehoods, Untruths, and Actingby Sophia Mason

  Mr. O'Brien and I seem to have a knack for giving each other post ideas--probably because we tend to be interested in the same things (I'm an actor/writer too). This time I was reading his comments on the James O'Keefe debate--or rather, the broader debate among Catholics about the ethics of lying.

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• February 15th, 2011Speaking Engagements for February & Marchby Joseph Pearce

  After a welcome lull from travelling during January the lecture season gets underweigh this week with my first speaking engagement of the year. Here are the details of my speaking engagements over the next six weeks or so.

  This Thursday, February 17, at 7pm, I am giving the Newman Lecture in the hall at the Newman Center at Our Lady Seat of Wisdom Church & Catholic Student Center at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette. My topic is "The Catholic Literary Revival".

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• February 15th, 2011Orthodox Catholics Abandoning Shipby Kevin O'Brien

  We begin with this: the Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that lying is intrinsically evil and can never be justified.

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• February 15th, 2011Oh, Mr. Blair, What You Said!by Dena Hunt

  I don't often find myself muttering "Hear, Hear!" on reading the articulations of Tony Blair, but a tiny little news segment the other day has Tony opining that multiculturalism in the UK is a failed experiment. And more: he said that some other EU folks felt the same way.

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• February 14th, 2011Laughter and the Love of Friends: An Elegy on the English Pubby Joseph Pearce

  I'm pleased to see an elegiac defence of the English Pub in a recent issue of The Economist. The fact that it is written by the journal's obituary editor might be seen as portentous. The truth is that the traditional English pub is endangered, like the nation that gave it birth. Indeed, and to indulge in an embedded pun, the health of the English pub can be seen as a cultural barometer. If the pub is ailing so is the nation.

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• February 14th, 2011Solzhenitsyn and the Forgotten Soviet Holocaustby Joseph Pearce

  I was intrigued to read an aricle by Jeff Durstewitz about the adoption of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago as required reading in Russian high schools, a move endorsed and actively encouraged by Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin. The government-backed initiative represents a definitive break with the Stalinist past by Russia's present rulers. Yet the aspect of Durstewitz's article that intrigued me most was his criticism of the silence about Stalin's holocaust in Hollywood and the US media.

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• February 14th, 2011Industry: A Distributist Solution Part IIby Richard Aleman

  The family's limited participation in the manufacturing of medium to large-scale goods appears to present us with a challenge. Large-scale industry is needed to accommodate the production of heavy machinery, automobiles, and other technologies we use everyday. To the skeptic, Distributism seems unresponsive to these needs and incapable of fitting into our modern framework.

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• February 11th, 2011Mostly Magicby Sophia Mason

  As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I was lucky enough to be able to attend two performances of the Washington Stage Guild's production of G.K. Chesterton's play Magic.  This post is unfortunately too late to inspire anyone to go see the play; but I suspect most Chesterton fans will still be curious to know how it came out.

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• February 11th, 2011Sneak Preview of the March/April Issueby Joseph Pearce

  The next issue of StAR is now winging its way to the printers. The forthcoming issue is on the theme of "Children's Literature: Wisdom in Wonderland". Once again, it's full of wonderful and thought-provoking articles by some of the finest Christian writers. If you haven't already subscribed to StAR, now's the time to do so, especially as you can now subscribe via PayPal on this site. What are you waiting for!

  The highlights of the next issue, on the theme of Children's literature:

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• February 11th, 2011When It Comes to the Devil, ‘The Rite’ Gets It Rightby Lorraine V. Murray

  There's an old saying about giving the devil his due, and today it seems more fitting than ever.

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• February 11th, 2011A Forgotten Masterby Joseph Pearce

  As a follow-up to my plaintive post yesterday about the iniquitous allotment of space in The Oxford Companion to English Literature, I'd also like to protest a significant sin of omission in the same volume. There is no place in the Companion for even a passing reference to the great and sadly neglected American poet, Dunstan Thompson.

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• February 10th, 2011Tolkien’s Last Laughby Joseph Pearce

  What do Brigid Brophy, G. D. H. Cole, William de Morgan, Nigel Dennis, William Gerhardie, Richard Hughes, Ann Jellico, Alun Lewis, Robert Nichols, T. F. Powys, Jon Silkin, May Sinclair,  J. C. Squire, Andrew Young and Francis Young have in common? The most obvous answer is that almost nobody has heard of any of them. The next answer is that they are all British literary figures of the twentieth century. The third and most scandalous answer is that they all warrant more space in The Oxford Companion to English Literature (5th edition) than does a certain J. R. R. Tolkien.

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• February 8th, 2011Solzhenitsyn’s Final Judgment on Russiaby Joseph Pearce

  I'm very excited by the prospect of the new, revised and expanded edition of my biography of Solzhenitsyn, which will be published by Ignatius Press this spring. It contains several new chapters covering the great man's life from the time of the publicaiton of the first edition of my biography in 1999 until his death in 2008.

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• February 8th, 2011The Terror of Certaintyby Dena Hunt

  It's interesting how several small events often converge to reveal a larger pattern. A comment on a talk show, a news item, a review of a book, and one or two other items that on their own have no significance but taken together, fit like puzzle pieces to reveal a picture.

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• February 8th, 2011The Only Sign of Lifeby Pavel Chichikov

  I just saw a news item about Joseph Stalin. He’s been dead for almost fifty-eight years, so you might wonder what could be new about him. But there is a departure of sorts in this from RIA-Novosti:

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• February 8th, 2011Industry: A Distributist Solution Part Iby Richard Aleman

  The mention of Distributism often draws skepticism by those who, while valuing its merits, believe Distributism incapable of providing satisfactory answers to our modern needs.

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