With imaginative power and biting satire Swift exposes the madness and folly of learning divorced from morals and of reason devoid of feeling and charity—the cold rationalism of the Enlightenment. In “a Voyage to Lilliput” six-inch creatures, not only tiny in size but also petty and small-minded in thought, possess advanced knowledge of mathematics and … Read more
St. Thomas Aquinas, in the Second Part of the Second Volume of his Summa theologiae, considers in a little over 1000 pages in Latin a massive number of sins and vices – injustice, gluttony, anger, greed, lying, etc., etc. Sexual sins are considered under the technical scholastic rubric of “luxury” (i.e., lust), and like the … Read more
After decades of strategically choosing to ignore the transgendered community, the GLB (Gay Lesbian and Bisexual) activists have added the T and in some case a Q to their coalition. T stands for transgendered, defined as anyone who wants to appear in public and be accepted as the sex they were not born, whether or … Read more
On July 3rd, just days after the Vatican announced that Pope Benedict XVI would beatify the Sicilian anti-Mafia priest Don Pino Puglisi, it became clear not everyone was happy with the decision. Police discovered a bomb in the form of a gas cylinder outside the entrance of a Centre in Palermo founded by the late … Read more
“When freedom does not have a purpose, when it does not wish to know anything about the rule of law engraved in the hearts of men and women, when it does not listen to the voice of conscience, it turns against humanity and society.” —Pope John Paul II The abortion issue is not simply a … Read more
Best-selling author and controversial social scientist Charles Murray is back in the news. This time it’s because of his new book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010. In “Coming Apart,” Murray deftly wields both statistical data and anecdotal evidence to document the wholesale abandonment of the ideals that for two centuries defined the … Read more
The characteristic of the modern age is that men concentrate on themselves and what they can and want to do. This and this alone is what life is about. No outside source can guide, command, or coerce us. Man is autonomous. He is only what he makes himself to be, whatever it is. He does … Read more
The Nuns on the Bus tour ended in front of the United Methodist Church & Society Building here in DC on July 2nd. Sister Simone Campbell gave an impassioned speech invoking Catholic Social Teaching in defense of their ideas about the federal budget and criticized certain Catholic politicians for violating the tenets of Catholic Social … Read more
The Supreme Court’s minor mistakes have few systemic consequences. But when the Supremes make a big mistake, the error tends to seep throughout the entire political process, poisoning everything in its path. That was what happened with the Court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision, which intensified the passions and accelerated the dynamics that led to the … Read more
Edmund Burke, the eighteenth-century British statesman, has long been a popular figure for political conservatives to cite. But his views on religion get relatively little attention. This is a shame, because Burke has a lot to offer those concerned about matters of religion, morality, and politics in contemporary American life.
The last two weeks have brought good news for proponents of abstaining from sex until marriage. Two Fridays ago, for example, the House Energy & Commerce Health Subcommittee released a report which said abstinence-only education is superior to so-called “comprehensive sex education.” The subcommittee, which has jurisdiction over the nation’s federal sexual education policies, released … Read more
Now that the Affordable Care Act has survived its Supreme Court challenge, there comes the fight over its implementation. Moral considerations rank high on the list of casus belli for Catholics and other religious groups. They fear that the Act will force them to pay for procedures which they abhor, like the morning-after pill, abortion, … Read more
The recent Supreme Court ruling on ObamaCare (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) which upheld the individual mandate as constitutional portends grave danger for those religious organizations now suing the federal government for infringing on their religious liberty. These groups rightly contend that the government has no right to decide who is religious enough to … Read more
In his 1911 preface to Dawn of All, Robert Hughes Benson proposes: to sketch—again in parable—the kind of developments, about sixty years hence which, I think, may reasonably be expected should the opposite process begin, and ancient thought (which has stood the test of centuries, and is, in a very remarkable manner, being “rediscovered” by … Read more
So let no one boast about human beings, for everything belongs to you, Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death, or the present or the future: all things belong to you, and you to Christ, and Christ to God. I Cor. 3.21-23 St. Bonaventure (1217-1274), the “Seraphic Doctor,” has much … Read more
Shortly before he died in Oxford in 1988, the Jesuit retreat master and raconteur, Bernard Bassett, in good spirits after a double leg amputation, told me that the great lights of his theological formation had been Ignatius Loyola and John Henry Newman, but if he “had to do it all over,” he’d only read Paul. “Everything is … Read more
Is a life worth a dollar? Is it worth a hundred dollars? Is it worth a million plus dollars? These seemingly innocuous questions are frequently put to us by those advocating cause A, B or C. The only answer, and the one they expect to hear, is that life is priceless and, consequently, their cause … Read more
And was Jerusalem built here Among those dark satanic mills? … I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem In England’s green and pleasant land (“Jerusalem,” by William Blake). Last month marked the 100th anniversary of the most deadly industrial accident in America. … Read more
This article originally appeared on Ethika Politika Lately Americans have been talking more explicitly than usual about what is called American exceptionalism. For most of my lifetime not much was said about this directly. Apparently most people just took it for granted and assumed that everyone believed it. But now politicians think they have to … Read more
Heavy-hearted, Sophronius, the patriarch of Jerusalem, set out to meet the Caliph, the successor to the Muslim prophet Muhammad, at the gates of the Holy City. The surrender had already been negotiated, after a siege that had lasted four months. Sophronius, patriarch of the city since 634, had decided that the city must be surrendered. … Read more