“To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.” So wrote Edmund Burke, the Anglo-Irish Protestant statesman whose Reflections on the Revolution in France is considered one of the finest political treatises of modern conservatism. Perhaps Burke’s sentiment seems overly simplistic—of course we will like things that are likeable. Yet it is … Read more
Liberty is enshrined as the greatest good of the American political experiment. Its primacy is codified in our founding political documents, anthemized in our patriotic music, and honored in political speeches, legal rulings, and newspaper editorials. “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation,” wrote the Supreme Court majority in its 1943 ruling, … Read more
The Christmas decorations came out early this year. Immediately after Halloween, they began popping up in neighborhoods and strip malls. The justification was 2020—in a year of manifold chaos and distemper defined by the Coronavirus, racial strife, and contentious elections, putting up the decorations early was a cathartic way to bring out those good “Christmas … Read more
At the beginning of the 2005 conclave, Pope Benedict XVI preached a now-famous homily condemning what he called the “dictatorship of relativism.” The newly-elected pontiff warned: “We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one’s own ego and desires.” Benedict’s words elicited … Read more
Joe Biden, the self-declared President-Elect, is widely portrayed by the media as a “good Catholic” for his liberal position on immigration, with expectations that he will reverse many of President Donald Trump’s immigration policies once he takes office. “Biden has vowed to reverse limits on temporary workers, loosen visa restrictions on international students, halt border … Read more
Poland several times has played a pivotal, spoiler role in overcoming some of the greatest threats to Western civilization. In 1683, a Polish army led by John III Sobieski repelled an Ottoman army besieging the city of Vienna that threatened the survival of all of Christendom. In 1920, at the Miracle of the Vistula, a … Read more
According to devotees of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s personality cult, the ideal Supreme Court Justice is many things. She’s well-educated and professionally successful. She’s articulate. She possesses gravitas. She balances career and family. She cares for the vulnerable. Yet Democratic senators and progressive pundits insist that Amy Coney Barrett is definitely not that woman. But, eager … Read more
A slogan one sometimes sees in Dixie goes: “American by Birth, Southern by the Grace of God.” The Southern Baptist Convention, it would appear, no longer agrees with this sentiment, as many of its leaders are dropping the “Southern” part of their name, calling it a “potentially painful reminder of the convention’s historic role in … Read more
In case you didn’t think the antics of the woke name police could get any more absurd, on August 31, the “D.C. Facilities and Commemorative Expressions Working Group” released a report urging the District of Columbia to rename, remove, or “contextualize” various municipal public properties named after various historical persons. Included in the list are … Read more
“These are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others,” said Groucho Marx. In the land down under, many are wishing the Catholic Church would be so flexible, especially as it relates to a recent ecumenical ethical development. Australian Catholic, Anglican, and Greek Orthodox archbishops authored a joint letter on August … 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
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