In just the past couple of years, teaching high school students about sexuality has been completely upended. Before beginning the unit on sex, there used to be a piqued attentiveness, an awakened primal anticipation. But now students approach sex-ed with an enlightened glow, a condescending smirk and a smug ideological certainty. Perhaps it has always … Read more
One of the great truths lost in the zealotry of gender politics is that unlike animal sexuality, which is purely instinctive, human sexuality is a combination of instinct and socialization. We are not just “born this way.” Human sexual desire is cultivated. It can be channeled toward beauty, love, and even sublime self-sacrifice, culminating in … Read more
There was always something Disneyesque about the 1980s preachers of the prosperity gospel. Of course there was no corpus on their cross, but that sacrilege had been achieved by earlier versions of Protestantism. What was really galling about the perpetually smiling televangelists was their soft-lens obliteration of the cross, which had at least remained a … Read more
Culture is not merely whatever fungus happens to grow in the unclean soul of a transgressive artist. But to say so is counter-cultural, and to say so with wit and erudition is invigorating. Joseph Epstein writes with clarity and probity about culture, but more importantly he writes about the conditioning of the mind and soul necessary for … Read more
What if embryonic DNA could be extracted from amniotic fluid and information from that DNA could be used to build a high probability composite of what the embryo will look like as a 2-year-old, a 6-year-old and beyond? DNA phenotyping, also known as molecular photofitting, is a process of predictive modelling linking genetic traits and … Read more
“Oh my God. I’m home. All the time … you finally really did it. You maniacs. You blew it up. Damn you. G-d damn you all to hell.” Wearing only a loincloth and a look of despair Charlton Heston slides off his horse and falls to his knees. Still on the horse sits a beautiful … Read more
1) Because it is not enough to be quietly horrified by Planned Parenthood killing babies and selling baby parts. The doors into your local abortion clinic are the gates of hell. You are called to exercise your prophetic charism and unambiguously witness to the truth. 2) Because Planned Parenthood and the abortion/baby part industry radiates … Read more
Everyone loves a winner, or at least fears the taint of a loser, and so post-Obergefell v. Hodges, popular support for same-sex “marriage” is already moving from a court imposed edict to majority popular support. But like slavery after Dred Scott v. Sandford, or abortion after Roe v. Wade, a bad decision from SCOTUS does … Read more
Like boiling frogs, we may be forgiven for failing to notice an all pervasive atmospheric change; forgiven but not spared. Whether we can look it in the eye or not, we have entered the era Pope Benedict XVI described as the mustard seed church. Our stature and influence are gone and the world has become … Read more
Confirmation bias is the tendency to ascribe greater significance to information that supports our pre-existing theories and lesser significance to information that contradicts those theories. We often do this subconsciously. For example you get a new car, and now you notice that same type of car on the road with a much greater frequency than … Read more
On the morning of Friday, February 6, 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the law against assisted suicide was unconstitutional. Canada now joins a small, elite group of madly progressive countries in abandoning the most fundamental principle in all of nature. All living things, from an ameba to a human being seek to … Read more
For a little more than 100 years we’ve had standardized IQ tests, and over those 100 years there has been a consistent, linear increase in IQ scores, on the order of 3 points per decade. According to IQ tests, we are getting smarter. Also over the last 100 years, rates of belief in God and … Read more
In November of 1996 First Things hosted a symposium titled “The Judicial Usurpation of Politics” in which contributors discussed the threat to American democracy posed by the Supreme Court instated imposition of abortion on America. Nothing rivals the sheer volume of innocent human beings killed by abortion and yet First Things saw fit to focus … Read more
Calvary starring Brendan Gleeson and directed by John Michael McDonagh is a movie serious Catholics must see. Largely overlooked when it was released in North America in August 2014, moviegoers who missed it in the theater now have a chance to see it on DVD. The confessional is the tomb, and the confessed sinner, pushing … Read more
In the polyester-clad fast food industry, there’s an unnamed universal law which holds that eventually, even the most exotic delicacy will become a $5.99 soy-based value meal. We want the exotic, but we want it affordable, fast, convenient and blandly uniform. In this, the age of pornography, lust has become almost indistinguishable from the gluttony … Read more
Shepherd and king are two of the loneliest professions. Shepherds are heirs of Abel whose offering was favored by God and whose blood still cries from the ground. Kings possess what we strive for, but pay the price of distance and objectification. But it was shepherds and kings who were invited guests at the first … Read more
Modern philosophy is full of all sorts of absurd theories about the illusory nature of existence and the unreliability of everything we know to be true. But the boots on the ground, living, breathing, day to day philosophy of even the most angst-ridden German nihilist or the most wild-eyed French existentialist has to be common … Read more
Fr. Richard John Neuhaus used to call it “the parish paper,” a gentle barb at the pretensions of the self-described “paper of record,” but also, I think, a subtle pastoral hand extended to those who think they get all the advice they need when they look in the mirror. Yes, I’m talking about the New … Read more
Bill Cosby is 77. He may well live another 5 years, but is unlikely to live more than 10 years. Still, there are no accounts suggesting diminished capacity for the bright, thoughtful Bill Cosby who has been a famous comedian and more recently a brave social commentator on failed fatherhood in black America. In his … Read more