In the film Full Metal Jacket, which is set during the Vietnam War, there is a scene where a platoon of American soldiers is pinned down by a sniper. Two soldiers have already been hit. They writhe in pain, and perhaps death throes, out in the open. The newly christened platoon leader, “Cowboy,” tells his … Read more
Columnist Damon Linker has had one of those emotional meltdowns we have come to expect from Never-Trump dead-enders. Mr. Linker has his nose out of joint about a lot of things Trump. Right now, he’s cranky that Trump hasn’t conceded the election. It’s an assault on our fragile democracy or something. In a recent column … Read more
Father James Martin, S.J., says Catholics must place orphan children with homosexual men, or else they become guilty of a new sin: homophobia. He says religious liberty should not be used as a cover for this new sin. He also compared sodomitical relationships with (of all things) Methodism. After all, just like sodomites, Methodists don’t … Read more
At the end of September, Public Discourse published a series of columns about voting for Trump. Or not. Mostly not. Mostly ewww. Brandon McGinley argues the usual yadda-yadda that Christians have no home in either political party. I don’t know about you, but my home is where my family lives. I don’t look for a … Read more
In a recent article for the Catholic Herald of London, Eve Tushnet argues that the Church has a stark choice. Either she must accept out-and-proud gay men and women as they are or, failing that, she must risk losing them to apostasy or suicide. Ms. Tushnet asserts that any efforts to help men to deal … 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
I rounded the corner at the grocery store not long ago and came across a woman who froze stock still. Her whole body became rigid, as if she had seen a fearful specter ready to drag her down to hell. She plastered herself along the opposite side of the aisle and stepped ever so gingerly … 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
It is hard to write about the victims of gender ideology, radical feminism, and the sexual revolution. After all, they are victims. But sometimes these victims take public positions that will lead others into the same type of tragic victimhood. And so today I write about two victims. It is also challenging to write about … Read more
Pope Francis has condemned racism, and what Catholic could possibly disagree? Responding to the killing of George Floyd, the Holy Father said: “My friends, we cannot tolerate or turn a blind eye to racism and exclusion in any form and yet claim to defend the sacredness of every human life.” I have to think he … Read more
Rod Dreher lives in fear. It comes out in his life and certainly in much if not most of his writing. Just this week he was writing about (what else?) the coronavirus, commenting on his blog at The American Conservative, “This thing is going to be with us a very, very long time. It will … Read more
Last week, President Donald Trump wished the country “Happy Good Friday,” and all hell broke loose. Suddenly, everyone was an expert on Catholic theology—or, at least, the emotional rubrics going along with Holy Week. Sure, most religious folk would not use the phrase “Happy Good Friday.” But most religious folk understood what he was trying … Read more
The annual Rainbow Shakedown of America’s corporations continues. The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) has released its Corporate Equality Index for 2020. They announced it at Davos, no less. The Corporate Equality Index is the annual threat to corporate America that they better step into line with the gay elite because hell hath no fury as … Read more
It is always painful to criticize someone you admire and consider a friend. But Jonathan Last—now the executive editor of The Bulwark, one of these new NeverTrump websites—has allowed his Trump skepticism to color his attitude, not just toward the March for Life but the pro-life movement in general. He gets a lot wrong along … Read more
Mark Joseph Stern, the resident LGBT scold at Slate magazine, is having a hissy fit over pronouns. Stern complains that a “transgender” pedophile in federal custody was not allowed to be called by his preferred pronouns. The case revolves around a man named Norman Varner, who, in 2012, was found to have sexual images of … Read more
They say the homosexual scenes in the new Elton John biopic are the most titillating ever in a mainstream movie. They make Brokeback Mountain look like Bringing Up Baby. Less discussed, perhaps, is the fact that ordinary Catholic pew-sitters paid for it via their Peter’s Pence donations to the Pope. The cash came from a … Read more
To look at our diocese, you might assume it’s on the liberal side. Located in Northern Virginia and established in 1974, most of the newer churches (and there are many of them) are “in the round.” You know the ones—they look like spaceships. Needless to say, these triumphs of modern ecclesial architecture generally exclude altar … Read more
Not long ago, Austen Ivereigh took to Twitter to compare conservative Catholics to feces. He called them racists, anti-Semites, and sedevecantists. In another tweet, Austen compared faithful Catholics—specifically the Pachamama Dunkers—to ISIS head-choppers. The only difference between the Dunkers and Islamic terrorists, said Austen, is that the terrorists have the “guts” to show their faces … Read more
This column is about selfish regret. In 1997, we founded C-Fam to lobby U.N. delegations on life issues. One of the first phone calls I made was to a man named George Marlin, who happened to be one of my proudest political votes ever. George lost to Rudy Giuliani on the Conservative Party line for … Read more
Nobody wants to talk about buggery. And why would they? The trouble is, leftists count on this proper squeamishness. They want us to think that “LGBT persons” are a cultural group, and one very much like ourselves—all golden retrievers, church on Sunday, and fathers-know-best. They avoid discussing the carnal act that gives the movement its … Read more