Burying the dead is a work of mercy. So, too, is voting for them, according to Sister Marguerite Kloos. Or at least that’s what she thought last year until Ohio investigators nabbed her for an act of voter fraud. This week she plead guilty to the charge of voting twice, acknowledging that she forged the … Read more
During his Apostolic Visit to the United States, on April 16, 2008, which was also his birthday, Pope Benedict XVI was welcomed to the White House by President George W. Bush. The Pope expressed the hope that his visit would be a source of renewal to the Church in the United States. Early in his remarks, … Read more
According to a recent survey, the average college student’s idea of Tyrannosaurus rex is modeled on Barney the purple dinosaur. Accurate portrayals in movies and textbooks make no difference: students continue to believe T. rex stood upright instead of pitched forward like the real thing. Once people get ideas in their heads it takes very … Read more
The matronly administrator instructed 1000 students through a microphone in her thick accent “you better clap boys and girls; you could be up there some day.” A tepid round of applause reverberated in the amphitheater for the ninety-seventh time at a presentation of mock pageantry previously unmatched in our school district. Our leaders excel at … Read more
There are papal encyclicals, and then there are papal encyclicals. Some escape public attention almost from the moment they’re promulgated. Others continue reverberating inside the Church decades after they appear. But there’s also a third type of encyclical: those which assume truly civilizational significance. This year marks the twentieth anniversary of one document that falls … Read more
Gay activists tell us that “gay marriage is inevitable.” It’s a taunt devised to pick off the more faint-hearted clingers-on of traditional marriage by exploiting the human instinct to be on the winning side. And all too often, it works. Traditional marriage advocates rightly protest that this isn’t an argument. Nothing, they say, is ‘inevitable’ … Read more
Barraged by headlines like the New York Post’s “St. John’s Dean of Mean, Cecilia Chang, Commits Suicide,” most New Yorkers remain bewildered by the facts surrounding a sordid story of money, power and status seeking at St. John’s University. Last October, The New York Times reported that Dr. Chang, a longtime Dean of the Institute … Read more
Nowadays, “charity” conjures up various images, some of which are quite distant from everyday life. Consider the “nonprofit sector”—or government welfare programs. Others images are more immediate—soup kitchens, or Salvation Army kettles. But charity—caritas—is actually a supernatural virtue. As Saint Paul puts it, “now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these … Read more
There is a gravestone in Boston’s Granary Burying Ground that legend purports marks the resting place of Mother Goose. Now, whether Mother Goose lived in Boston or any other place in the world is less of a concern than if she is dead to the world. The death of Mother Goose, who teaches the love … Read more
In these dirty dishonest days you expect your political enemies deliberately to misstate your positions. How positively Medieval to restate your opponent’s position better than he can before demolishing it. Now is the day of the straw man, and the flimsier the better. While you expect this from your enemies, it’s disheartening to see 80% … Read more
I fear that John Zmirak’s The Bad Catholic’s Guide to the Catechism will be a failure. This is not because the book is bad, but because it is too good. Too good, for the dull religious reader. The problem is that Zmirak has done the unthinkable and made theology fun. Not only has he made … Read more
The Left has always held a dim view of parental rights, seeing them as an obstacle to centralized planning. But usually the Left’s spokesmen are a little more circumspect in their pronouncements than MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry, who blurted out in a promotional ad for the channel that “we have to break through our kind of … Read more
Editor’s note: The following remarks by Archbishop Charles Chaput were submitted to the United States Commission on Civil Rights and published March 25, 2013 on Public Discourse. My remarks today are purely my own. But they’re shaped by twenty-five years as a Catholic bishop and the social and religious ministries that such work involves; ministries … Read more
It is a true truism that art imitates life. We might be struck anew by the freshness underlying this proverb if we consider the type of all imitation, the mimicry of a child. Children immediately fix on an animal’s salient characteristics then exaggerate them. Despite their best intentions, and the windows being up, adults will … Read more
Nobody knows how the Supreme Court will ultimately rule on the two cases concerning so-called same-sex “marriage,” the California Proposition 8 case and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) case, on which the high court recently heard two days of testimony. However, some of the comments made by several justices in the course of the … Read more
It’s beginning to look a lot like 1913, a decade before the peak of the Social Darwinism movement, a time when educated and concerned people joined the Race Betterment Foundation and looked to the settled science of eugenics to save civilization from the growing horde of the genetically inferior. Events have since made the word … Read more
How blessedly instructive it has been, following the installation of the first pope from the Americas, Pope Francis, to witness the world’s sheer unaffected delight in this man. His warmth and simplicity have endeared him everywhere. Indeed, he has disarmed us all by the spontaneity of his style. Of course—it needs straightaway to be said—none … Read more
Dictator Kim Jong Un has been rattling his saber in North Korea with enough warmongering threats to go around. Though U.S. national defense and U.N. security officials recognize that the situation brewing in Pyongyang is serious, they also recognize it as ceremonious. There is a traditional rhetoric in these rumblings from a young leader, portrayed … Read more
When our Lord says turn the other cheek, He speaks of a spiritual strategy to humble the self and then perhaps, to win other souls to Him. Not all the proud are shamed by humility and it seems pretty clear that those who smote the One who offered them salvation did not turn their hearts … Read more
An article in the March issue of Pediatrics entitled “Marriage and the Well-Being of Children” tacitly admits that there may be empirical evidence that “children reared by same-sex couples fare worse than children in other arrangements.” However, the authors, Jeremy Garrett and John Lentos, argue that there are no “intrinsic properties of traditional marriages that … Read more