Dulce et Decorum Est, by Michael Pakaluk

By Michael Pakaluk, The Catholic Thing, July 8, 2021

Michael Pakaluk, an Aristotle scholar and Ordinarius of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, is a professor in the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America. …

Note: TCT Editor-in-Chief Robert Royal will be appearing this evening on EWTN’s “The World Over with Raymond Arroyo.” He’ll be discussing the pope’s surgery, the indictments in the Vatican over financial scandals, church burnings in Canada, and the ongoing controversies over President Biden and Communion. The show will air at 8PM Eastern Time (consult local listings for broadcasts and rebroadcasts). And it will be available on the EWTN YouTube channel shortly after it first appears.

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori: “Sweet and fitting it is, to die for one’s country.”  A line from the Roman poet, Horace, today the phrase would most likely be recognized – when it’s recognized at all – as the title of a famous poem by Wilfred Owen, one of the great “war poets” of World War I.

The poem describes the convulsive death of a soldier who failed to put on his mask in time before a gas attack: “In all my dreams before my helpless sight,/ He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning,” If you could continue to see him too, Owen says, “His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;/ If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood/ Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,” then: ….

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