Category: Correspondence

It is no exaggeration to say that the entire Polish nation was outraged and insulted by President Obama’s clumsy reference in a May 28 speech to “Polish death camps.”  Not only did the Poles play no part in setting up and running the Nazi camps where millions of Jews were murdered, but when the killings...

“The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible.  God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.” —Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov   Winter came early in the year after the Fall.  All the people’s hopes and dreams and expansive aspirations had not yet faded,...

“‘Aren’t there any grown-ups at all?’ ‘I don’t think so.’” William Golding, Lord of the Flies   In an inner-city school beset by truancy, the presence of a 13-year-old pupil an hour before the first lesson suggests something is amiss.  “Good morning, Kim,” I said.  “What brings you in so early?” Kim didn’t answer immediately. ...

The Royal Mint has struck a series of coins to commemorate the 2012 London Olympics.  Each depicts a sporting event and a Roman god.  No, you have not misread that last sentence, nor have I mis­typed it.  The Royal Mint doesn’t know its Mars from its Ares.  The howler is cast in 22-karat gold for...

It is a beautiful prospect, looking east from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. We were there recently on a fine March day, and could see past the Vietnam and Korean Memorials up through the Reflecting Pool (currently under repair for a leak), to the giant fountain of the World War II Memorial (dry also),...

I have been spending my spring sabbatical in China.  As I am a sinologist, specializing in traditional Chinese poetry, there is nothing surprising in that, except that I have not been here since 1981, when I led a tour group for less than three weeks.  Most of my work has been that of the classicist,...

“She’s such an inspiration.  She’s class.”  That’s how 17-year-old Bianca, in her gold-lamé miniskirt, summed up Kate Middleton, 90 minutes before the British royal wedding.  Like many others, Bianca was positioned alongside the Mall in central London, but unlike most she had the advantage of a view.  She was being carried on the shoulders of...

In Britain there have been 17 recent prosecutions of gangs of Muslim rapists and child molesters involved in the “on-street grooming” for sex of victims as young as 11 in several towns and cities in northern England.  In the most recent case, members of a gang of Muslims from Derby were convicted of rape, false...

On March 10, 2010, a group of tourists, reputedly “students from Austria,” entered the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption in Córdoba and started a Muslim prayer.  Private guards and, later, police arrested them. One of the students apologized, saying they had “no intention to offend.”  The students’ organization in Austria apologized as well,...

The people of England, after very considerable provocation, have lately come to fear England’s Muslims.  Britain’s leftists have shifted in the opposite direction.  From an entrenched hostility to the mores of their own country and out of sheer perversity, the leftists have intensified their attacks on the Catholic Church, while making a point of defending...

That enormously talented and courageous woman, Yoani Sanchez, summarized the meaning of the forthcoming April 2011 Conference Guidelines for the Communist Party’s Sixth Congress in her biting blog called Generation Y (November 9, 2010): not a single line refers to the expansion of civil rights, including the restrictions suffered by Cubans in entering and leaving...

Ten years after his death, Auberon Waugh still makes me laugh out loud.  Here, for example, from the Spectator of June 1985, are his thoughts on British prostitutes: British prostitutes have the reputation for being not only the ugliest and greediest but also the laziest in the world.  Few even pretend to enjoy the job,...

Declining prosperity is now a settled fact of American life. Prosperity is not measured by the day’s average of stock speculation, or the profits of bankers, or the munificence of government subsidies and salaries, or the consumption of luxury goods, or even by the Gross Domestic Product.  It is amazing how in a few short...

About an hour into the papal vigil in Hyde Park, I turned to one of my companions, a musical genius with bipolar disorder, and said, “You know what I think?  I think this is pagan.”  No doubt my sour reaction to the singing and dancing and picnicking—to all that amplified noise, to the happiness on...

I arrived in Poland just as the television announced the tragic death of President Lech Kaczynski, his wife, Maria, and many of Poland’s military and political leaders in an airplane crash at Smolensk in Russia.  A week of mourning followed throughout the entire country. The president had been traveling to Smolensk for a joint commemoration...

A seven-foot bronze statue of the late Beatle John Lennon greets travelers at the international airport in Liverpool that bears his name.  It’s fitting that Lennon’s impish image—hands inserted in pants pockets—is displayed at the airport adjacent to the Mersey River.  Lennon emigrated from blue-collar Liverpool, a one-time symbol of Great Britain’s manufacturing strength, to...

There seemed to be little interest among audience members [at a scholarly meeting] in whether the ideas I had presented were true, only in whether their application would bring about results they liked. —Jason Jewell   I used to have a running argument with a colleague, a great scholar now gathered to his fathers, during...

I must thank you sincerely for your extremely thoughtful gift of Saturday by British novelist Ian McEwan.  I have read the book with great interest and enjoyment.  What is more, it has sent me back to “Dover Beach,” which it uses so creatively, and to Matthew Arnold in general, with a new perspective.  You can...

“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?” “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” “The dog did nothing in the night-time.” “That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes. —Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “Silver Blaze”   Some recent Australian cultural trends—massive Islamic immigration, for instance—are so...

The May 6 general election in England was one of the most eagerly contested in recent history.  At stake were 649 parliamentary seats (one vote has been postponed because of the death of a candidate) for which there were almost 4,150 candidates.  Also up for grabs were 4,222 local council seats in 164 English local...

This is the second part of a two-part article written by a white male Catholic convert, 48 years old, who has no specialist theological training whatsoever, is of strictly average intelligence, and represents no interest group or political movement.  It derives solely from a recent visit to London, in which nothing spectacularly horrible occurred, and...

It was another episode in a series of shocking crimes against children.  Little Sasha, just three years old, was pulled from the frigid waters of the Pekhorka River in January 2009.  He was bound to a car battery with adhesive tape, his body battered and bearing the marks of cigarette burns.  It was the second...

The following is written by a white male Catholic convert, 48 years old, who has no specialist theological training whatever, is of strictly average intelligence, and represents no interest group or political movement.  It derives solely from a recent visit to London, in which nothing spectacularly horrible occurred, and which was spent mostly among people...

The Church of England is made up of three parts: evangelical Protestants, Anglo-Catholics, and liberals.  They have long been at war, and soon this war will lead to the final rending of that Church.  The Anglo-Catholics will break away when women are ordained bishops, as some already did when the Church of England first ordained...

Tammy Ormson gave much of herself to Catholic education, both as a student and as a teacher.  And yet so much was taken from her. Ormson lost her alma mater, Mount Scenario College, when the Ladysmith, Wisconsin, school closed a few years back because of financial trouble. She then lost the school at which she...