Ordo Dei - Essays of Dr. Robert Hickson

Dr. Robert Hickson - Hardcover - 782 pages

It is a great joy to present to the readers of this volume a collection
of essays written by Dr. Robert Hickson in the course of some five
years, in the last stage of his life as a Catholic author.

This book contains around 80 essays, and they are a sequel to the
last set of two volumes that we published, entitled The Collected Essays
of Dr. Robert Hickson (Loreto Publications, 2022), which contained
almost 100 essays written from 2012 until 2018 and published by the
website Catholicism.org. In light of his own life experience as a military man, a literary and
philosophical scholar, a father of ten children, and, most importantly,
a defender of the Catholic faith at a time of a great crisis of the Catholic
Church, the essays touch upon a large variety of topics.

Foreword by Dr. Maike Hickson...............................................
Introduction by Brother André Marie, M.I.C.M.......................
Sentimentalists and Barbarians—Contrasting Thoughts of
Hilaire Belloc in 1912 and G.K. Chesterton in 1934................
Pope Pius X’s 1908 Words on Joan of Arc, Courage, and
Lukewarm Catholics, by Robert and Maike Hickson.................
G.K. Chesterton on “the New Sort of Cynic”............................
Remembering Father John A. Hardon, S.J. (1914-2000)...........
“That Unended War...Against the Innocent”: Evelyn Waugh and
Father McNabb, O.P.................................................................
Glimpses of H. Belloc’s Pluck and Youthfulness: G.K. Chesterton
and The Path to Rome................................................................
Hilaire Belloc’s 1901 Reflections on Belief and the Faith in his
The Path to Rome (1902)............................................................
Josef Pieper’s Presentation of Purity...........................................
Hilaire Belloc on the Hospitality of Small Inns and their
Surprises: On the Path to Rome................................................
Hilaire Belloc’s Getting Over the Alps into Italy in 1901: Helps
and Perils on His March Afoot..................................................
Hilaire Belloc’s Grateful “Enchanted Pilgrimage”: Memorable
Characters Whom He Met in The Path to Rome (1902).............
An Introduction to Hilaire Belloc’s The Servile State (1912).......
An Introduction to Hilaire Belloc’s The Great Heresies (1938)....
Recurrently Assessing the Battle-Situation of the Catholic
Church: H. Belloc’s 1929 Insights in Survivals and New Arrivals
Hilaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton on the Need for Intellectual
Magnanimity.............................................................................
The Decline of a State and Power without Grace: Reflections of
Hilaire Belloc and Evelyn Waugh..............................................
A Form of Style Not to Be Despised: Evelyn Waugh’s Lactantius
in Helena (1950).......................................................................
Introduction to Hilaire Belloc’s Survivals and New Arrivals
(1929).......................................................................................
Hilaire Belloc’s Festive Foreword to his Hills and the Sea (1906)
The Balm of the Sea and Hilaire Belloc’s Grateful Consolation..
Hilaire Belloc on the Presence and the Passing of Human
Affection...................................................................................
Hilaire Belloc’s The Cruise of the Nona (1925) and Elegiac “The
Death of the Ship” (1931).........................................................
Hilaire Belloc on Sailing and the Salt of Reality: The Cruise of the
Nona (1925)..............................................................................
Learning from the Early English Reformation 1531-1606.........
Hilaire Belloc’s 1931 Insights from His Survey of the New
Paganism...................................................................................
Hilaire Belloc’s 1938 Return to the Baltic and Poland...............
Strategic Bombing and the Innocents: Considering Gertrud von
Le Fort and Pope Pius XII in Response to World War II............
Hilaire Belloc’s 1910 Reflective Essay “On Sacramental Things”
The Oath Against Modernism (1910-1967) and Cardinal Walter
Brandmüller’s Recent Words......................................................
Augustin Cochin and Igor Shafarevich: The Revolutionary
Phenomenon of the “Lesser People” in France and Elsewhere....
Cervantes’ Picaresque Tale About Criminal and Moral Disorder
in Seville’s Underground............................................................
Cervantes at Lepanto and the Aftermath: In Captivity and with
Don Quixote.............................................................................
An Understanding of Don Quixote and His Loyal Companion
Sancho the Winetaster...............................................................
E.F. Schumacher’s Generous Tribute to Josef Pieper in Small is
Beautiful (1973)........................................................................
E.F. Schumacher’s A Guide for the Perplexed (1977) And His
Inspiring Discussion of “Two Types of Problems”......................
Josef Pieper’s Summary Presentation of the Virtue of Prudence
and Its Conscientiousness..........................................................
Maurice Baring’s “Xantippe and Socrates” (1925) with Miguel
Cervantes’ Teresa and Sancho Panza in Don Quixote (1615):
Shedding Comic Light on Married Couples..............................
Josef Pieper on the Virtues of the Human Heart and the Test of
Temptation................................................................................
Josef Pieper’s Final Portion of his Autobiography 1964-1988: A
Story Like a Beam of Light..........................................................
The 1571 Meetings of Miguel Cervantes and Don Juan of Austria:
Louis de Wohl’s 1956 Historical Novel, The Last Crusader.........
Insights on the Philosophical Mixture of Truth and Error: Louis
