Edited by Christopher Dawson and T. F. Burns

The Persistence of Order (Vols. I, II, and III)

In 1931, preeminent historian and scholar Christopher Dawson commissioned a new series (titled Essays in Order), whose purpose was, in part, “to examine the possibilities of cooperation and of conflict that exist between the Catholic order and the new world.” The world was “passing through one of the most critical moments in its history,” and those who hold to and hand on the Catholic faith must respond to the moment with “moral sympathy and intellectual comprehension.” Thus Dawson engaged the leading voices of the Catholic academy and literary circles to develop a renaissance of Catholic thought in the face of a darkening age.

• Volume I: Jacques Maritain, “Religion and Culture”; Peter Wust, “Crisis in the West”; Ida Friederike Coudenhove, “Nature of Sanctity”; and Christopher Dawson, “Christianity and the New Age.”
• Volume II: Christopher Dawson, “The Modern Dilemma”; Rudolf Allers, “The New Psychologies”; Michael de la Bédoyère, “The Drift of Democracy”; Nicholas Berdyaev, “The Russian Revolution”; and Gerald Vann, O.P., “On Being Human.”
• Volume III: Theodore Haecker, “Virgil, Father of the West”; E. I. Watkin, “The Bow in the Clouds”; Thomas Gilby, “Poetic Experience”; Herbert Read, “Form in Modern Poetry”; and François Mauriac, “God and Mammon.”

Nota bene: The volumes in Persistence of Order are also available for individual purchase.