From time to time the better angels of my nature are overcome and, submitting to that most vicious of temptations, I click through to an article in the National Catholic Reporter (which Father John Zuhlsdorf affectionately refers to as the National Catholic Fishwrap). Such was the malign, some may say demonic, influence that brought me, sometime last … Read more
A powerful revolutionary wave has been sweeping the nation. One of its bywords is “Defund the Police.” In reality, however, it is about law and order. Emasculating or even dismantling the police is plainly an assault on law and order. The postulate to defund law enforcement officers has gained some traction in Democrat-controlled cities in … Read more
My dear _______, I received your letter expressing your disappointment that I mentioned in my column in the bulletin that former Vice President Joseph Biden has clearly taken positions in favor of legalized abortion. You claim that the candidate is pro-life because he stated in a debate with Congressman Paul Ryan that he was “personally … Read more
There is a strong push from President Donald Trump, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, and educators across the country for schools to resume in-person, full-time instruction despite the fears and dangers associated with Covid-19. Even the CDC issued an article recently on the importance of reopening America’s schools this fall, estimating that it is actually … Read more
It was a good year for many of us. An economy that had sustained a heavy blow under President Jimmy Carter was recovering under Ronald Reagan. Aside from the skirmishes in Lebanon, the nation was at peace. And as a college freshman away from my mother’s scrupulous gaze, I was at last free to leave … Read more
Dr. Ben Carson offers some badly needed wisdom when he speaks about the vandalism, looting, and other forms of anti-social behavior that seem to be escalating in the United States. The remedy to the problem, he states, lies within the family. Unfortunately, “it is almost politically incorrect to talk about family values,” he told Fox … Read more
In an interview published in Forbes Magazine on July 8, rapper, producer, and presidential aspirant Kanye West spoke out against Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry. West has made waves in recent years for his support of President Trump and his very public conversion to Christianity. While his support for the President has cooled, his … Read more
The word “vocation” has been diluted. Before the sixteenth century, “vocation” had an exclusively sacramental sense. But, as Max Weber points out in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, the Lutheran and Calvinist dissolution of monastic and priestly orders gave rise to its modern sense of “occupation” or “profession.” What is the difference … Read more
This past March, The Atlantic published an essay by Adrian Vermeule, a Catholic professor of constitutional law at Harvard University, introducing the idea of “common-good constitutionalism” to an audience that I’m sure had never read anything quite like it. At its most basic, Professor Vermeule’s argument unfolded something like this: Human flourishing, or the “good … Read more
Catholic integralism holds that the state must confess the Catholic religion. Integralism follows the teaching of Pope Leo XIII (as in his encyclical Immortale Dei) and a host of other popes in denying the liberal doctrine of the separation of Church and state, and proposes instead that the state is truly subordinate to the Church, … Read more
China’s record on human rights protections has long been appalling. But, in the past few weeks, a series of interviews with Uighur Muslims who have escaped from China revealed a whole new level of gut-wrenching details about the Communist regime’s oppression. These interviews expose the existence of a long-suspected archipelago of concentration camps (called “reeducation … Read more
In the ethnic tradition of Anglo-Saxons, the “patter songs” of Gilbert and Sullivan have been the equivalent of contemporary rap music. Learning the repertoire was part of the expected rites of passage and, in the 1960s, I did my duty, even attaining to the heights of playing Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd, a baronet disguised as young … Read more
“The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that … Read more
Man is a rational animal. The capacity for reason is ingrained in his nature. He cannot be truly himself without living by the light of human reason. Saint Thomas Aquinas understood the social implications of reason and saw it as a means by which all people can communicate with each other on a common basis. … Read more
O God, the cleanest offering Of tainted earth below, Unblushing to thy feet we bring— “A leper white as snow!” In September of 1881, while King Kalākaua of Hawaii was away on his world tour, his regent (and sister) Princess Liliʻuokalani visited the leper colony of Kalaupapa on the island of Molokai. Its administrator was … Read more
As a musician in my parish church, I am required to step into the sacristy every Sunday before Mass to take my temperature, register it on a form, and certify that I have no symptoms of the coronavirus before climbing up to the choir loft. The day the procedure was initiated several weeks ago, the … Read more
The black family, as an institution, survived slavery. The black family, as an institution, survived Jim Crow. Under quite unimaginable pressure from systematic and institutional racism, black Americans fought tenaciously to protect the institution of the family. It is evident that blacks understood in their bones that the larger society and certainly not the government … Read more
Ignoring concerns about the threats to women’s civil rights, Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, promises to use the Equality Act to promote a long list of transgender rights that will eclipse women’s rights and the rights of people of faith if he is elected. The misnamed Equality Act, approved by the House … Read more
For decades, American foreign policy has been off track. The United States has launched wars in far-flung corners of the globe that have not only killed and wounded thousands of brave members of the American military, but our foreign interventions have led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of others, many of them innocent … Read more
The Second Vatican Council continues to provoke concern, as shown by the recent open letter from priests, scholars, and journalists in support of calls from Bishop Schneider, who believes it contains errors and ambiguities needing correction, and Archbishop Viganò, who has suggested it might be best to forget the whole thing. I don’t have much … Read more