The most infamous of Karl Marx’s remarks on religion was his demeaning assessment that religion is the “opiate” or “opium” of the masses. Few, however, are familiar with the wider context of the assessment, the larger passage that is no less reassuring, and that, like much of Marx and his disciples’ writings, becomes even more … Read more
Catholics for Biden held its national kickoff call on the evening of Thursday, September 3. It was, predictably, an hour-long attempt to make us all forget that the candidate is implicit in—and his party is devoted to—the vilest crime ever perpetrated against humanity. It was a less than brilliant exercise in misdirection. The distraction was … Read more
“Kamala Harris is an anti-Catholic bigot,” wrote former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich in an August 15 article for Fox News. Not only is she an anti-Catholic bigot; Mr. Gingrich claims that the Democratic Vice Presidential nominee “is the most openly anti-Catholic bigot to be on a national ticket in modern times.” Senator Harris … Read more
Black lives do matter. Period. My first step-father was a racist and an abuser. He constantly used the “n”-word and denigrating language for all who were non-white. He also beat my mother and fired a gun inside our home. I never embraced racism in any form—my stepfather’s character made that easy. During my youth, by … Read more
Excellence-focused community organizations are a brainchild of Robert L. Woodson, Sr. The founder and president of Woodson Center recently launched a new campaign called “1776 Unites,” in which neighborhood organizations exorcise the demon of victimhood possessing the 1619 Project and our entire “woke” culture with the holy water of virtue formation. Instead of telling young … Read more
I recently finished Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now and was reminded that we live in extraordinary times. Contrary to the dystopic forecast of pundits and politicians, Pinker charts the astounding scale of human progress and shows dramatic increases in life expectancy, gross domestic product, income gains, and literacy, as well as drastic falls in child mortality, … Read more
Ever since the passage of the 13th Amendment in 1865, reparations have been proposed as a form of redress for slavery. Originally targeting the direct victims of slavery, reparations today are proposed, not only for descendents of slaves but for the black community at large, for the racial injustice responsible for the black-white wealth gap. … Read more
It has been 56 years since Flannery O’Connor passed from the earth at the all-too-young age of 39. Her legacy as an outstanding writer and extraordinary human being seemed firmly established. However, two precipitating factors have led to her previously untarnished legacy being questioned and the removal of her name from a residence hall at … Read more
The Lord has commanded us to assist the poor. This is not an option. How shall we do it? One of the paradoxical results of obsessive political agitation is that it makes political discussions almost impossible. Imagine someone on a sickbed, afflicted with a disease that makes the lightest touch upon the skin feel like … Read more
“Where is the road which leads us to Jesus Christ? It is before our eyes: it is the Church. It is our duty to recall to everyone, great and small, the absolute necessity we are under to have recourse to this Church in order to work out our eternal salvation.” — Pope Saint Pius X … Read more
It was at about 3:30 a.m. when, in the middle of a dream, I awoke to a noise. Since the noise appeared to be that of a rifle being discharged from somewhere about the house, the line between dream and reality was a trifle blurred. Grabbing my 12-gauge and donning my brown leather slippers, I … Read more
Events over the last eight or nine years at my old place of work, Providence College, as well as events that have recently broken out in a new rash of the disease, have caused me to try to understand what makes someone a sneak, and what that might have to do with mob politics—with losing … Read more
The opening lines of the Communist Manifesto could not have been more eerily apt: “A specter is haunting Europe—the specter of communism,” wrote Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848. “All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and … Read more
Nothing facilitates jihad like ignorance of Islam. And since there is so much ignorance, jihad has been spreading rapidly. But we don’t seem to notice. We hear scattered reports about the persecution of Christians in Nigeria, Egypt, Pakistan, and Iran. We know or should know about the daily knife and vehicle attacks in Europe. Yet … Read more
As America’s major cities continue to be besieged both by rioters and inane local governments, and as increasing numbers of individuals are being attacked for dissenting from the elites’ party line regarding race and gender via “cancelling” and “doxxing,” we deem it to be in the public interest to identify those organizations in government, education … Read more
In 1969, long before he became Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger made a prediction about the post–Vatican II Catholic Church. Instead of a growing and dynamic Church reaching all cultures, he envisioned a smaller and less influential Church: “She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. … Read more
Ten years ago this month, I called my grandmother, a devout Catholic living in the Shenandoah Valley of western Virginia, to declare my intention to return to the Catholic Church of my youth, which I had left along with my evangelically-inclined parents after my First Communion. She was arrestingly unsurprised. “Oh, I knew you would, … Read more
We like to say that American conservatism is a three-legged stool. The “legs” are the three dominant factions in the Republican Party: social traditionalists, economic libertarians, and foreign policy interventionists. Conventional wisdom holds that the Right is only stable if all three legs are balanced. Yet, over the last half-century, the only “leg” that has … Read more
Looking at social media recently, I saw someone asking for people to explain why they were Christians in five words or less. I was tempted to write three words: “It is true.” Then I remembered the words of the novelist and Catholic convert Walker Percy. When asked why he had converted to Catholicism he answered, … Read more
Attacking the four dissenters in the July 24 Supreme Court decision refusing relief to the chapel that sued Nevada for imposing more restrictive indoors assembly numbers on churches than on casinos, New York Times reporter Linda Greenhouse accused them of pursuing a religious “crusade.” We all know that crusades are led by sectarian ignoramuses whose … Read more