How should we be good Catholics and good Americans? Until recently that did not seem to be an issue to most of us. Separation of Church and State appeared to reconcile the Faith with a secular pluralist public order. The arrangement seemed to leave room for each to be what it is, do what it … Read more
Why are so many straight people pro gay? Because the normalization of homosexuality is the premier achievement of heterosexual ideology. “Gay” and “straight” are not taxonomies but ideologies. They are not orientations but disorientations: whether bi-, homo-, or hetero-, hyphenated sexuality makes us lose our sense of direction toward the truly sexual, and the victims … Read more
Catholics, it is said, are called to a New Evangelization that involves re-proposing the Faith to a world that is falling away from it. In that effort we are all expected to do our part. But what does that mean for the average believer? We have always dealt with our obligations to those outside the … Read more
The Catholic Church’s teachings regarding sexual congress, marriage, and the family are clear and coherent. If you disagree with one or another of them, you place in jeopardy the entire edifice. Fine, say many people who urge us to get with the times as regards—and here you may fill in your preferred form of divorce, … Read more
The rhetoric of leftist politicians, commentators, and “civil rights spokesmen” after events of the last few years has created a picture of America as a deeply “racist” nation. The impression conveyed is that things are no better, possibly even worse, than they were in the Jim Crow era. This is after decades of civil rights … Read more
On April 28, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on whether same-sex “marriage” should be legal in every state. As articulated by Justice Kennedy, gay and lesbians have a powerful motivation for their claim, namely, human dignity: “Same-sex couples say, of course, we understand the nobility and the sacredness of the marriage. We know we can’t … Read more
It is inevitable that advocates for the Sexual Revolution will say all we need is a bit more of it. More orgasms. More sex-ed. More abortion. More contraception. Less guilt. More freedom, man. But they will never acknowledge that their revolution has been tried and found wanting, wanting being a fairly benign way of saying … Read more
There is a clash of mystical ideas in the world, which is often represented in mythical imagery—like superheroes. Though many hold superheroes as nothing to be taken seriously, Msgr. Ronald Knox wrote, “To the scholarly mind, anything is worthy of study.” Though the demigods of current culture are not as golden as the demigods of … Read more
Despite a ruthless public relations war against San Francisco’s Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone for attempting to ensure that Catholic schools remain faithful to the Church, the majority of respondents to a San Francisco Chronicle poll remain supportive of their episcopal leader. On Sunday, the Chronicle provided a weeklong poll for readers entitled “Time for Archbishop Cordileone … Read more
Thinking back upon a winter’s day in New England, a man in the middle of life beholds the bent limbs of a birch tree that recalls the fondest of childhood memories, the delight of climbing up the tree and sliding down the bent branches again and again. He knows the real reason for the bending … Read more
We have won the argument over marriage. We have won 34 statewide elections where traditional marriage was on the ballot. We did this even though the polls showed us losing most of them, perhaps all of them, prior to the vote. We won even in liberal states like California. We won even during Democratic primaries … Read more
Faithful Catholics who have supported Patricia Jannuzzi, the embattled New Jersey Catholic high school theology teacher, who had been suspended from her job at Immaculata High School for using her Facebook page to present authentic Catholic teachings on homosexuality and same-sex “marriage,” were happy to hear that she finally was returned to the classroom. It … Read more
Zombies have been making the rounds lately. Not real ones, of course, because there are no real ones. It is to their great disadvantage that they do not exist, considering how popular they are. But then, they would have no great advantages in existing, either. While they may experience a certain brute satisfaction, their intellectual … Read more
Democracy is dead. I say so not because I have ceased to believe in it. I retain a half guilty affection for that worst of all forms of government, except for most of the rest. I say so because everyone else has ceased to believe in it. Yesterday I asked my students what … Read more
Some say the world has gone mad, others that it is only now becoming sane. The disagreement shows that people disagree on what it is to be rational. It also reflects a widespread and very basic change in how people think. Joe Bissonnette notes that the change is visible in IQ test results. For decades … Read more
The controversy about the Indiana religious liberty statute is a textbook example of the increasing timidity of leading Republican politicians in the face of the homosexualist movement. It is an exposè of how they just can’t get past the politics of the moment—which they often poorly analyze—to see the civilizational questions that confront us in … Read more
If you’re in need of some comic relief this week, check out this piece from The Atlantic on “the sexually conservative Millennial.” In it, writer Emma Green sets out to show that Millennials (the generation of Americans presently between 18 and 35) are in fact far less libertine than is widely supposed. They are, in … Read more
Eastertide, 1894 marked the resurrection of a famous figure besides Jesus Christ. Sherlock Holmes, supposed dead for three years following his agony with the Napoleon of Crime, reappeared suddenly to his friends in London—heralded not by an empty tomb, but by an empty house. There are very few literary giants with so perfect a resurrectional … Read more
Just once wouldn’t you like to see some gay guy ask a Muslim baker to make a sheet cake with an image of Mohammed—Peace Be Upon Him? Gay guys are awfully brave when they bully meek Christian bakers with the full force of the federal and state governments behind them. But let them belly up … Read more
We often hear that there is no sense of shame anymore. For decades, that has been evident about sexual matters. Sexual behaviors, even perversions, which were once not only unmentioned but even unthinkable are now in the mainstream. Not only this, but opposing thinking—such as the value of chastity and sound sexual ethics—is held to … Read more