Friday Links
May 16, 2025
A Cultural Vision for Conservatism
Catholic Social Teaching
Converting Beauty into Prayer
Julian of Norwich’s Radical Trust
Benjamin Parviz on Gabriel Marcel and the Mysteries of Death and Despair
A Cultural Vision for Conservatism
Daniel McCarthy and Dana Gioia talk “conservative influence in the arts.”
I am a pragmatist and I would first of all say that conservatism is not primarily a political philosophy; it’s a mindset, it’s a temperament, it’s a worldview, which believes that we must conserve the best of the past, we need to be skeptical about sudden changes and improvements, we honor traditional institutions while trying to improve them, we honor the the rights of the individual, the property of the individual, free speech and freedom of worship for the individual, and all of those things strike me as deeply consistent with a cultural worldview. Conservatism in America has I think failed to make lasting changes because it believed that it could rule by policy and ignore culture. Until the conservative worldview—which is a huge range from libertarianism to a kind of anti-intellectualist traditionalism—until it has a cultural vision, it’s going to be temporary and tactical. So I believe in a conservatism that is anchored in the best of tradition, not just politically or economically, but artistically and culturally.
John Wheldon: Catholic Social Teaching
Pope Leo XIV has got us talking about some good stuff, such as Catholic social teaching.
It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that the relationship of postwar American conservatives to Catholic social teaching has been an uneasy one. While conservatives have been strongly opposed to communism and socialism, they have generally also allied themselves with liberal political systems and capitalist economic institutions in ways that are in deep tension with many of the church’s core social doctrines. Less prominent strains within modern conservatism, however, seem more compatible with these teachings. Writers like Russell Kirk, Eric Voegelin, and Richard Weaver, for example, expressed a healthy distrust of modernity. Others, such as Irving Kristol, Robert Nisbet, and Wilhelm Röpke, have also concerned themselves with the justice of robustly capitalistic social orders.
Converting Beauty into Prayer
Claire Giuntini writes about attending a Higher Word concert in NYC’s Little Italy
Higher Word is oriented around the sacred. Advertisements for its concerts feature touching reflections on beauty, worship, and the role of music in both. “Have you ever wondered where beauty comes from?” asks Jacob Beranek in a video trailer for the St. Anthony’s event. “All the bliss we experience that draws us out of ourselves and that draws us higher? They all point to the same source. What is that source? God,” he answers bluntly. “Our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Julian of Norwich’s Radical Trust
Bella Reyes writes on Victoria Mackenzie’s fictional portrayal of Julian of Norwich, For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain:
Mackenzie allows both the stillness of Julian and the tempest of Margery to unfold without authorial comment. When the two finally meet at the end of the novel, a meeting which we know from Margery’s own account did occur in 1413, the encounter feels like a spiritual summit. Though wildly different in temperament, they recognize a shared trust in the divine: “You saw what I see!”
Benjamin Parviz on Gabriel Marcel and the Mysteries of Death and Despair
Gabriel Marcel was a philosopher of hope who thought deeply about the experiences of challenge and suffering that would tempt one to despair and suicide and also about the experience of hope that carries one through and beyond experiences of challenge and suffering. In his book Homo Viator, Marcel describes hope as “breathing for the soul.” According to Marcel, human beings have a basic need to participate in the being of something greater than or outside of ourselves, in its life and dynamic existence.
