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C alling a thing by its proper name is a service to truth, if not to political ambitions or evil designs. Of course, ambitions abide and creating labels to denigrate an idea, opponent, or promote your agenda is nothing new. If I am a "Progressive" and you are not with me, you must be against Progress. The Dark Ages was a clever label, attributed to Petrarch (d. 1374), stuck on the period after the decline of the Roman Empire which neatly contrasted with an earlier period of antiquity which boasted learning and literacy. With the recovery of classical texts, the classical light was dawning aft...

I magine facing a world of great turmoil, violence, even death threats. Saying, "Beam me up, Scotty!" doesn't seem to work. One wealthy, radical youth named Paul, to escape the intensifying persecutions of the Emperor Decius, retired to a home out in the country. Upon discovering that his brother-in-law plotted to hand him over to the persecutors, Paul left all behind and fled in fear to the desert. Jerome wrote an account of his life. Paul of Thebes preceded Anthony of Egypt into the desert. Anthony, at 90, was informed about this hermit Paul who at 113 was "a much better man than he." Antho...

T imes of unrest surely outnumber times of peace. Of course, not every age has Attila the Hun. But one of them did. January 8 is the commemoration of Severinus of Noricum, who lived in the fifth century at a time of great upheaval in Pannonia (Austria). His Life was written by his disciple Eugippius after Severinus' death in 482. Eugippius wrote what he called a memoir of Severinus and sent it to the Deacon Paschasius, imploring him: "Illustrious minister of Christ, thou hast the memoir. From it make by thy editorial care a profitable work." Paschasius read it and replied: "Thou hast sent me ...

I n this horrible year 2020, many are wondering what the New Normal will be. Some are anxious about an imminent Great Reset, which would be, it seems, a sinister global and ungodly New Normal. When a society eschews direction from Above, it might, for example, systematically remove the Ten Commandments from courthouses. Or it might deny that church services are in any way "essential" to the nation during a pandemic. Apparently, the New Normal is systemic secularism. Systemic secularism was given a boost when commercialism claimed the last vestige of sacred time, the Lord's Day. A sea-change t...