John Paul Meenan

On this day, May 8, in 1978, Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler stood on the highest peak in the world, Mount Everest, at 29,031.7 feet. To get any higher, you’d have to fly. Everest...

On May 6th, 1954, on a make-do track field in Oxford, in windy and blustery conditions, medical student Roger Bannister broke what some thought was the unbreakable barrier of the four-minute mile. Paced for...

Roald Dahl (+1990) is being mauled, along with Dr. Seuss (+1991), and, as the Cat in the Hat might declare, we should be appalled, galled, palled, if not stonewalled. On the Ginsu chopping block...

The old joke has it that Milton wrote Paradise Lost after he got married; and when his wife died, he penned the sequel, Paradise Found. In joco veritas. The joke is only funny – if...

Pretense:  A false appearance or action intended to deceive.  A professed but feigned reason or excuse; a pretext. Something imagined or pretended. (https://www.wordnik.com/words/pretense) What term does one use for what happened at the cathedral of...

Today is a national holiday in England - as they commemorate the semi-legendary Saint George, martyr for the Faith, slayer of the dragon and rescuer of princesses. This is also, by one of those...

On this day in 1014, at the Battle of Clontarf, just outside Dublin, the great high king of Ireland, Brian Boru, died in battle against the Vikings - a Good Friday that year, alas....

George Weigel just posted an impassioned condemnation of the moral error of proportionalism - that the overall good of any moral decision is the final determinant of the course of action to be chosen,...