Via Vitae

Exploring the social good of spiritual practice.

Fr. Gregory Jensen

The Forgotten Good of American Individualism

Christian apologists and social critics would do well not simply to point out the limitations but also the strengths of individualism and so the dangers as well as the opportunities it affords the Church.

The Editors

The New Martyr Saint Valentine

With gracious permission from the Orthodox Monastic Cell of Saint John the Divine, Ethika Politika is pleased to republish the account of a 20th-century saint and martyr: Father Valentine Sventitsky.

Dylan Pahman

Book Review: The Ox-Herder and the Good Shepherd

Addison Hodges Hart, in The Ox-Herder and the Good Shepherd, offers a wonderful exercise in comparative religion, examining the common ground that can be found in spiritual practice between Christianity and Buddhism.

Dylan Pahman

Book Review: The Forgotten Faith

The Forgotten Faith offers a helpful introduction to American Orthodox Christianity for interested Protestants.

Dylan Pahman

The Benedict Option Doesn’t Exist

If Rod Dreher’s version of the Benedict Option does not have any connection to the historical St. Benedict, does it really exist?

Dylan Pahman

Conservatism, Progressivism, and Thanksgiving

Adopting thankfulness as one’s orientation toward human experience and history requires a hermeneutic grounded in virtue and asceticism, open to both societal reform and moral progress.

Ducking the Question: Bodily Semiotics

Children in traditional cultures in the West face severe stress regarding their anthropology and cosmology of sex, in the face of those seeking in effect to eradicate their sexual identities.

Dylan Pahman

Ecumenical Patriarch Weighs in on the Virginity Debate

The Ecumenical Patriarch’s brief treatment of virginity, alongside the sanctity of life and the good of the family, highlights its importance as a witness to the world of humanity’s transcended destiny.