In a recent piece published in Crisis I commented on the features of our public life that led the Supreme Court to assert that support for the natural definition of marriage is simply an attempt to harm people. One reader wrote to say he found the piece both convincing and horrific. He noted that it … Read more
With tears in her eyes, Lindsey approached me during her junior year in high school after hearing a lecture I gave on the negative side effects of contraception and the alternatives offered by the science of NaPro Technology. Lindsey was on “the pill” because her obstetrician insisted that it was the best means to manage … Read more
The Catholic Church has sometimes been praised, and sometimes criticized, for the strength of its hold upon the lives of its members. Its vision of the human is so profound and its view of the destinies of collective humanity are so all-encompassing that it tends to create its own atmosphere wherever it takes root, and … Read more
Two recent court cases illustrate the incoherence and remarkable intolerance of “liberal” views regarding conscience. One involves the bottomless pockets of the atheist Michael Newdow, who most recently joined several plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the U.S. Treasury Department demanding the words “In God We Trust” be scrubbed from U.S. currency. Newdow advocates what Richard … Read more
It is a small detail, but a revealing one, as the small details tend to be. Michael Novak in the final chapter of his personable memoir tells the story of his first meeting with John Paul II. Friends of Novak know that Wojtyła counted him as his friend too. But somewhat surprisingly they did not … Read more
The scene is from C. S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength. The callow young sociology professor, Mark Studdock, an atheist and a social climber, has been detained in a cubicle deliberately fashioned with odd annoying angles and not-quite-right pictures on the wall. His detainers aim to break down in him any last sense of the inner … Read more
The trouble with atheists, some wag once wrote, is that they are always talking about God. How endlessly they obsess about him! And what strikes one straightaway about the sheer mind-numbing attention they pay to God, including especially the problems posed by us benighted folk who persist in believing in him, is that it so … Read more
Many faithful Catholics know that for decades the U.S. bishops conference and its bureaucratic arm have often been criticized for their statements about public questions and issues. The statements have at times seemed to line up too readily with politically liberal positions, been overly specific, too focused on public policy solutions, and unduly restrictive of … Read more
For a generation, some Catholics in America believed that the Gospel injunction to help the poor meant to help them through government. Joined to that was a distaste for the WASP-dominated business culture of postwar American prosperity, even though Catholics had enjoyed the fruits of that prosperity along with other Americans. The long tradition of … Read more
Football is a deeply offensive sport. It is violent and triumphalist, and teaches young children that however nicely they play the game, winning still matters. More terrible still, a football team is a roiling cauldron of unvarnished masculinity. Hardly anyone even pretends to want women on the field. Football is an affront to everything progressives … Read more
Football season is upon us! And football season for my family means … perusing the catalog from Notre Dame’s Hammes Bookstore! No actual books, of course, but lots and lots of merchandise—t-shirts, sweatshirts, jackets, hats, umbrellas. How about a pair of Notre Dame sandals? Despite the internet and Amazon, actual physical catalogs keep showing up … Read more
When I entered the Church early in 1978 there was little enough discussion of natural family planning or of the Church’s teaching that use of contraceptives violated the law of God. The Couple to Couple League had been founded just a few years earlier, and NFP was not a subject even written about much in … Read more
St. John’s University is back in the news following an investigation into possible financial improprieties involving the former president of the university and another administrator with ties to Cecilia Chang, a dean who was accused of fraud. A statement released by the University on August 24th, concluded that although “there were errors in judgment” by … Read more
Summer is at an end. For those of us in the world of education, the new academic year is upon us. As the urgency and pace of preparation builds, it is worthwhile to pause, take a step back, and reflect. When the year is over, what will we have accomplished? This question is especially important … Read more
Miley Cyrus’s gyrations on the Video Music Awards are hardly new. In fact, Miley is getting whupped by the black community for a white performer once more taking a cultural artifact from the black experience. Some have gone so far as to call Miley racist for taking on-stage twerking into the white mainstream. You probably … Read more
Here’s a rather silly story brought to my attention recently. It should tell us something about how very silly lawyers’ views of morals and the law have become in recent years. According to Religion News Service, among others, one Dola Indidis, a lawyer in Kenya, has petitioned the International Court of Justice to nullify the … Read more
Several years ago, I received a note from an older man who had been battling much of his life for good Church music, particularly Gregorian chant. He did this in terrible times following the Second Vatican Council when the cultural ethos warred against any settled liturgical forms. He had plenty of scars to show for … Read more
Natural selection triumphs: Jane Austen has displaced Charles Darwin … on the British ten-pound note. Last month on July 24th, the Bank of England announced that the image of Jane Austen would replace that of naturalist Charles Darwin on the British currency note. Without irony, the Bank remarked that the selection of the 19th century … Read more
In my beginning is my end. –T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets: “East Coker” St. John the Baptist’s origin and vocation, as recorded in the beginning of the fourth gospel, provides hints of his destiny. In his beginning is his end. The fourth gospel declares that John’s vocation is “to bear witness” to the Messiah. Within the … Read more
Editor’s Note: A friend passed on this manuscript written by someone named “Foggy Bottom,” which purports to be the notes or an alternative draft of a recent piece, with a similar title, which has received some attention by one “Jody Bottum” in Commonweal. We cannot vouch for its authenticity, but in light of its curious … Read more