The MagazineWhen Ralph McInerny landed back in the United States and cashed his GI check, a civilian again, the first thing he did was run to a bookstore to buy a copy of Lord Weary’s Castle, Robert Lowell’s new collection of poems. Or so he told me once, and then he laughed and gave a deprecating shrug, because—well, because that’s the kind of thing smart boys with literary pretensions did in those days, and if there ever was one of those smart 1940s literary boys, it was Ralph McInerny. Besides, Lowell had produced an amazingly Catholic book, and the Catholic Renaissance that included everyone from Flannery O’Connor to Thomas Merton was about to take off in America. They are slipping away from us one by one, the people who can remember those times that once seemed so promising. Names like Jacques Maritain and Etienne Gilson had a weight about them; you could conjure with them and see the future—a world turned high scholastic and Neo-Thomistic: Catholic philosophy and Catholic art joining to make a golden age. On another occasion, I asked Ralph what he thought had happened—why, by the late 1960s, the whole Renaissance had faded, first to fantasy and then to dust. But he merely gave another of those shrugs and said, “We just weren’t good enough.” To read more, you must be a Weekly Standard Subscriber We're Sorry,
the rest of this article is available only to subscribers. You have two options: 1:
2:
If you are not yet a Subscriber to TWS, don't wait
any longer to Subscribe Now!
Subscribing today will provide you with immediate, complete access to the current issue, as well as to all back issues on the site. Each week you will be able to read articles from the newest issue even before print copies are mailed! Privacy PolicyRecent Blog PostsThe Weekly Standard ArchivesBrowse 15 Years of the Weekly Standard |
What Did You Miss? Features |
Become a Fan on Facebook Follow us on Twitter Share This
© Copyright 2012 The Weekly Standard LLC - A Weekly Conservative Magazine & Blog. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy
