Editor’s note: The following column by Stratford Caldecott first appeared May 16, 2014 on his blog Beauty in Education. Why can’t we all live forever? It seems a terrible flaw in the fabric of the world—that death haunts us from the moment we are born, injecting a note of tragedy into everything. And yet how … Read more
In late May, Governor Tom Corbett of my home state of Pennsylvania decided to throw in the towel on same-sex “marriage” and not appeal a federal district judge’s decision to strike down the state’s law that permitted marriage licenses to be issued only to male-female couples. While Corbett is to be commended for legally defending … Read more
Continuing their commitment to silence anyone who might stand in the way of their agenda, gay and lesbian groups are now beginning to criticize supporters who are thought to be insufficiently loyal. The most recent case involves Douglas Laycock, a University of Virginia law professor, who is married to the University’s president, Teresa A. Sullivan. … Read more
Perhaps my favorite recorded conversation in English literature is the short chat between Boswell and Dr. Johnson, when Boswell said he wanted to stand for election to Parliament, and Johnson advised against it: BOSWELL. “Perhaps, Sir, I should be the less happy for being in Parliament. I never would sell my vote, and I should … Read more
Editor’s note: The following essay was written for the “St. Francis of Assisi and the Western Tradition” conference sponsored by the Thomistic Institute and delivered at the NYU Catholic Center on April 25, 2014. I want to start with a simple statement of fact. All Christian life is a paradox. What I mean is this. … Read more
A gay guy gets up in the morning, does something, and nobody writes about it. Now that would be news. Will we ever see that day when we as a culture do not stare slack-jawed and unblinking—so as not to miss a single thing—at all things gay? There’s an old joke about how many lesbians … Read more
I have always been a believer. Among other reasons, that’s because I think rationality demands it. When I talk about “belief” here, I mean it in a very broad sense, which is not synonymous with “Catholic” or even “Christian”; Sikhs, Hindus and Zoroastrians might all qualify, and I myself was raised in the LDS church … Read more
Last month I discussed how the assumptions and language of public life today, which are based on commercial and bureaucratic concerns, are biased against Catholics. To make matters worse, the all-pervasive electronic media, increasing reliance on commerce and bureaucracy in everyday affairs, and changes in the purposes of formal education, along with its radical expansion, … Read more
The world reeled in disbelief and grief. Sherlock Holmes was dead. But not for long. His resurrection—or resuscitation, to use a more practical term instead of such a mystical one out of reverence for the Master—his resuscitation brought with it a matchless struggle between logic and magic. Out of the tomb, a hero and a … Read more
For Catholics, sexuality does not start with sexuality. In a fallen world, it starts with the cross—and almost everyone harbors stereotypes when it comes to the cross. Some worry I’m about to get wildly conservative. Others are afraid I’ll be too liberal. Some would like it if I said we were going to find a … Read more
Faith has always been a struggle for me. Indeed, throughout my forty-six years of life, very rarely have I ever felt comfortable for any stretch of time with my religion or my religious practices. I readily and rather gleefully abandoned almost any faith and religious observance during my teenage years. I’m not totally sure what … Read more
Homer’s great epic about the family as the center of civilization portrays two different types of woman: women who are pro-marriage and pro-family and women who are anti-marriage and anti-family. Penelope, the faithful wife of Odysseus who waited twenty years for her husband’s return from war and exile, defends her home from the suitors who … Read more
There is no way around it: the Christian’s life is to be one of obedience. “Let him who has ears to hear, hear,” says Jesus. That does not mean that we are beholden only to God, under our own understanding of who God is and what He wants from us. God in His mercy does … Read more
In Making Gay Okay, Robert Reilly says the ascendancy of men-who-have-sex-with-men (MSM) started with Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s victory over Aristotle and that once philosophy fell the triumphant march through the institutions was quick and maybe even inevitable. Reilly explains that the debate centers on the question of what is natural and not, and how to distinguish … Read more
Like recalcitrant teenagers, taunting their teachers with their latest refusal to submit to authority, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious—an organization that represents more than 80 percent of the more than 50,000 Catholic women religious in the United States—has finally been publicly rebuked by the Vatican. After several decades of trying to persuade the intractable … Read more
With few exceptions, American Catholics have given up on the dream of a Catholic society. Instead, they have come to aspire to a seat at the table: a respected position in public life that lets them bring their insights and values into public discussion within a pluralistic system. At first glance the aspiration seems sensible. … Read more
Most people, I find, have some potent memory from early childhood, in which they lied and then felt the blistering sting of remorse. For me, that memory takes me back to age five, when the two (much older) girls next door persuaded me to sneak ginger cookies and candy canes off of our Christmas tree … Read more
Secularists are known for dismissing religion as merely espousing a set of blind faith beliefs without any evidence to support them. The crudest among them will often do it in a snide and sneering way, holding that religious belief is imagination and fantasy—like a childhood fairy tale—in contrast to the “scientific” view that they espouse. … Read more
Why is God a he, not a she or an it? Could Jesus have been a woman? What if the Lord’s Prayer began not with “Our Father,” but with “Our Mother”? Reading modern commentaries, you’d think a female goddess invited Sarah out under the stars and promised she would be the mother of a great … Read more
A sentinel watches upon the battlements. The air is raw and cold, and it seems to have penetrated to his knees and ankles and the shoulder upon which he rests his rifle. But he paces his rounds, hour after long hour. He peers into the little glooming light showing in the east. He turns again … Read more