Everyone agrees that public discussion has become divorced from reality. On the hard left people talk about capitalist propaganda, while the soft left, including most respectable journalists, complains about conspiracy theories, truthiness, fake news, and the post-truth era. At the same time, conservatives protest media omissions, distortions, falsehoods, and narratives, while the far right grabs … Read more
The December 28 New York Times reported another “oops!” in vitro fertilization (IVF) moment. A technician in Utrecht may have mixed up sperm used to fertilize eggs, leading to the members of 26 couples perhaps not being the parents of the babies they contracted to produce. I admit that last sentence is a bit awkward: … Read more
After Hillary Clinton defended partial-birth abortion at a presidential debate, a poet promised that late-term abortion could unleash a mother’s “compassion.” Her sheeny New York Times essay about aborting a wiggling son whose name meant “heart” is heartbreaking. He’d need a heart transplant one day if he survived delivery; he’d face “horribly painful obstacles” and … Read more
Your perversity is as though the potter were taken to be the clay: As though what is made should say of its maker, “He did not make me!” (Isaiah 29:16) These words are as pertinent today as when they were first spoken by the prophet Isaiah (ca 740-681 BC). If there is a God today, … Read more
In the recent presidential campaign we observed the strongly critical reaction of business and economic commentators, surely representing the views of many corporate leaders, to President-elect Donald Trump’s tough talk on trade and especially his zeroing in on China. In the last couple of years, we have witnessed the willingness of many big companies to … Read more
A middle-aged man wheels his disabled daughter through a public park. They have enjoyed their visit there. The young woman likes to look at the flowers. For a moment, their shared pleasure of the beauty all around unites them. This is especially precious given her limited ability to communicate. In recent years, however, the visits … Read more
Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh. Kasper, Melchior, and Balthazar. These three gifts and names are familiar enough. We see images of the three kings who visited Jesus in almost every nativity scene, even if Biblically inaccurate. It is a marvelous and beautiful scene to contemplate: Jesus honored as the King He is for the first time; … Read more
“Schoolchildren banned from singing Silent Night over fears it will offend other religions.” So reads a headline in the Express. Instead of singing the lyrics which might “offend other religions,” schoolchildren in Bresciano, Italy were told to hum the tune. If you have trouble guessing what other religion might take offense, it probably means that … Read more
It may strike many Catholics as odd, improper, even irreverent, that there would be a patron saint of hangovers. We know from personal experience that through the prayers of the saints we are healed of serious ailments, protected in our travels, find stuff we’ve lost, and are granted a host of other graces. Why, then, … Read more
With his usual erudition, C.S. Lewis sums up an important aspect of the human condition: The Christian says, “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. … Read more
The new transgender revolutionaries would like to go beyond bra burning and accusations of patriarchy. They would like to change language itself—particularly pronouns—and abolish “he” and “she” and to replace it with “they”—or other inventive pronouns, to indicate anyone of any gender. While this has not been seriously institutionalized in western countries, transgender revolutionaries would … Read more
“Can you drink the cup that I will drink?” (Matt 20:22). This is the question Jesus posed to St. John the Evangelist and his brother, James, as they and their mother petition for seats on his right and on his left. Though not a martyr, several traditions affirm that John did suffer from persecution, though … Read more
A recent issue of the Italian daily Avennire suggests the next possible front in the effort to accommodate the sacraments to “pastoral” problems (at least as Cardinal Walter Kasper sees them): intercommunion. The December 9 issue features a brief interview in which Kasper reflects on Pope Francis’s October 31-November 1 visit to Sweden to mark the … Read more
A recent article in First Things by J.D. Flynn reflects upon Shusaku Endo’s 1966 Japanese novel Silence, now being released as a film directed by Martin Scorcese (which should tell you something). The tale follows an idealistic Jesuit missionary who, towards the end of the story, well, in Flynn’s words: At its pivotal moment, Silence’s protagonist, the Jesuit missionary … Read more
Tis the season to attack traditional Christianity by pedaling, through social networks and the mass media, speculative theories that contradict orthodox Christian beliefs. On Christmas Eve (predictably), the Washington Post revived a 2014 article promoting the discredited theory that the “historical Jesus” never even existed. Yet even the agnostic New Testament scholar, Bart Ehrman, famously … Read more
One Christmas was so much like the other, in those years around the sea-town corner now, out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve, or whether it … Read more
The aroma was transporting: the familiar smell brought me back to childhood, to being in the kitchen with my mom, as her banana cake baked in the oven, promising sweet and banana-ish goodness. To this day, the aroma of a well-made banana cake (and, you’ll allow me to aver, my mother’s was the best) brings … Read more
As a cradle Catholic long accustomed to the rituals and feasts of faith, the earliest memories I have coincide, most happily, with membership in what the comedian Lenny Bruce used to call the only the Church. And so there was never a time when Christmas was not an occasion for sheer wonderment and joy, an … Read more
This week the brave African delegations to the UN fought a rear-guard action to stop a new UN office that will seek out and punish any country or institution that does not bend to the will of the dominant LGBT ethos. This months-long fight began at the Human Rights Council in Geneva and it was … Read more
A study published last week in the journal JAMA Psychiatry claims to show that women facing an unwanted pregnancy do not suffer any negative impact on their mental health after abortion. Carried out by the ANSIRH (Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health) program at the University of California, San Francisco, the study sought to respond to … Read more