Fr. Michael Curtin—Fr. Mike to anyone who dealt with him for more than about three minutes—knew for some years before his death at 63 on February 4 that he was living on borrowed time. Males in his family, he would point out in his irreducibly good-natured way, had a habit of expiring well before their … Read more
Shortly after l’affaire Lewinsky broke open last year, the public let it be known that if in fact President Clinton had lied under oath, he would have rendered himself unfit to remain in office. O what a difference a year makes! Somewhere between then and now, the public appears to have concluded that having a … Read more
The irrepressible humorist, Dave Barry, said it best. In his review of the annus horribilis that was 1998, he noted that Bill Clinton “really, really, really wanted to take his place in history alongside the likes of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, and instead he winds up looking more like Pee-wee Herman, but with less … Read more
In a memorable 1992 essay, Daniel Patrick Moynihan noted how the meaning of “normal” in our day has been expanded to include behavior that only a short time ago was universally acknowledged to be morally wrong or pathological. The Senator described this habit as “defining deviancy down,” and although he focused primarily on the ease … Read more
They had barely broken for the first commercials on election night when the media Wise Men began to intone the mantra that will be endlessly repeated by liberals and country-club Republicans over the next two years: Voters had rejected divisiveness and extremism (read conservative religious values) in favor of moderation (read toleration of abortion, gay … Read more
Several weeks after the Starr report revealed to the nation the sort of man it has twice elected president, public opinion remains a study in equivocation. Whatever your point of view, you can probably find it reinforced by some significant segment of the people. Give or take change, about 30 percent of the public would … Read more
It has often been remarked that great men are seldom elected president. True enough, but the genius of American politics lies not in the grandeur of those who hold its highest office, but in the grandeur of the constitutional order that presidents swear to uphold. Our system neither anticipates nor requires that statesmen will always … Read more
Interpreting the religion clause of the First Amendment, to put it mildly, has not been the Supreme Court’s finest hour. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The Framers took just sixteen words to declare their intention; the justices have taken hundreds of thousands to obscure … Read more
A quick test: (a) Who was the commencement speaker at your high school graduation? (b) At your college graduation? (c) Regardless of your answer to (a) or (b), can you recall anything he or she had to say? An unscientific sampling of friends and acquaintances produced the following results: (a) 2 of 10 could identify … Read more
Americans complain like no other people on earth, confident in the conviction that the Constitution, if not God himself, guarantees their right to do so. When something really bugs us, we join others of like mind to alter or remove the object of our discontent. Political protest has been a grand theme of our history … Read more
Whether William Jefferson Clinton will spend his last days in office defending himself before an impeachment inquiry in the House of Representatives is debatable, but his presidency is almost certainly damaged beyond repair. In one of his few memorable statements, Jimmy Carter said that on the important issues a president’s advisers are more or less … Read more
Men are fitted for civil liberty,” Edmund Burke once wrote, “in exact proportion to their capacity to place chains upon their own appetites. . . . It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free; their passions form their fetters.” This pithy reflection, although penned at the … Read more
Texas committeeman Tim Lambert rolled a grenade into the middle of Republican National Committee deliberations in January when he proposed to terminate funding for Republican candidates who support partial birth abortion. His gesture predictably angered the opposition but, more to the point, seems to have been advanced with insufficient groundwork among his natural allies. In … Read more
In 1994 voters in Oregon narrowly approved a ballot measure making their state the most permissive jurisdiction in the world on physician-assisted suicide. Opponents filed suit, arguing that the so-called “Death with Dignity” Act denied equal protection of the law to terminally ill patients, especially those who were economically or socially deprived. A federal district … Read more
Concerning the recent National Catholic Bishops’ Statement, Always Our Children, a few thoughts. (1) What exactly is this statement, and whose opinion, precisely, does it represent? Does it deserve any more attention than a homily one might hear from an ordinary pulpit on any given Sunday or, say, an editorial one might read in some … Read more
I write on the eve of Princess Diana’s funeral, the culmination of a week-long therapeutic exercise in which genuine empathy struggled for air in a sea of manufactured bathos. In death, Diana has been swept along by the same forces of celebrity-worship she both courted and despised in life. She was not only a star-crossed … Read more
The recent death of Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. was attended with much ceremony, including the equivalent of a state funeral at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington and a eulogy delivered by the President of the United States. The warm remembrances of family, friends, and colleagues were echoed in heroic encomia by professors … Read more
May, 1997 may become known in pro-life annals as the month that changed the world. First, a little pre-history. In late summer of last year Congress passed a legislative ban on partial-birth abortion, the barbaric procedure in which the child is partially delivered for the sole purpose of killing it. Scissors are thrust into the … Read more
Archbishop William Levada of San Francisco is by all accounts a fine man, a Godly priest and an able bishop, but shepherding the Church in a city where some 15% of the population is proudly homosexual is evidently going to require heroic skills. Homosexual culture pervades the city’s life in ways that would shock most … Read more
Nearly a quarter of a century has passed since the Supreme Court decreed that an unborn child possessed no rights the Constitution was bound to respect. Justice Harry Blackmun twisted himself into a pretzel trying to justify that conclusion and, in desperation, managed to invent a wholly fictitious entity called a “potential” human being. The … Read more