Of the many symptoms and manifestations of pride—disobedience, stubbornness, willfulness, boastfulness, vanity, presumption, arrogance—spiritual pride does not express itself in such visible, noticeable ways as these other attributes. In Chesterton’s short story “The Hammer of God” the Reverend Wilfred Bohun enjoys the reputation of a holy Anglican priest who lives an austere life of self-denial … Read more
My wife and I decided long ago that we would live in a double-wide down by the river rather than send our kids to government schools. We are constantly reminded of the rightness of that decision, most recently by a talk given to a room full of kids at George Mason High School in Falls … Read more
The sexual harassment frenzy of the last few months—and it can only be called a frenzy—is disturbing in many ways, and decent and right-minded people need to speak up about it. It’s only the latest poison from the Sexual Revolution and the regime of moral relativism generally. First, it is troubling that in the minds … Read more
I am not a techy-type and I never thought I would do it, but I did—I took the infernal trouble of customizing my cellular telephone’s ringtone. With tongue in cheek, but not without symbolic intent, I programmed my phone to emit the sound of Darth Vader’s ominous breathing for every incoming call. Though people start … Read more
A few weeks ago, I outed the anti-Christian Human Rights Campaign as a “font of evil.” I asserted they are in the business of persecuting Christian believers who may disagree with the homosexual agenda. I explained how they are rich and powerful and want to force their agenda on school children. I also said they … Read more
The merry and the morbid have ever been cater-cousins. Man has for ages immemorial eaten, drunk, and made merry for the simple reason that tomorrow he dies. Let life be merry while it lasts, and especially, God willing, at Christmastime. And why not? Let nothing you dismay. Christmastime is a time when dark death was … Read more
We are living through dark times. Most Christians today share a sense of foreboding as we watch the decline of our culture. We see our friends and neighbors succumbing to loneliness, confusion, and despair. Our faith is increasingly regarded with hostility. Orthodox Christians find ourselves debating the best way forward, as we try to discern … Read more
Charlie Brown and Linus are sitting on the floor, looking at something in a book and laughing. Lucy comes up to them and asks what they are laughing at. They show her, and she asks, “Why are you laughing at it?” “Because we don’t understand it,” they say. In old days, people among the intelligentsia … Read more
The first lines of Belloc’s 1936 book, The Characters of the Reformation, are these: “The break-up of united western Christendom with the coming of the Reformation was by far the most important thing in history since the formation of the Catholic Church fifteen hundred years before.” We live in a time when the Reformation is … Read more
Public opinion matters a great deal today. That situation creates a way in which all of us participate in public affairs, even in hierarchical settings like the Church. So we should try to understand what’s going on. But if we are to sit in judgment over public affairs, what attitude should we take toward social … Read more
In his recent book, Nixon’s White House Wars, Patrick J. Buchanan writes about how most of Richard Nixon’s Supreme Court nominees—Buchanan was an aide to Nixon—did not turn out to be the “judicial restraintists” that the thirty-seventh president had hoped for. Buchanan says that has been a problem for Republican presidents generally. From Nixon up … Read more
For nearly a decade, progressive politicians like Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) helped to create a culture that has denied due process protections to college students accused of sexual harassment and assault. Convinced that college campuses had become havens for rapists, Senator Gillibrand and her progressive peers in the Senate helped to usher in new federal requirements … Read more
When St. Nick drives his miniature sleigh full of toys drawn by eight tiny reindeer to the snowy housetop, and drops to the sooty hearth below, the paterfamilias is bidden to attend. It is the father who hears “the prancing and pawing of each little hoof,” and springs from his bed to stand witness and … Read more
No, the bishops do not want us to subsidize porn usage on the Internet but that is the reality of a position agreed to by a committee of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops on something called “net neutrality.” Bishop Christopher Coyne of Burlington, Vermont (who is chairman of the Communications Committee of the USCCB) … Read more
At the school where I used to teach, diversity has become the word of faith, an intellectual idol to conjure by. It does not mean that you study a variety of cultures. It couldn’t mean that. Otherwise we would have been in very Diversity Heaven, as we introduced our students to ancient Babylon, Homeric Greece, … Read more
Et voilà. The cold corpse lay in Compartment #2 of the Orient Express, stabbed twelve times, no murder weapon, no obvious motive, victim’s pistol ready under the pillow, door locked and chained from within, mysterious clues (or blinds) littered about, a broken watch, a ghostly intruder, a scarlet kimono, a perfect murder and a perfect … Read more
Though I was born on a farm, I was raised in small-town Iowa. Thus, I was never a farmer, though my grandfathers were. Several of my aunts, uncles, and cousins formed farming families. I remember seeing, due to mechanization, the size of farms that one family could handle pass in size from a quarter-section, to … Read more
Despite curbing my online reading, scarcely a day passes without noting some new scandal caused by a theologian, priest, or bishop. It’s true, of course, that small stories from faraway places achieve an immediacy impossible without the web, but, still, the outrages are all too real. I suspect stories come readily to mind: commemorations of … Read more
You might say that Lee Edwards is the Zelig of the conservative movement, except Edwards is nothing like the inconsequential eager-to-please character created by Woody Allen. Even so, Edwards has been present and a central participant in every single significant conservative event and development for close to 85 years. I say 85 years because Edwards … Read more
Everyone seems to agree that haters and bigots are bad people. The belief makes some sense. If someone’s way of viewing others is based on aversions that don’t regard truth or justice then it’s basically malicious, at least in the extreme cases the words “hate” and “bigotry” suggest. So it seems that Catholics can buy … Read more