Francis Xavier’s feast day is December 3. For those of us who love our afternoon tea, it is a feast we should well note. For the world’s most civilized habit owes a huge debt of gratitude to Xavier and his Jesuit missionaries who traveled to Japan in 1549. Now, to properly appreciate this story, you … Read more
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Ministry of Love promoted nothing but hatred and the Ministry of Truth spread nothing but lies. Although totalitarianism of the kind described and analyzed by Orwell has all but disappeared from the face of the earth, give or take a country or two, totalitarianism of another, softer kind is marching its … Read more
I cannot escape a constant sense, like a dull pain in the lower back, of the debilitating poverty of our present age. A slog through O’Hare Airport, for example, where I find Our Lord’s command to love my fellow man especially difficult to follow, exacerbates the ache some. Reading the story of Hernán Cortés, however, … Read more
Behind these two words “judge not” (Matthew 7:1) stand the champions of moral relativism. Before the wall the relativists erect with these two words, Christians drop their weapons, seemingly defeated by a rampart they thought was meant for their own defense. The Gospels are the ultimate love story and from their midst not only do … Read more
Los Angeles today might not be the first place that comes to mind when seeking out hymns to the Blessed Virgin Mary. However, a recent concert on Sunday, November 18, at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, featuring Monteverdi’s Vespers (Vespro della Beata Vergine) of 1610, was not the first time that this city has lived … Read more
The offertory antiphon for the Sunday before the last Sunday of the liturgical year is the famous text “De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine; Domine, exaudi vocem meam.” From the depths, I have cried out to you, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice. It’s not a text heard in parish praxis much anymore. It doesn’t … Read more
In Why Tolerate Religion? Brian Leiter, author of the Leiter Reports blog and a law professor at the University of Chicago who has an interest in philosophy, asks why Western democracies have sought to promote and protect religion—and religious liberty—in both law and culture. He explores this question because he’s puzzled by it. As he … Read more
Imagine someone appealing to Lord Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts, to justify the activities of gangs in Los Angeles. Why not? Lord Baden-Powell wanted boys to do risky things, and what’s more dangerous than running guns or smuggling cocaine or fighting another gang in a shooting spree? He enjoined upon the Scouts a stern … Read more
Blogging is not typically a sphere of life that I prefer to tread into. More often than not, it seems that blogs have become merely an outlet for those who neither want nor seek genuine and fruitful intellectual discussion. This is, of course, not a denial that no good blogs exist, nor that good ones … Read more
George Bernard Shaw wrote that “Sherlock Holmes was a drug addict without a single amiable trait,” 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 … Read more
One of the most malignant features of modernity since the French Revolution has been the attempt by the State—left or right, fascist, nationalist, socialist, or communist—to take over control of children’s education from parents and local agencies—such as churches and municipalities—and direct that education in the interest of grandiose, intellectually neat, or more efficient plans … Read more
Those who do pro-life work every day watched slack-jawed as a true-blue pro-lifer got garroted by the Republican and conservative establishment. Even today, weeks after the national electoral debacle, they’re beating up Todd Akin for Republican losses. Hardly a post-election think piece gets published that does not further tan Akin’s hide. But, does anyone think … Read more
Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me to recommend to the people of the United States … Read more
Among the most beautiful and fascinating of Rome’s churches is the twelfth-century Basilica of San Clemente, dedicated to Pope St. Clement, who, according to early lists and reckonings of Rome’s first bishops, stands either first or third in the line of St. Peter’s successors. The apse mosaic, which sits above the high altar of San … Read more
The barely restrained euphoria that erupted after gay marriage marked its first wins at the ballot box in this month’s election overstates the significance of those victories for the future of marriage in the United States, leading social conservatives are saying. Voters in four states approved same-sex marriage questions on the ballot: Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, … Read more
Two recent incidents have received a great deal of media attention in Canada, raising the question, once again, as to whether secular feminism takes precedence over every other religion. Ontario’s Minister of Education, Laurel Broten, has declared that Catholic teaching is “misogynistic” inasmuch as it opposes woman’s choice for abortion. According to Ms. Broten, “taking … Read more
Of the 427 weddings in my present parish during the past eleven years (I have lost count of all the others), the band—for want of a better word—at the most recent reception was the loudest I can remember. Conversation was impossible, so some of a certain age complained loudly but not loudly enough and others … Read more
A visitor this past week came from Italy. Don Angelo Romano, the priest who is responsible for the church of St. Bartholomew on the Tiber Island, was passing through Chicago after giving a talk at a conference at the University of Notre Dame. The conference was entitled “Seed of the Church: telling the story of … Read more
It’s been more than ten years since I first noticed something odd about the generally pleasant—and generally Catholic—students at the college where I teach. The boys and girls don’t hold hands. Let that serve as shorthand for the absence of all those rites of attraction and conversation, flirting and courting, that used to be passed … Read more
I am very sorry that Professor Eamon Duffy should have seen fit so immoderately to spring to the defense of Professor Tina Beattie, an invitation to whom to take up a fellowship has been withdrawn by the (Catholic) University of San Diego, following that institution’s discovery of her public support for gay unions. “It is … Read more