The latest issue of Touchstone
Nov. / Dec. 2017
Yes, Virginia, There Is a God
by James M. Kushiner
Christ, Individualism & the Meaning of Cultural Diversity
by Anthony Esolen
On C. S. Lewis, Brideshead Revisited & the Middle Things
by Ben Reinhard
Familiar Christmas Hymns and More from Ralph Vaughan Williams—"Christian Agnostic"
by Ken Myers
You should read this interview Rod Dreher did with Anthony Esolen, the beleagured (and betrayed?) professor at Catholic Providence College in Rhode Island. He is not alone as a professor targeted on the liberal arts college campuses of our nation, where diversity seems to mean that no criticism of “diversity” is allowed, or even discussion of what real diversity should mean.
Guess what? The President of Providence College reveals himself as a fraud and a poltroon. You don’t expect better from clergymen in our time, especially if they’re nursing at the higher education teat.
I have gotten so much from reading Anthony Esolen, and I pray he and his family will be encouraged. I think of the ballad of the White Horse:
“The men of the East may spell the stars,
And times and triumphs mark.
But the men signed of the cross of Christ
Go gaily in the dark. …
“Night shall be thrice night over you,
And heaven an iron cope.
Do you have joy without a cause
Yea, faith without a hope?”
Esolen is one who spills with joy for God’s splendid, dappled, dear world and for man, the crown of creation—and he can articulate the cause of that joy, faith, and hope. One can always recognize his hand; I pick something up and am reading along and think, “this has to be Esolen.” And it is. May the Lord defend him in every way.
If you’re going to quote the ballad, these are the verses that lift the heart in the darkest times:
“That on you is fallen the shadow,
And not upon the Name;
That though we scatter and though we fly,
And you hang over us like the sky,
You are more tired of victory,
Than we are tired of shame.
“That though you hunt the Christian man
Like a hare on the hill-side,
The hare has still more heart to run
Than you have heart to ride.
“That though all lances split on you,
All swords be heaved in vain,
We have more lust again to lose
Than you to win again.
Thank you!
Thank you for this. I have never read, nor have I ever heard of the Ballad of the White House, which I just ordered.
Funny note–when I read the line “You are more tired of victory” I said to myself, “ah, like Chesterton in Everlasting Man (I think it’s from Everlasting Man) when he says that pessimism lies not growing weary of evil, but when we grow weary of the good. And then after a second of Googling I said “well, yes, very much like Chesterton.
Douglas: “Ballad of the White House” makes me wonder if you are a prophet….?