Criminal law and criminal justice in the United States may reasonably be said to be in a state of crisis in many different aspects: the increasing amount of criminal law, the kinds of things it tries to address, its enforcement, the level of criminal activity, and punishment. The sub-title of a book published by the … Read more
Ah, to know the mind of Aristotle, the man whom Dante called “the teacher of those who know.” How magnificent to commune with the intellect of Plato, of whom Alfred North Whitehead dared to say: “the European philosophical tradition consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.” Many other ancient writers by their enduring works … Read more
Several weeks ago, Saint Valentine’s Day at my school came and went. There was no dance. There was no concert. There was no ice cream social. There was no party for trading little gifts. There was no showing of She Wore a Yellow Ribbon or Marty or Goodbye, Mr. Chips or Casablanca. There were no … Read more
Believe it or not, in at least one specific area public discourse in the United States is a bit better than it was a few decades ago. How so? Today we occasionally hear the word “virtue” used—and not always in sarcasm. This is good news because the return of the word “virtue” to the lexicon … Read more
Somehow we have this impression that Gregorian chant is part of a high Church ethos. It’s for conservatives and traditionalists who favor their liturgy buttoned up, obedient, and strict. On the other hand, this line of thinking goes, people who want authentic human expression of spontaneous religious experience should embrace popular music and a looser … Read more
Belgian Archbishop André-Joseph Léonard was participating in a debate on blasphemy at the Free University of Brussels on April 23rd when he became the target of a blasphemy. Four topless women emerged from the attendees and mobbed the prelate, dousing him with water from bottles shaped like the Virgin Mary and screaming accusations of homophobia … Read more
In the nineteenth century, the West took great pride in its independence from the Church, an independence based on a new public authority rooted in the language of the natural sciences. Liberals and socialists disagreed on the nature of the economy, but both appealed to science to justify their positions. In France, this general faith … Read more
There’s deception going on in the front office of the Boy Scouts. It includes deliberate misrepresentation of polling data, and threats to pack an upcoming meeting with anonymous and unqualified voters so that the Boy Scout policy on homosexuality gets forced on the majority of Scouts and parents who don’t want it. The Boy Scouts … Read more
When New Jersey-born novelist Philip Roth, arguably America’s most acclaimed author, turned eighty last month, his home town of Newark rolled out the red carpet, determined to honor a local luminary whose fame had reached into every corner of American cultural life. Did I say fame? Maybe the more honest appellation should be infamy, since … Read more
The world goes its own way without much regard for the Church, because it has very little regard for truth—that is to say, for reality. The problems go to the roots of current ways of thinking. The modern movement of thought began as an attempt to attain security and certainty by emphasizing what is practical … Read more
A little over a decade ago, a gathering of the who’s who of Catholic feminism issued the Madeleva Manifesto: A Message of Hope and Courage to Women in the Church. The signatories to the Manifesto included Charlie Curran’s defender Monika Hellwig and women’s ordination advocate, Joan Chittister. Not by accident, they issued their declaration on … Read more
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee; And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils … Read more
For more than a decade, Garry Wills has been devoting much of his energy to Catholic matters. In Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit (2000), he explained that the papacy was never intended by Jesus and that most popes have had a malign influence on the Church and the world. In 2002 he followed with Why … Read more
Just as Mr. Darcy’s aunt, the overbearing Lady Catherine De Bourgh, held that if she’d ever been taught music she would have been a great proficient, I’ve sometimes had the chumpaciousness to think that if I’d ever learned to draw I’d have been a good cartoonist. These inflated thoughts generally occur when I’ve got a … Read more
Though the world barely knows Pope Francis, it has rushed to judge him. As Caitlin Bootsma has lamented, “Catholics, of all stripes, immediately sought to measure Pope Francis against their own goals for the papacy.” Rather than measuring him according to our interests and wants, we should make haste to pray for him. We should, further, … Read more
The world was transfixed in early 2013 as three meteors broke through the deceptive calm of outer space. Thanks to the media, for a few weeks, people were confronted with the remote, but unsettling, possibility that the ultimate horror might come true—a killing fire, raining down from the sky. Actually, humanity has been confronted by … Read more
Not for the first time in his own indispensable blog, Protect the Pope, Deacon Nick has drawn our attention to another attack on Catholic blogs, coming from a familiar prelatical source. In a homily given during the Diocese of Westminster’s recent Mass following the election of Pope Francis, Archbishop Nichols quoted the new Pope’s reflection … Read more
When we study the history of the Church, we encounter what many have called the res Catholica, the “Catholic thing.” We use the non-descript Latin res quite deliberately in order to evoke within the reader a sense of enigma, of irreducible mystery. The saints of the Church are the strongest representatives of this res Catholica, … Read more
Unknowingly, my family had a sneak preview of the results of the recent Conclave. During the week prior, my one year old son, Austin, kept going up to our bookshelf and pulling off a particular book, no matter where it was shelved. My wife, Anne, beginning to wonder why this was happening, decided to look … Read more
A rational person, in view of the innumerable contradictions emerging from religious spokesmen, will conclude that false prophets indisputably exist. And one wonders: if one’s personal encounters are primarily with such false prophets, can faith still be activated, and operate constructively? Of course, even the worst charlatans can be catalysts to further exploration for “seekers,” … Read more