Dear Readers,
Happy Vigil of the Ascension! We hope you will appreciate these articles, both reflecting on the world’s lost sense of beauty—and how we ought to give it back to our children. Let us always, as the traditional collect for tomorrow’s feast says, “dwell in mind amid heavenly things.”
—The Editors
A World In Need of Beauty
Not long ago, Elisabeth Sullivan, director of the Institute for Liberal Catholic Education, reflected on the most frustrating questions a teacher can be asked by a student: “Is this going to be on the test?” Or, “Do we have to know this?” These questions signal a disappointing failure to engage the mind of the student; they indicate a child whose min…
A Plea for the Lost Art of Penmanship
In a recent article, we joined a chorus of Catholic voices calling for Catholics to commit to the restoration and promotion of beauty in our modern world. Certainly, our world has need of it. In so many ways we seem to live in a jaded world committed to the bland, the functionalist, and the utilitarian. Modern buildings are too often uninteresting at…