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
They were one of the first American fraternal societies not to prohibit black membership in their constitution. During World War I, with the slogan “Everybody Welcome, Everything Free” atop their doors, they managed the only racially integrated facilities available to American troops, three decades before the U.S. military integrated its ranks. And they were described … Read more
Bad luck comes in threes, so they say. Sometimes so do good things, as demonstrated by three recent Supreme Court decisions on religious liberty. In a sea of recent bad news in the United States, we should welcome these rulings as a happy interruption that will hopefully provide some protection to the Catholic Church’s work … Read more
Karens are everywhere, notes a June 30 article in the Washington Post, and they are the most addictive thing to watch in America’s disastrous summer of 2020. For the uninitiated, a “Karen” is a pejorative term for a white woman who is “perceived to be entitled or demanding beyond the scope of what is considered … Read more
What would lead a pro-immigration, pro-gun control, pro-gay rights liberal woman, who participates in anti-racism marches and demonstrations, to wear blackface at a 2018 Halloween party in Washington, D.C.? What would lead a Puerto Rican attendee of that party to declare that she felt personally “harassed” because after she had approached and reprimanded the woman … Read more
“Yes, I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down. They are a form of white supremacy. Always have been…. All murals and stained glass windows of white Jesus, and his European mother, and their white friends should also come down. They are a gross form of white … Read more
In the United States on the seventh day of the week, trade and industry seem suspended throughout the nation; all noise ceases. A deep peace, or rather a sort of solemn contemplation, takes its place. The soul regains its own domain and devotes itself to meditation. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote these words in his 1835 … Read more
“It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends,” says Albus Dumbledore in an address to the Great Hall in J.K. Rowling’s The Sorcerer’s Stone, the first book in her fabulously successful Harry Potter series. I confess I don’t know who … Read more
Almost twenty years ago, as a zealous evangelical Young Life leader at the University of Virginia, I sat on the trunk of my car with a high school senior at Charlottesville High School. He, an intelligent secular Jew, had taken my Gospel-sharing bait, and was willing to converse on God and Christianity. There we sat, … Read more
What would James Madison and Thomas Jefferson—the philosophical and logistical masterminds behind the historically influential Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom in 1786—have to say about the latest ruckus over religious liberty in their beloved Old Dominion? Lighthouse Fellowship Church, a church located on tourist-friendly Chincoteague Island, is suing Virginia Democratic Governor Ralph Northam, whose … Read more
As American parents have learned in the last two months, it doesn’t matter what we think of home-schooling, we’re all doing it, especially for those in my home, Fairfax County, Virginia, where our nationally renowned public school system delayed and then egregiously fumbled its move to virtual classes. Thankfully, there are libraries-worth of free information … Read more
On the Saturday of the Easter Triduum, Virginia governor Ralph Northam signed Senate Bill 868, called the Virginia Values Act, which “prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in housing, public or private employment, public spaces and credit transactions,” according to the Washington Post. It also provides “causes of action,” allowing … Read more
The coronavirus crisis has certainly put a lot of things into perspective —and not just the value of relationships with our family or how much money we really need to get by. What counts as essential medical service has also become a topic of national conversation. This is most salient in regard to abortion, though … Read more
In early March, several players on the World Series championship team the Washington Nationals—Ryan Zimmerman, Trea Turner, Kurt Suzuki, Patrick Corbin, and Daniel Hudson—played golf with President Trump at his private West Palm Beach resort after a morning workout at the team’s spring training facility. Unsurprisingly, the Nats players were pilloried by the President’s many … Read more
Scholars and pundits for generations have been making comparisons between the United States and the late Roman Empire. Such analogies date back to America’s Founding Fathers, notes Andrew Sullivan in a recent piece for New York Magazine. These men were deeply conscious of the decline of the Roman Republic, brought on by bitter and bloody … Read more
Jamie Forsythe always felt called to be a priest, according to a CBS News 5 February report. That calling persisted even after pleading guilty in 1989 to attempting to sexually abuse a 15-year-old Kansas boy, serving a prison sentence, and being laicized by the Catholic Archdiocese of Kansas City. Forsythe was released from prison after … Read more
In 2018, the Maryland legislature passed a bill requiring that sex education classes—those taught to thirteen-year-olds—include lessons on the meaning of consent. The results have been unsurprising. A January article in the Washington Post reports on seventh graders at Hallie Wells Middle School “huddled around a table in their second-period health class,” debating a scenario … Read more
During a hilarious 2018 performance in London, comedy musicians Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords stop to chat about gender identity dynamics within their two-man band. “The band is very male-dominated. It’s systemic. It’s a systemic problem—it’s the f***ing patriarchy!” they declare to an audience roaring with laughter. McKenzie and Clement, … Read more
The Catholic Church lost a great ally on January 12 when conservative philosopher Sir Roger Scruton died at the age of 75 from cancer. Scruton was not Catholic but Anglican—the author of Our Church: A Personal History of the Church of England. Yet he was a friend of Rome, telling the Catholic Herald in 2015, … Read more
On January 3, leaders of the United Methodist Church (UMC) announced plans to split into two denominations. This division of the third-largest church in the United States (after the Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention) is an attempt to resolve a years-long, contentious battle over sexual ethics, particularly homosexuality. According to the announcement, Methodist … Read more