With the New Year and the Year of Mercy begun, last year’s Synod of the Family seems like old news. In a way, it’s business as usual for the Church. No new teaching was proclaimed (as if a Synod even had the authority to do that!), no radical changes to Church discipline were announced concerning … Read more
In proof of Chesterton’s dictum that if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly, I pound away at the piano playing the easier Chopin Nocturnes and I grind on my violin with a confidence only an amateur can flaunt. So I am not innocent of music. I appreciate the emotive post-war French … Read more
More than one commentator has noted that the majority decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, requiring states to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, actually was decades in the making. No-fault divorce and our culture of sexual promiscuity, separating sex and even pregnancy from childbirth, inevitably dissolved the social consensus recognizing the natural family, including its children, … Read more
If you haven’t yet read The Divine Comedy, the Year of Mercy is the time to do it. Named by Pope Francis as one of his favorite books, this narrative poem by the fourteenth-century Italian poet Dante Alighieri is widely considered to be the most preeminent work of Italian literature, as well as one of the greatest poems ever written. … Read more
Ever since Michael Brown was felled by a white police officer, activists and the media have made the deaths of African Americans at the hands of law enforcement the cause célèbre. Yet, in the year following the Brown shooting, 29 unarmed black men were killed by police versus 2205 blacks killed by other blacks (76 … Read more
When I opened the newspaper a couple of days after Christmas, I was surprised by a familiar face in the obituaries section: psychiatrist Robert Spitzer. The name brought back a flood of bittersweet personal memories. I had learned something about human nature from Bob Spitzer, and also about politics as they play out behind the … Read more
When my mother-in-law died, following a long and unhappy illness, her passing was seen by all as a blessed and merciful release. Free at last—that was the universal refrain among family and friends. It was not just the burden of old age, whose cumulative debilities wore her down, but the ravages of Alzheimer’s, which left … Read more
As the novel shows, the corruption of sense in the form of prudent self-interest leads to marriages based solely on money, and the corruption of sensibility in the form of license leads to elopement, seduction, and children out of wedlock. Both attitudes destroy the ideal of marriage that forms the basis of civilization in Austen’s … Read more
“Do you take milk or cream in your coffee, Anna? I’m so forgetful these days.” “Neither, dear. Don’t fret about it.” Anna gave a little sigh and passed the cup to her friend Liz. Then they sat quietly for a moment at the table, Anna stirring the sugar in her cup and clinking the spoon … Read more
We cannot grasp music intellectually, but we can let ourselves be touched by it. ~ David Steindl-Rast, OSB And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart (Lk 2.19). HELP WANTED: Cello player. Viola would suffice, but I’d prefer a cello—doesn’t it have a more mellow, deeper tone? Plus, I like how the cello … Read more
Now more than ever, there are calls for a more pastoral Church. That’s a good thing. It’s the clergy’s job to be our pastors, and who could object to priests, bishops, and popes doing their job? “Pastor“ means shepherd, so we find what pastors should do by looking at what shepherds do, especially in the … Read more
In a recent article on the Obama Administration’s incremental assault on parental moral authority, Caleb Henry observes that the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision portends the government’s imposition of a progressive “moral reeducation program” against private schools and families. Pointing to increasingly explicit public school interjection into morality traditionally entrusted to the family and church, Henry asks, … Read more
The U.S. bishops recently issued an updated version of their 2007 document on the political obligations of Catholics, Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship (FCFC). While an in-depth analysis of it cannot be undertaken in a short column, I offer some thoughts and an assessment of its main points and try to put it into the … Read more
Renaissance political thinker Niccolo Machiavelli castigated Christianity for making its adherents weak. Looking to the next world, he charged, Christians forget their public duties in this world, leaving their communities weak in the face of their enemies. Early Christian martyrs were hardly cowards. There were martyrs in Machiavelli’s day as well, and as I write … Read more
Being a New Yorker, I only go to the top of the Empire State Building about once every thirty-five years, and I have been to the Statue of Liberty just twice. Merely once in my life have I welcomed the new year in Times Square, and I had the impression that I was the only … Read more
If you’re expecting American Muslim leaders to join in efforts to reverse the legalization of same-sex “marriage,” don’t hold your breath. Undoubtedly, we will hear some obligatory statements of disappointment and disapproval, but it’s unlikely to go beyond that. It’s no secret that Islam is no friend to the gay lifestyle. The issue of gay … Read more
The Sexual Revolution was supposed to liberate us from sexual stereotypes. In fact, we have replaced the old stereotypes of gay men with new and even more rigid stereotypes. Perhaps some people regard the new view of gay as more positive and affirming than the old view. But the New Gay Man is no less … Read more
This month marks the 450th anniversary of the accession to the throne of Peter of Michael Ghislieri, the great Dominican of peasant birth known forevermore as Pope St. Pius V. Cardinal Borromeo brought Ghislieri the news of his election on January 7, 1566; he was crowned Pius V ten days later on his sixty-second birthday. Few … Read more
Today I picked up my Mossberg 500 Tactical 12-gauge shotgun with a pistol grip and a short barrel. It is not for game. I hate hunting. There is much blather about guns these days, and not just from the left. Last year one of the deep thinkers at Patheos grunted this very fine argument about … Read more
We are beginning the Year of the Lord 2016. The marking of the dawn of a new year is no secular holiday, because time and history have been drawn into the coming of God into the world. We keep track of our time as either BC (Before Christ) or AD (Anno Domini) to demonstrate that … Read more