It seems like rioting (or the threat thereof) has become a form of participatory democracy. Nothing reveals the disintegration of authority and the common good so much in our society as the more and more frequent resort to violence. That this is particularly connected to police and the use of force, undue or otherwise, is … Read more
Philip Dick wrote Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? in 1968, but the novel is set in January 2021. The movie Blade Runner was based on some of the concepts in the novel, but the book’s plot is different and its themes more complex. One of the key themes of the novel is the human … Read more
A friend of mine, an early activist in the Christian Democrat party in El Salvador, told me a story that I have been thinking about lately. Before I had ever gone to that country as a missionary, the parish school building served as a polling place. When they were setting up for an election, my … Read more
Arthur Koestler is most famous for his Darkness at Noon, a book written in 1939 whose subject was the Stalin show trials of the thirties, when the Dictatorship of the Proletariat was exposed as the tyranny of a very bad man. Koestler wrote many other books, however, and one that I just read, Arrow in … Read more
In Bruce Catton’s famous book A Stillness at Appomattox, which won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1954, the historian recounts a meeting held by Abraham Lincoln with his two generals, Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, just before the inevitable surrender of the Confederacy. “The principal order of business,” Catton … Read more
The unprecedented message of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI regarding the crisis of the clergy contained a surprising illumination that is so incisive it will probably be ignored for years: All problems connected to Holy Orders are related in some way to the Eucharist. Benedict wrote: Our handling of the Eucharist can only arouse concern… What … Read more
A brave theology professor at my diocesan seminary, Rev. Gerald J. Bednar, has taken upon himself to defend the ambiguity that exists in Amoris Laetitia against the Dubia famously presented by “dissenters” (i.e. the four cardinals). He wrote an article that appeared in Emmanuel Magazine published by the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament. A shortened … Read more