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Should we be Indifferent to Everything but God?
One of the difficulties we all face in spiritual life is that attitudes which seem to be identical can, in fact, be quite different and...


We Will Be Judged by our Ability to Accept Defeat
I wonder whether former President Bill Clinton has ever given a speech without mentioning “the American Dream.” The dream to which...


Truth or Charity?
One of the most burning topics today is the relationship existing between "truth" and "charity." I shall defend the thesis that they are...


Two Dimensions of Married Love
One of the important contributions of the late Dietrich von Hildebrand (d. 1977) is in shedding brighter light on the two dimensions of...


The Secular War on the Supernatural
In 1965 my husband Dietrich von Hildebrand and I had a private audience with Pope Paul VI, in which my husband "shot from the hip" as...


An Audience with John Paul II
In 1980, I was granted the extraordinary privilege of a private audience with His Holiness Pope John Paul II. Knowing that John Paul had a..


The Church, the Nazis, and the Facts
Joanna Bogle's article on Cardinal von Galen ("The Bishop vs. the Nazis," February, 2008) is highly welcome. So many lies have gained...


Ingratitude: The Forgotten Sin
I recall vividly that in my early teens I read the memoirs of a priest who, aged 70, bitterly lamented his ingratitude toward his mother...


Two Souls One Flesh: The Divine Invention of Man and Marriage is a Prodigious Mystery
When at the age of eleven, I took a course on seventeenth-century French literature—French is my beautiful mother tongue—I made the...


The Joy of Being Indebted
The word “bankruptcy” is a nightmare to finance people. Literature is eloquent on this topic. Consider Charles Dickens’s Little Dorrit...


Truth: Our Daily Bread
If Socrates were alive today, it is likely that he would sit close to a newspaper per stand and address the people rushing to grab a...


Silence of Riches versus Silence of Poverty
My Dear Friend:
I am sure you have sometimes found yourself sitting next to an unknown person at a dinner party; you try to engage in a...


Man Alone Can Procreate
John Paul II will leave us a precious legacy: his staunch defense of life, and his theology of the body. He has succeeded in unveiling...


The Tears of the World "Lacrimae rerum" - Virgil, Aeneid
Recognizing how we hurt other people can be the first step in becoming more charitable to our neighbor. One of the sad facts of human...


Murder of Culture
Wherever we turn, we are faced with the words "in our culture." "Our culture tells us." We are implicitly told that we have a social duty...


The Blessings of Old Age
We know neither the day nor the hour. In our sick and violent society, in spite of the laws of statistics, no young person has any...


Two Types of Blindness
Plato’s name has been mentioned more than once in these pages. He deserves to be mentioned once again...


Culpable & Laudable Disobedience
Once again I am going to question your knowledge of ancient Greece. I assume that you have read Antigone — this great work of Sophocles ...


Suffering, A Crushing Burden: Allowing the Burden to Sanctify and Not Destroy Us
If there is one thing we all dread, it is suffering. A newborn baby will already respond with screams to any discomfort...


The Great Divide, Part 1: Love, Marriage, Sacrifice, Procreation
Many schools and universities pride themselves on having finally acknowledged that the difference between men and animals is minimal...


Habit: Friend or Enemy?
Habit plays a cardinal role in human life. In order to gauge its value, however, some distinctions are called for...


The Canons of Friendship
Friendship is the remnant of paradise. Aristotle sees it as a virtue, and one's behavior toward one's friends tells us a great deal about...


Wrong Approaches to Art
Perfect eyesight does not guarantee artistic appreciation. An eagle sees better than we do; a dog's ear registers many sounds that escape...


Kierkegaard Against Feminism: Beautiful Words About Women
To write on Kierkegaard's thought is an act of daring. In a way this is true of many philosophers. One only needs to think of the various...
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