With almost $40 billion in assets, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation possesses incredible influence, and is unafraid to use it. As one staffer put it, the foundation’s greatest strength is “setting agendas, framing debates, advocating the foundation’s point of view and taking action … an unchecked way of getting things done,” although some might … Read more
What are poems for? Is there any real point in writing them? And what about us, the folks who are expected to buy all that bilge—is it quite necessary that we actually read all that bleeping poetry? Exercising his customary acuity, C.S. Lewis tells us that poems exist to remind us that water is wet … Read more
“Now what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them.” With this dogmatic and militaristic monologue … Read more
The modern day LGBT movement wants you to believe that the people featured in the new documentary “Desire of the Everlasting Hills” really don’t exist. They are figments of the fevered imaginations of the Christian right. Meet Dan, Rilene and Paul, all refugees from deep enmeshment in the LGBT life, each finding a home in … Read more
The newly published preparatory document for the rapidly approaching synod on “Pastoral Challenges of the Family in the Context of Evangelization” observes that “knowledge of conciliar and post-conciliar documents on … the family … seems to be rather wanting.” Church teachings regarding marriage, sexuality, and family “do not seem to have taken a foothold in … Read more
One thing that you can say for ISIS, the Middle-East terrorist army, is that it doesn’t have a recruitment problem. Young men are streaming to Syria and Iraq from all over the world to join the cause. And they come not just from the Muslim world, but also from England, France, Sweden, Australia, and the … Read more
The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision that for-profit companies such as Hobby Lobby are not required to provide in their healthcare plans “preventive services” that include abortion-inducing drugs, raises doubts about the constitutionality of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate requiring that all FDA-approved forms of birth control be provided in all … Read more
“Sherlock Holmes was a drug addict without a single amiable trait,” wrote George Bernard Shaw—and he was absolutely right; but such vehement condemnation betrays the irresistability of Sherlock Holmes. In 1886, a struggling physician named Arthur Conan Doyle made a fateful decision which was intended simply to pay the bills, but which would end up enriching … Read more
A church friend of mine has a daughter going off to college in the fall. When I ran into him recently, I asked how the summertime preparations were going. I expected him to tell me they’d spent an afternoon trying to help her register for classes or a day at Target looking at tiny fridges … Read more
I begin with a piece, spotted by Fr Tim Finigan and reported in his indispensable blog The Hermeneutic of Continuity, which had been published in Sandro Magister’s blog—not his English one, Chiesa, but his Italian language blog for L’Espresso, Settimo Cielo. A few days ago, Magister told the story of a parish priest in the Italian diocese … Read more
A major Catholic university is scheduled to consider this year whether it will cut its meager two-course requirements in Philosophy and Theology to one or none. Why, you may ask, would a Catholic institution be inclined to cut the two disciplines that have traditionally been entrusted with the task of imparting the specifically Catholic elements … Read more
Author’s preface: I am a gay man who is opposed to same-sex marriage. Readers can view my speech on this topic given earlier this year at the Celebration of Marriage Rally here and read my essay “I’m Gay and I Oppose Same-Sex Marriage.” A recent article in the Daily Beast, “Pennsylvania. Oregon. Is Gay Marriage Unstoppable?” began … Read more
The LDS church recently excommunicated Kate Kelly, a feminist whose organization, Ordain Women, had been aggressively lobbying for women to be admitted to the Mormon priesthood. The aftermath has been interesting, and might offer Catholics some valuable food for thought concerning the logic of heresy and excommunication. I’m not interested in adjudicating the issues over … Read more
Many religious folk have been rejoicing at the Supreme Court’s recent 5-4 decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the case concerning the Obama Administration’s attempt to force Hobby Lobby and other religious businesses to pay for contraceptive and abortifacient drugs for their employees under Obamacare. The Court held that the Obamacare regulation forcing business owners … Read more
When asked by a puzzled journalist how she ended up running a home for impoverished cancer victims in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Rose Hawthorne Lathrop simply noted that she had taken St. Vincent de Paul’s motto as her own: “I am for God and the poor.” The writer was curious because he knew that Rose … Read more
Many Americans are just getting out of rehab for their addiction to AMC’s taut modern-western crime-drama, Breaking Bad. The expression “breaking bad” is street slang meaning to break loose from the established traces and give in to wildness and wickedness. The series told the tragic, traumatic tale of Walter White, an unassuming high-school chemistry teacher … Read more
On June 28, 1776, the first draft of our nation’s Declaration of Independence was introduced to the general session of the Second Continental Congress. The 28th was a Friday, and so the founding fathers tabled the draft until the following Monday, July 1st, when they took it up again for debate. A resolution for independence … Read more
U.S. government officials were caught off guard by the recent rapid rise of ISIS in Iraq and Syria and its plan to establish a sharia-ruled caliphate state. Either they weren’t getting enough intelligence from their agents in the field, or else they lacked the framework for processing the information. Since the American Embassy in Baghdad … Read more
On Friday, July 12, 1929, the following report appeared in The Times of London: “Our Paris Correspondent telegraphs that the death has occurred at Thuilieres, in the Vosges, of Mlle. Eve Lavalliere, formerly an actress of distinction. She had been living in retirement for the last 12 years, having suddenly come to the decision, in … Read more
Tomorrow, July 11, is the feast of St. Benedict and the anniversary of the refounding of St. Peter’s Abbey of Solesmes, France in 1833 by Ven. Dom Prosper Guéranger and five other priests. Apart from the Benedictines, you may wonder why this event has significance. Solesmes became a great center of renewal for the entire … Read more