Illuminations
Loving Sacrifice
by Anthony Esolen
I work at one of the most atavistic institutions in the world. I am a college professor, teaching in the humanities.By "atavistic," I do not mean anything so noble as that we still cherish the poets of old and feel honored to sit at their feet and listen, if not to their wisdom, at least to their touches of sweet harmony. A few old-fashioned liberal professors, I suppose, still hold fondly to the hope of the once-Christian Matthew Arnold, that the moral order would be saved by good taste in poetry. Most professors in the humanities have reeled back into the beast—a sallow and lumpy beast, but a beast no less. If the demonstrations on college campuses are any evidence, they and their students have recovered the ancient joy of confessing other people's sins, often sins that require a perfectly mystical fault-finding to identify, and making other people pay. The process has been described by the recently deceased philosopher René Girard. Choose your scapegoat well, and cleanse yourself by happily slitting its throat and plunging your arms up to the elbow in its blood.
The Cross is a stake through the heart of this all-too-natural religion.
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Anthony Esolen is the author of over thirty books, including Real Music: A Guide to the Timeless Hymns of the Church (Tan, with a CD), Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture (Regnery), and The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord (Ignatius). He has also translated Dante’s Divine Comedy (Random House). He and his wife Debra publish a web magazine, Word and Song (anthonyesolen.substack.com), on poetry, hymnody, language, classic films, and music. He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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