de Wohl’s 1950 Historical Novel The Quiet Light......................
Josef Pieper’s Double Challenge to a Character of Virtue:
Facing Both an Unjust Exercise of Power and an Intrinsically
Unrepayable Debt.....................................................................
Josef Pieper on the Purity of Heart and the Perception of Beauty
Josef Pieper’s Further Insights on Silence and Purity and Incipient
Contemplation: From His 1985 Anthology and Lesebuch........
An Inchoate and Growing Genetics-Based Revolution in
Military Affairs: Some Implications for a Predominant Culture
of Scientific Materialism and Uncertain Strategic Culture.........
“Easter” and “Spring”: Two Poems by Isabella Maria Hickson....
Infecting Soft Targets: Biological Weapons and Fabian Forms of
Indirect Grand Strategy—Some 20 Years Later..........................
Subtle Forms of Strategic Indirect Warfare: Infecting “Soft”
Biological Targets......................................................................
“The Art of Not Yielding to Despair”: Josef Pieper’s 1972
Reflections on Final Hope.........................................................
H. Belloc’s 1910 Sense of “Sacramental Things”: The Revival of
the Past as a Vivid and Abiding Presence...................................
G.K. Chesterton’s 1920 Insights on “The Story of the Vow”......
Josef Pieper on the Sophist Phenomenon and Its Recurring
Temptations..............................................................................
Max Beerbohm’s Charming 1950 Parody on Maurice Baring:
“All Roads—” As a Christmas Garland Woven for His Gifted
Friend.......................................................................................
Maurice Baring’s Multi-Faceted 1912 Travelogue: Round the
World in Any Number of Days.....................................................
Memoirs of a Slow Learner and a Deficient Fruit Inspector.......
The Concept and Reality of a Prolonged Self-Censorship and
Its Effects: Alexander Nekrich’s Germinal Insights in the 1970s
Another Memoir of a Slow Learner: The Judeo-Masonic Yoke as
an anti-Catholic Tradition.........................................................
Hilaire Belloc’s 1936 Insights on “The Modern Man”................
The Strategic Deceits and Threat of Bio-Terrorism and Longer-
Range Psycho-Biological Warfare: the New Battle for the Mind
in Cultures of Uprooted Hope and Broken Trust.......................
SOF Strategic Education and “The Indirect War”: Psycho-
Biological Warfare (and Terrorism) in a Grand-Strategic Context
The Indirect Grand-Strategic Approach and Context of Biological
Warfare (and Bio-Terrorism) in the Likely Near Future: A
Trenchant Strategic Challenge to American Special Operations
Forces and to Our Incipient Strategic Culture...........................
To Weaken and Manipulate the Complex Human Immune
System: A Strategic Objective and Desirable Application for
Some Malefactors......................................................................
“The Fall”: A Poem by Isabella Maria Hickson............................
Conversations with Father John A. Hardon About the
Incarnation of Christ.................................................................
St. Philip Benizi (1233-1285) and the Servite Order of the
Sorrows of Mary........................................................................
A 1903 French Novel’s Unexpected Insights Concerning the
Sorrows of Mary: J.K. Huysmans’ The Oblate of St. Benedict...
Young Hilaire Belloc’s 1906 Open Letter on the Decay of Faith:
His Polite Reply to Some Eloquent Discouragements................
The Chinese-Triad Phenomenon in Europe, in Light of the
History and Strategic Culture of China.....................................
God and the Knowledge of Reality (1973) by Dr. Thomas
Molnar: An Inchoate Young Scholar’s Brief 1975 Review of the
Book’s Trenchant Substance.......................................................
Maurice Baring’s Proposed Addition to The Romance (and
Tragedy) of Tristan and Isolde....................................................
Fr. John Hardon, S.J. in Rome in 1950: A Formative Time For
Him Indeed...............................................................................
The Concept and Reality of “Nation-Building”: A Moral and
Strategic Critique of a Recent Long-Range Study......................
In My End Is My Beginning: Maurice Baring’s 1931 Novel on
Mary Queen of Scots.................................................................
Pope Pius V’s 1570 Excommunication of Queen Elizabeth and
the New 1581 Jesuit Spirit: Hence “the Chivalry of Lepanto and
the Poetry of La Mancha”..........................................................
Two Emperors in Trouble and a Mother’s Prayer for Her Groping
Son: Evelyn Waugh’s 1950 Presentation of Saint Helena’s
Deepening Faith and Eloquence................................................
The Gift Comes First: An Insight of Josef Pieper........................
Quixote at Oxford: Maurice Baring’s Literary Insights into
Foreign Literatures....................................................................
A Sequence of Formative and Cumulative Insights....................
Maurice Baring on the Mystery of Mortal Beauty and the
Supreme Sacrifice: The Lonely Lady of Dulwich (1934)...............
Hilaire Belloc’s Belinda: A Tale of Affection in Youth and Age
(1928).......................................................................................
Hilaire Belloc’s The Modern Traveler (1898): An Ironic Adventure
and Boasting Satire....................................................................
Hilaire Belloc’s Poems on Courtesy: His Poignant Humility
before Our Lady and Child.......................................................
Hilaire Belloc the Sailor and His Salty “Song of the Pelagian
Heresy”.....................................................................................
“Blessed Be He Who Has Saved a Child’s Heart from Despair”:
Some Reflections from The Diary of a Country Priest (1937) by
Georges Bernanos......................................................................