Americans are accustomed to mutable truth. Politicians often lie openly. Moral relativism commonly and craftily excuses falsehood. The media regularly and unabashedly fabricates and manipulates according to the agenda du jour—and high on today’s agenda is the issue of transgender normalization. From North Carolina’s House Bill 2 (which legally requires people to use public restrooms … Read more
How do you explain the fact that so many people support disastrous public policies? According to polls, a majority of young people want Bernie Sanders to be the next president. Yet socialist policies of the type advocated by Sanders reliably lead to basket-case economies such as in Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea. Likewise, the welcoming … Read more
She was to die. The doctors had not said as much, but once the word cancer was uttered I knew it was only a matter of time. My mother took the news as she had taken all else in life: with an act of faith. She had been diagnosed just prior to Ash Wednesday; she … Read more
If I remove the central reason for a thing to exist, it will slowly cease to exist, and even what it had will be lost. On the other hand, if I proclaim and reinforce that central reason, the thing will not only continue to exist, but will likely even increase and bear fruit in due … Read more
Governments have often minimized religious conflict by establishing one religion and granting it privileges even where others are tolerated. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution left such power to the states, saying only that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion….” Following the enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment, however, the … Read more
In an essay that appeared recently on National Catholic Reporter online, Professor Terrence Rynne of Marquette University offered five reasons that support abandoning Catholic Just War Theory and toward what he calls a positive vision of peace: Modern wars have made the just war theory obsolete; The rise of a Christology “from below”; A clearer … Read more
Recent weeks have seen a sudden slew of bureaucratic and judicial action on the question of public accommodation of self-identified transgendered individuals. In one of the latest moves, a decision from the Fourth Federal Circuit struck down a Virginia school board ruling that children must use the bathroom corresponding to their biological sex. As Hadley … Read more
The openness of Pope Francis to create a committee on deaconesses has been met with another uproar from traditionalists in the Church, many with the eye-rolling Reagan-esque response: “There he goes again.” Meanwhile the theological dissidents in the Church see the commission as another opportunity for women’s ordination. Both the traditionalists and the dissidents seem … Read more
Like all modern tyrants, Karl Marx hated religion, Christianity in particular, because he understood that it was going to be very difficult if not impossible to get men to follow him so long as they continued to follow Jesus Christ, and so the first thing an aspiring tyrant in the middle of Christian Europe needed … Read more
Running up and down Yggdrasil, the Tree of trees of Nordic lore, goes Ratatösk the Squirrel. Up and down Yggdrasil Ratatösk runs, making trouble between the eagle that nests in the branches high above and the dragon that gnaws at the roots deep below. The squirrel tells the dragon how the eagle plans to destroy … Read more
A few weeks ago I gave a talk in Omaha called “No Finer Time to be a Faithful Catholic.” In the talk I argue that it is the finest time to be a faithful Catholic not in spite of all manifold and manifest troubles we face today, but precisely because of them. I argue it … Read more
Editor’s note: The following address was delivered on April 15, 2016 before the Harvard Hillel Society and is printed with permission of the author. I am so glad to be back in cooperation with the Harvard Hillel Society. Long, long ago, in about 1961, the Hillel Society and the Harvard Catholic Club almost at the … Read more
Though a New York Appellate court recently ruled that there is no right to physician-assisted suicide under the current laws of the state, the issue remains far from settled. Not only are the plaintiffs expected to appeal the decision, but a bill recently proposed in the New York legislature also seeks to legalize the practice. … Read more
Why is the U.S. Department of Justice—which one assumes deals with evidence all the time—so adamantly opposed to evidence regarding transgendered status? In the “Dear Colleague” letter that was jointly issued by the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Justice, it is clearly stated that asking for evidence of transgendered status is … Read more
Once asked what book he’d like to be stuck with on a desert island, G.K. Chesterton reportedly responded in the way one would expect of him: Thomas’ Guide to Practical Shipbuilding. He was being facetious, and his real answer was The Pickwick Papers. The question is a fun one to consider, but frankly, I’d beg … Read more
“The Yankees,” said the Hall of Fame center fielder Tris Speaker, “will regret making Babe Ruth into an outfielder.” Speaker can be forgiven that colossally errant prediction. Nobody had actually done what Ruth was about to do, changing the game forever by changing the batter’s strategy, “uppercutting” the ball to produce a lot of strikeouts … Read more
“If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed than with two hands to go into Gehenna, into the unquenchable fire.” (Mk. 9:43) It requires no great insight in order to discern what the modern world would make of such a statement had it … Read more
The government of the United States has now officially declared war on sexuality itself and, in doing so, attacked the very idea of man made in the image of God. On Monday, May 9, the U.S. Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, and the Justice Department sued the State of North Carolina for legislating that men’s rooms … Read more
I noted last month that living well is difficult apart from a definite and well-developed tradition of life. Otherwise we simply won’t know what we’re doing, and we’ll have to make up everything as we go along without any idea of ultimate results or significance, or of what we might be missing. Such claims for the necessity … Read more
A couple of weeks ago I was staying at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C., as a guest speaker for a symposium on the role of Dominicans in the life of the intellect. The eastern province is flush with vocations, as we at Providence College know well, having in recent years sent to … Read more