The trial of Paolo Gabriele, the Pope’s former valet, last week found guilty of aggravated theft of confidential documents from the papal apartments, predictably drew worldwide attention. As the first major criminal trial at the Vatican in modern times, and one that opened up the Vatican and papal apartments to unprecedented scrutiny, it was always … Read more
What strikes me most powerfully about the defenders of the sexual revolution is their immovable abstraction. Always the matter is couched in terms of rights, or individual desires—what I want, what I may pursue. That this sexual laissez-faire destroys the common good, by undermining families and rotting whole neighborhoods from within, seems not to matter. … Read more
One of the privileges of writing this column is that I occasionally get to meet the composers of the music I review. I had a meeting this past year with a musician with whom I have been in correspondence for some time. Morten Lauridsen, the most frequently performed American choral composer, came to Washington, D.C. … Read more
If John Henry Newman should be declared a Doctor of the Church, the honor will be in large part due to his work as an educator. As Benedict XVI has pointed out, the “definite service” that he gave to the Church was to apply “his keen intellect and prolific pen to many of the most … Read more
Who do they think they are? Such must have been the thought of many Catholics when the Obama Administration ruled that Catholic institutions must provide contraceptive services to their employees. We responded with outrage, indignation and, perhaps most of all, surprise over an assault on our complacently assumed right to religious freedom. As a Catholic community many of … Read more
In an age that seems to believe that Christianity is an obstacle to liberty it will prove provocative to insist, contrary to such belief, that Christian faith is essential to liberty’s very existence. Yet, as counter-intuitive as it may seem to disciples of the progressivist zeitgeist, it must be insisted that faith enshrines freedom. Without … Read more
Monsignor Ronald Knox, probably the most inspired preacher and apologist of the twentieth century, wrote an essay in 1928 satirizing some skeptical Biblical literary critics, in which he used their methods to “prove” that the real author of Tennyson’s In Memoriam was Queen Victoria. Many who doubt the plausibility of the Scriptures are gullible about hoaxes. I don’t just mean … Read more
In 2008, Barack Obama stole a chunk of religious voters from the GOP by clothing his secularist and socialist positions in quasi-religious garb. “People of faith” received their own slot on his campaign web site, a mere two tabs down from the “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender community.” Obama “valued” the religious, as he put … Read more
For over 100 years, there has been a veritable “Francis industry,” going well beyond the plastic kitsch in Assisi gift shop windows (after all, no one can capitalize on poverty like a Minorite!). For that whole period of time, people have been making and remaking Giovanni Francesco di Pietro Bernardone to fit their own images … Read more
Apart from short intervals of confusion, every society has networks of influential people who cooperate to maintain their authority and advance their goals. There is always a ruling class, and we have seen that the Sixties were a period in which a new one consolidated its position. That class, which for the most part still … Read more
The title of Gregory Wolfe’s excellent collection of essays, Beauty Will Save the World, is based on a much-quoted line from Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. In its context it appears only in indirect speech, being attributed by one of the other characters to the “Idiot” of the title, Prince Myshkin. Thus in its original context its … Read more
Dr. Rowan Williams is retiring as the Archbishop of Canterbury to take up the post of Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge. His “valedictory” book, Faith in the Public Square, is attracting considerable media interest. I was prompted to buy it after reading Dr. William Oddie’s particularly colorful review in the London Catholic Herald. Oddie concluded … Read more
Thomas Aquinas, practical fellow that he was, understood that not all bad things can feasibly be proscribed by human law. It isn’t because people disagree about what is bad, but rather that a well-governed polity should require few laws, easily promulgated and understood, broadly promoting the common good, wherein the lawgiver can attend to things … Read more
The late European scholar Dr. Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn said that politics in Western countries typically features a “Santa Claus party” and a “belt-tightening party.” We are in the midst of an American political campaign where we are witnessing just that. The Democrats think that government can solve most problems by promising to provide more programs … Read more
The Second Reading for Sunday, August 26, is from St. Paul (Ephesians 5:21-32), in which Paul offers the instruction in 5:22, “Wives should be subordinate to their husbands, as to the Lord.” Following this Epistle, an optional alternative “shorter” epistle is offered; actually it is only a few lines shorter. This optional substitute reading is … Read more
To use the phrase of St. Thomas Aquinas, farming and education belong to the category of “cooperative arts.” The farmer does not himself produce the harvest, but provides the cultivation of the soil, the sowing of the seed, the tending of the crop, and the labor of reaping. Mother Nature’s fruitfulness produces the abundance of … Read more
The Gregorian Institute of Benedictine College has been polling Catholics to get nominations for the greatest Catholic bishops, greatest Catholic intellectuals, greatest Catholic third-basemen and so on. Actually they did not do third-basemen. They did greatest Catholic athletes though. Did you know Babe Ruth was a Catholic? Did you know his name is carved into … Read more
G. K. Chesterton wrote in his 1908 classic Orthodoxy, “The unpopular parts of Christianity turn out when examined to be the very props of the people.” The outer crust of Christian reality is a moral sternness that seems ugly, but makes possible “pagan freedom.” Neo-pagans wishing to excise those outer morals have brought on themselves … Read more
Cynicism seems to come all too easily to the French. The anticlerical cry of “crush the wretched one” came forth from the sumptuous bourgeois comfort—with its viper’s tangle of adultery—of Voltaire’s estate near Lake Geneva. Two centuries later, Sartre’s bleak atheism won him plenty of disciples on the shabby-chic Left Bank of the Seine. Even … Read more
Advocates of abortion and birth control often speak of “empowering women” with unbiased and vital information about “reproductive health.” Their silence following regular warnings about the negative side-effects of contraceptives, however, calls into question the nature of their concern for women’s health. On September 26, 2011, the FDA announced that it “remains concerned by the potential … Read more