Until They Breathe Together
Twenty-four centuries ago Aristotle named eight Greek cities torn apart after taking in settlers, and named the cure: time, until the peoples “breathe together.” Fr. G. V. W. Lewis tells their stories, weighs them against Rome, Deuteronomy, Aquinas and the Fathers, and adds his eyewitness account of Portugal’s retornados to ask what the West must learn about the pace of belonging.
The Man Who Could Not Read
From the Parthenon to Bach's autographs, Durham's vaults to the Moon landing: what the West has made, and why it burns so easily. After Mosul's museum, Palmyra and 47 French libraries struck in 2023, Fr. Lewis asks what happens when migration outpaces inheritance and doctrine meets the mob, and finds the deepest danger is a West that no longer teaches its own children to read.
The Two Usurpations
The Two Usurpations: On Piddington, Proscription, and the Sword That Belongs to Neither.
So we have a village with a real grievance, a private army offering to defend it, and a ministry reaching for its proscription powers. I want to argue that there are two usurpations here and not one, that they are opposite in direction and equal in gravity, and that the Catholic tradition possesses the resources to condemn both without collapsing either into the other. The State has claimed a jurisdiction that does not belong to it. The private band has claimed a sword that does not belong to it. Neither condemnation touches the villagers of Piddington, whose grievance is legitimate, whose only weapon so far has been a ballot of no legal effect, and whose own parish representatives have said plainly that they did not ask for masked men and that their opposition long predated the arrival of Mr Thomas.
UK: Nationality Law under the Christian Lens
The 1981 Act already ended the old automatic jus soli. What follows is not a party programme. It is an account of what the statute still leaves open, of what has changed around it in the last three years, of how a restrictionist reading of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans 13 and the Fathers tries to close those openings, and of why that reading is contested inside the tradition it claims. The argument is offered in the conviction that a Christian may hold a hard view of membership without pretending that Scripture dictates it, and may hold a generous one without pretending that the magistrate has no office.
The Goats Were Surprised Too
There is a Christian case for bounded admission, and it is a good deal better than its opponents allow. It runs in four movements. Civil authority is divinely warranted and not merely tolerated, so that the regulation of entry and residence falls within an office Scripture describes in theological terms. The love commanded of Christians is ordered rather than uniform, so that proximity and relation genuinely condition obligation. The Old Law, which is not shy about the stranger, nevertheless admits him by stages rather than at once. And the duty of the individual believer toward the man at his door is not the same thing as the duty of the magistrate toward a population, the two operating in distinct spheres with distinct instruments.
TWO SWORDS, ONE ENOUGH
Luke 22:36–38 Between the Sword of the Magistrate and the Consent of the Governed - A Coda to The Sword and the Stranger and The State and the Open Door. Conclusion to the Essay Trilogy on “Immigration, the State and Public Consent”.
Public Letter to the Christian Faithful: The Threat of Unmanaged Immigration
To all who hold the Christian faith, and to those who cherish the inheritance of Western civilisation built upon Judeo-Christian foundations:
We write in a spirit of clarity and resolve concerning the present crisis of migration into Europe, and specifically the policies pursued by Spain and other European governments. Read more…
