Does sanctity run in families? The initial answer is ‘surely no.’ After all, each of us is called to sanctity, regardless of how good or bad our family was, and our holiness will ultimately be judged individually. And yet, the story of the house of Árpád makes one wonder if God does not especially bless … Read more
For reasons that are both unfathomable as well as perplexing, the vast majority of young Canadians are champions of Barack Obama. I was informed that when a certain teacher asked her students who preferred Obama to Romney, all hands shot up. The entire class expressed unhesitating enthusiasm for the now re-elected President. Yet, no student, … Read more
The rebellious fervor of the Sixties, with its rejection of traditional standards and authorities, seemed a sudden break from what came before. At a deeper level, however, those developments simply brought to fruition what had long been in the works. What happened at that time was a further step in a centuries-long process of social … Read more
Cardinal Kurt Koch who is the President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity recently gave an interview in which he remarked that Pope Benedict prefers to call his approach to the Second Vatican Council not a “hermeneutic of continuity” but a “hermeneutic of reform.” The expression using the word “continuity” rather than “reform” … Read more
In the July issue of the scholarly journal Social Science Research (SSR), Professor Mark Regnerus (pictured) published an article detailing initial results from his New Family Structures Study. His results suggested that adult children who had been raised, for at least a brief time, in families with a gay, lesbian, or bisexual parent were more … Read more
His contemporaries described him as “the wonder and miracle of his age.” Indeed, it seems reasonable to ask whether the age of St. Albert the Great (1195-1280) would be remembered as such an eminent period of Christian culture had not “the light of Germany” (St. Peter Canisius) illuminated the minds and hearts of so many … Read more
The janitors, doormen, and apartment superintendents in my parish and I have a particular fraternal bond, for we are situated to observe the private lives of many. They are called upon at inconvenient hours, to do tasks and handle emergencies, uncongenial to those in some other lines of work. The term “janitor” is related to … Read more
There’s been a strange turn of opinions about fatherhood—at least in recent public debates. Decades of research have now documented the tremendous challenges children face when they grow up without their fathers. But you would never know it by looking at some of the recent public arguments for “genderless parenting.” So what do the decades … Read more
The many analyses of the 2012 election results are not saying much about what may have been the central and fundamental problem: democracy. Notice that I do not say a democratic republic—that was the nature of the American political order as fashioned by our Founding Fathers—but a democracy. A generation ago, Martin Diamond, Winston Mills … Read more
The success that the gay community has achieved in shedding the “deviant” label has relied upon convincing the heterosexual world that homosexual behavior is perfectly normal. The recent uproar over a social work course titled “Deviant Behavior” at Franciscan University of Steubenville—which lists homosexuality as a form of deviant behavior—demonstrates just how vigilant the gay … Read more
At the top, at least, the Obama campaign was premised on a clear vision of citizenship. As a matter of course, the President spoke words of good will toward his fellow Americans, promising that those who heard him were joining him in a great enterprise. He gestured toward our responsibility to our neighbors and our … Read more
The birthday notification popped up on my Skype window: Jeffrey Ostrowski just turned 31. I had to look again. Only 31 years old? This is a musician who has produced probably two dozen books of music for Catholic liturgy that have provided new options to tired songs given to us by the old establishment that … Read more
A miser gains but never gives. A moneylender gives in order to receive. A friend gives generously and gladly but never charges interest. A lover gives without calculating the cost, takes a risk without any guarantees, and gives without any forethought of reward only to receive more than ever imagined. In Shakespeare’s play Shylock hoards … Read more
Television and the blogosphere were alive the day after the election with conservative pundits calling for the GOP to forget social issues, to walk away from abortion and marriage, because these issues lost Romney the election. Big time political consultant Mike Murphy said on MSNBC that the GOP does not know how to appeal beyond … Read more
The elections are over and I for one am relieved that the campaigns are in the rear-view mirror. American political discourse is a patience-testing experience, but I am grateful for and recall fondly one glimmer of love and joy from the political campaigns. Bella Santorum Daughter of Senator Rick and Karen Santorum, Bella, who has … Read more
Voting patterns of this last election give ample support to the notion of the divided country, and it is now virtually obligatory to bemoan polarization while calling for unity in our fragmented polis. As obvious as our polarization seems, perhaps disunity is not the real problem; instead, perhaps we already have a unity, just of … Read more
On November 7th—the day after President Obama’s re-election—a lot of conservative bloggers tried to make the best of a bad outcome, but hyperbole also seems a frequent sight in the headlines. “The End of America I Know.” “The Day After America.” “Is America Still Exceptional?” Many seem to feel as though the republic has fallen. … Read more
Much like our own woeful Republic, the Roman Empire in late antiquity suffered from moral exhaustion and was beginning to show signs of its eventual collapse. Amidst that decay, St. Martin of Tours (c.336-397) embodied the Christian valor necessary to sustain and rebuild authentic Christian culture. For centuries, the most important Roman moral quality was … Read more
It passed almost unnoticed, but last month Benedict XVI significantly upped the ante in an argument he’s made one of his pontificate’s centerpieces. To the horror, one suspects, of some professional interfaith dialoguers and wishful-thinkers more generally, the pope indicated the Church should recognize that some types of religion are in fact “sick and distorted.” … Read more
Like millions of conservative Americans, I spent last night with hope and fear, followed by sinking disappointment at what my fellow Americans had chosen to do with our country. That disappointment has not gone away. But it has been tempered, as all our disappointments should be tempered, by a realization of just how little we … Read more