“In the enthusiasm of its discoveries the Higher Criticism has applied to the New Testament tests of authenticity so severe that by them a hundred ancient worthies – e.g., Hammurabi, David, Socrates – would fade into legend. Despite the prejudices and theological preconceptions of the evangelists, they record many incidents that mere inventors would have concealed – the competition of the apostles for high places in the Kingdom, their flight after Jesus’ arrest, Peter’s denial, the failure of Christ to work miracles in Galilee, the references of some auditors to his possible insanity, his early uncertainty as to his mission, his confessions of ignorance as to the future, his moments of bitterness, his despairing cry on the cross; no one reading these scenes can doubt the reality of the figure behind them. That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospels. After two centuries of Higher Criticism the outlines of the life, character, and teaching of Christ, remain reasonably clear, and constitute the most fascinating feature in the history of Western man.”

Will Durant Caesar and Christ

“There’s an old saying, ‘Choose your enemies wisely; you become like them.’”

Randall Smith in The Catholic Thing April 1, 2025

In my latest National Post column I express hope that Britain’s National Health Service praising cousin marriage to preemptively placate Islamist immigrants will instead represent a positive turning point as regular people simply refuse to tolerate such idiotic disloyalty and cultural suicide any longer.

“What is the matter with internationalism is that it is imperialism. It is the imposition of one ideal of one sect on the vital varieties of men. But it is worse than the imposition of ideals. It is actually the imposition of indifference.”

G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News June 17, 1922, quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert! The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #5 (May/June 2024)

“I care not what may be the form of belief which the on-looker may hold – whether it be in unison or in antagonism with that faith preached by these men; but he is only a poor semblance of a man who can behold such a sight through the narrow glass of sectarian feeling, holding opinions foreign to his own.”

W.F. Butler The Great Lone Land [re the extraordinary devotion of the French (and thus by implication Catholic) missionaries to the western Indian tribes]

“Time is not the same for the speaker as for the audience. To the speaker it is too, too brief for what he has to say. For the audience it is a grim foretaste of eternity.”

Marshall McLuhan “‘Culture Without Literacy’/ Explorations 1, 1953”, quoted as X post from The McLuhan Institute March 11, 2025 [https://x.com/McLinstitute/status/1899494456417480991]

“To pour that fiery simplicity upon the whole of life is the only real aim of education; and closest to the child comes the woman – she understands. To say what she understands is beyond me; save only this, that it is not a solemnity. Rather it is a towering levity, an uproarious amateurishness of the universe, such as we felt when we were little, and would as soon sing as garden, as soon paint as run…. This is that insanely frivolous thing we call sanity. And the elegant female, drooping her ringlets over her water-colors, knew it and acted on it. She was juggling with frantic and flaming suns. She was maintaining the bold equilibrium of inferiorities which is the most mysterious of superiorities and perhaps the most unattainable. She was maintaining the prime truth of woman, the universal mother: that if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”

G.K. Chesterton What’s Wrong with the World

In my latest Epoch Times column I say the idea of putting warning labels on booze is as silly as putting them on lions, and worse.