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.

• October 27th, 2011Children, Ice Cream and a Swanby Pavel Chichikov

  I ran across this piece on the Web today:

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• October 27th, 2011Bad Monks and the Rest of Usby Kevin O'Brien

  Regular reader Ink has an interesting post on her blog "With Eager Feet" about something I said concerning Bad Monks and Actors.

  Ink writes ...

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• October 21st, 2011Exclusive Preview of the Forthcoming Issueby Joseph Pearce

  The new issue of the St. Austin Review is at the printer.

  The theme is “Education as if Truth Mattered”. It’s not to be missed. Subscribe now by following the link on this site.

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• October 21st, 2011Comedy Fund Raiser in Chicagoby Kevin O'Brien

  Those of you in the Chicagoland area might be interested in this ...

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• October 20th, 2011Can’t Care, Don’t Care, Won’t Careby Kevin O'Brien

  "Don't take this so personally," my wife Karen always tells me. And of course she's right.

  In the past, when employees would become Vampires or Aliens it used to really bug me. How could they do this to me when I trusted them and gave them opportunities to help us and do good work? I would say to myself. Then I realized it had absolutely nothing to do with me.

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• October 18th, 2011Distributism in the Pressby Dena Hunt

  Distributism is getting some national press, here and abroad. I doubt there's much hope--it's just such an unglamorous idea to those who love the battle between big government and big business.

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• October 18th, 2011Good News from the European Unionby Joseph Pearce

  It's not often that I find myself saying anything positive about the secular fundamentalist monolith, which is the European Union. The latest news from Brussels is, however, very encouraging. 

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• October 16th, 2011Bringing the World to Its Kneesby Joseph Pearce

  Christopher Check, executive vice-president of the Rockford Institute, is a good friend of mine. More importantly, he is a good man. I'm pasting below a bulk e-mail that I recently received from him in which he relates his edifying experience with the Benedictines of Mary Queen of Apostles. He expresses himself so eloquently that no further comment on my part is necessary. Here's the text of his e-mail:

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• October 15th, 2011A Lord to Applaudby Joseph Pearce

  These are difficult days to be an Englishman, and difficult days to be a monarchist. I am deeply indebted and deeply committed to my English heritage, though ashamed of the secular cesspit and hedonist hell that modern England has become. I am a monarchist, though as a dyed-in-the-wall Jacobite who believes that the True King of England (James II) was exiled more than three hundred years ago, I have mixed feelings about the present royal family, who are descended from the usurper, William of Orange, and not from the True King in Exile. For me, as for J. R. R. Tolkien, the present royal family are like the stewards of Minas Tirith, keeping the throne warm until the Return of the King. And yet I'd rather have a steward on the throne than a secular president of a secular republic.

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• October 13th, 2011The Most Dangerous Thing in the Worldby Kevin O'Brien

  What does Safe Sex have in common with Bad Catholic Art?

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• October 11th, 2011Beauty and / vs. Truthby Dena Hunt

  At Catholic Online today, Fr. Dwight Longenecker has an article on “Why Catholics Should Build Beautiful Churches.” Featured is an interior by that brilliant young architectural designer, Matthew Alderman, who is also one of the editors over at Dappled Things, which is (in case there is still anyone who doesn’t know) the only Catholic literary print periodical in the country. The church is Our Lady of the Rosary, proposed for the Greenville, S.C., parish. Father Longenecker writes in his always lovely and lucid prose a brief answer to the “why” in the title of his article. He doesn’t refer to Keats’ melding of truth and beauty, which so often happens in longer reflections on the topic. 

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• October 8th, 2011I Pledge Allegiance ...by Abigail C. Reimel

  Every morning, my family and I stand in our foyer and say the Pledge of Allegiance before hanging the American Flag out on the front porch. When I was younger, I used to take great pride in this pledge. With a child’s faith, I believed that America was the best country in the nation. And then I grew up, Obama became President, and suddenly I found myself hesitating before saying, “I Pledge Allegiance…to the United States of America.” I began to wonder if, as a Catholic, I can pledge my allegiance every morning to a country that kills its children, mocks its Catholics, and supports gay unity.

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• October 8th, 2011Connecting with C.S. Lewisby Joseph Pearce

  I've just received a copy of Logos, the official journal of the C. S. Lewis Society of California. It has some interesting Lewis-related articles. Here are a couple of links to articles in the journal and another giving details of the society itself:

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• October 7th, 2011Joanne’s Choiceby Sophia Mason

  It was California, in the autumn of 1954, and a graduate student named Joanne had a problem. She had been having an affair with a Muslim immigrant, a man her father did not want her to marry; and she was pregnant. These were the days before abortion was socially acceptable, and Joanne decided to give her child up for adoption.

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• October 7th, 2011New Website for Literary “Revert”by Joseph Pearce

  I'm delighted to learn of the launch of a new website dedicated to the great and greatly underrated poet Dunstan Thompson, a literary "revert" who returned to the Faith of his childhood and youth after a brief dalliance with homosexuality.

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• October 7th, 2011Father Milward on the Latest Issueby Joseph Pearce

  I'm pleased to have received an appraisal of the latest issue of the St. Austin Review from Father Peter Milward, the celebrated Shakespeare scholar. It is always gratifying to receive an emphatic thumbs-up from scholars of Father Milward's stature. Here is the text of his e-mail:

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• October 5th, 2011Socialist nonsense Versus Subsidiarist Solutionsby Joseph Pearce

  There really is something pathetic about the somewhat silly socialists who have been demonstrating against Wall Street in recent days. In spite of the murder of millions of people in many parts of the world on the altar of Marxism, these utopian robots still seem to think that Big Government can bring justice to the poor. It’s all so naïve and so rooted in a shallow gullibility. When will they ever learn?

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• October 5th, 2011Tolkien and Lewis on EWTNby Joseph Pearce

  An e-mail just received: "We were watching the Catholicism of the Lord of the Rings special that you did on EWTN the other night in the Marian house, and I had two questions. The conversation between C.S. Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien, in regard to the importance of myths, was that dialogue written down by one of the two authors? I was just curious as to how that scene was put together. Lastly, I was more curious as to whether there were any plans to do more specials that would go deeper into The Lord of the Rings?"

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• October 5th, 2011Harry Potter: Friend or Foeby Joseph Pearce

  I thought my brief reply to an e-mail inquiring about the rights and wrongs of the Harry Potter books might interest visitors to this site:

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• October 5th, 2011Chesterton Goes Westby Joseph Pearce

  I had the great pleasure to spend last weekend with the indomitable Dale Ahlquist and the irrepressible Kevin O’Brien at the eighth annual Rochester Chesterton Conference in New York. I believe that this conference is the largest of the Chesterton Society’s regional conferences. The mother of all Chesterton conferences is, however, the national conference, which moves from city to city across the United States from one year to the next. I was not at this year’s conference in St. Louis but will be at next year’s in Reno. I know of no other event, anywhere in the world, that better encapsulates the Chesterbellocian ideal of “laughter and the love of friends”. Here’s Dale Ahlquist’s official notice of next year’s conference:

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