Anthony Esolen, Author at Catholic Herald

Anthony Esolen

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June 30, 2021

This is the first of a weekly series from Anthony Esolen giving his top ten films in different categories. Readers are invited to give their own choices on the Catholic Herald‘s Facebook page. You are also invited to suggest topics for future lists. Hollywood (and the English cinema) used to make a lot of

One Way to Racial Reconciliation: Don’t Talk, Do Something

June 25, 2021

I have watched with dismay as race relations in the United States have grown worse and worse. It seems as if all the good will won during my lifetime has been squandered away. We have gone from one daring kiss between a white man and a black woman on television in 1967, to a time

Piety and savagery: Boccaccio’s stories of an epidemic

April 09, 2020

In 1348, the rats aboard ship from some great Italian commercial city, whether Venice or Genoa or somewhere else (we cannot tell) came infested with disease-ridden fleas, and Europe was struck with the bubonic plague, the so-called Black Death. One third of the continent’s population was wiped out. That would be as if 110 million

We’re right to feel a longing for beauty

March 12, 2020

You can’t judge a book by its cover, we say, meaning that no man should be judged by his clothes, or by a mere glance at his demeanour. Fair enough, as far as it goes. “What went ye out into the wilderness to see?” Jesus asks, referring to John the Baptist. “A man clothed in

This year, let’s bring hearty innocence back to the world

January 02, 2020

I don’t break my New Year’s resolutions, because I never make any, but if I were to recommend one to readers today, it would be to try to read one genuinely good book every month, and to try to embody, in prayer, in conversation, in work and in play, something of that joy that Christians

The strange decline of Catholic hymns

August 29, 2019

When Pope Honorius crowned the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) by proclaiming the new feast of Corpus Christi – a triduum of joy from the Thursday following Trinity Sunday to echo the triduum of Holy Week and Easter – the Catholic world responded with a burst of artistic creativity unmatched since the days of Ancient Greece.

Artists can find inspiration in the Divine Office

May 30, 2019

Editor’s note: This article by the distinguished scholar Anthony Esolen is the first in a series on Catholic Aesthetics to be published in the Catholic Herald. Future articles by Joseph Pearce, Deal Hudson and others will offer readers an opportunity to reflect on the centrality of arts, creativity and beauty in the life and evangelical

Without Christ, poetry is also unredeemed

April 18, 2019

When the pilgrim Dante has come forth at last from the jaws of hell to look upon the stars of heaven again, he does not do what the modern writer is required to do. He does not enter the overheated boudoir of his feelings, to rummage in the closet and come forth with objects that

On the road

April 13, 2017

My favourite of the Eastertide Gospels is Luke’s account of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. It appears at first to be the sort of thing that can happen to anyone while travelling. We might call it the Law of the Large Train Station: someone there whom you don’t recognise is strangely enmeshed in