Our quadrennial spectacle of electing a president brings out the relationship between political order and the nation’s cultural and social order. Take the question of “rights,” which is a concept at the heart of the American experiment. Based on the nation’s revolt from England, and deeply grounded in the mother country’s common law tradition, rights … Read more
Public witness on issues of public concern is natural for Catholics because we have a commitment to the common good and to the dignity of each human person. Those two pillars—the common good and the dignity of every human person—come right out of Scripture. They underpin all of Catholic social thought. That includes politics. Politics … Read more
We interrupt the presidential campaign to raise this pressing question. Back in 1969, Bill Buckley sent my parents a hilarious book—not his, but his sister’s. Aloïse Buckley Heath was mother of ten rambunctious and inquisitive children, one of whom asked her, some 48 Octobers ago, if Tommy Major’s mother, who lived next door, would go … Read more
Pursuing the Catholic vote, both campaigns are focusing on the number one issue for many Americans: Fixing the weakened economy and helping those Americans suffering from the downturn. When Mitt Romney announced the Catholics for Romney coalition last month, Catholic observers were delighted to see that none other than the Vice-Presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan … Read more
In the current presidential campaign, I have heard some serious Catholics express reservations about voting for Mitt Romney because of the abortion issue. True, they are aware of how rabidly pro-abortion Barack Obama is. They may even consider him—correctly—the most pro-abortion president the U.S. has ever had. He has a consistent track record of embracing … Read more
In this column, it has been my special brief to pursue and attempt to resuscitate the reputation of great 20th century and contemporary classical music that I think has been neglected. There is a lot of it, which is why I published a book 10 years ago, titled Surprised by Beauty: A Listener’s Guide to … Read more
In Kenneth D. Whitehead’s short essay in this magazine, the recent liberal Catholic manifesto, All on Our Shoulders, is helpfully but incompletely criticized. At the core of his argument rests the claim that the document constructs a straw man out of Paul Ryan’s 2005 address to the Atlas Society, in which Ryan praised the free … Read more
I’ve long written in favor of reestablishing Gregorian chant as the primary musical language of liturgy for Roman Rite Catholics around the world. We’ve taken great steps in this direction with the new Missal in English, which embeds the chant tradition in the heart of the book. And for the first time, we are seeing … Read more
In this season of elections and of holy souls, it is fitting to recall one of the loveliest monuments to true democracy: the windows of the trades at Chartres Cathedral. The stained-glass windows at Chartres are famous the world over, and rightly so. Thanks to the foresight of the town’s mayors and the determination of … Read more
American Catholics seem to be sleepwalking toward the edge of an abyss. It’s as if we’ve hardly begun to realize to ourselves what’s at stake in this election. We don’t like to think about it. We’re vaguely banking on the hope that whatever happens will not turn out to be a big deal. One reason … Read more
One exchange in the second Presidential debate caught my imagination. It was the one in which Mr Romney asked Mr Obama whether he ever thought about his pension, and Mr Obama replied that he did not, but that he was sure that it was smaller than Mr Romney’s. Of course, Mr Romney’s question was itself … Read more
The Church, it is sometimes said, thinks in terms of centuries, not years or decades … or election cycles. Without intending to minimize the importance of this upcoming election and its implications for economic and foreign policy matters, it’s worth reminding ourselves that a long game is being played as well, a game with civilizational … Read more
G. K. Chesterton once described America as a “nation with the soul of a church.” Many have wrongly interpreted this statement as Chesterton’s way of saying that America was a Christian nation, or that Americans were especially pious and devout people. Chesterton meant something rather different, and not especially complementary. America is like a church … Read more
By now everyone paying attention to the presidential race has heard of the tasteless double-entendre ad the Obama campaign has put out, comparing voting for the President to losing your virginity. I am trying—I am failing—to imagine the astonishment if someone had suggested the like to the leaders of the Democratic party of my youth … Read more
Writing about the Republican National Convention in August, New York Times columnist David Brooks fretted that the Republican Party has been captured by a “hyperindividualistic mentality,” and he commended Condoleezza Rice’s celebration of “larger national goals—the long national struggle to extend benefits and to mobilize all human potential.” Last month Brooks reinforced this claim by … Read more
Human problems lend themselves to many solutions, some of them with an oppressive heavy-hand and others with a gentle touch. Gravity easily oppresses and complicates problems whereas lightheartedness simplifies the complex and applies a magical gentleness that Shakespeare compares to the play of the fairies at night that perform their favors in the silence of … Read more
Not long ago in Iowa Governor Romney caused a slight kerfuffle when he said he did not have any specific legislative proposals for the right to life. Almost immediately he added that he would, however, reinstitute Mexico City Policy. Ho-hum. Mexico City Policy is often touted by candidates and by office holders as pro-life bona … Read more
An organization called Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good came out on October 9 with what it announced was a “Catholic Call to Protect the Endangered Common Good.” It is entitled “On All of Our Shoulders,” and it has no less than 157 signatories describing themselves as “Catholic theologians, academics, and ministers concerned for … Read more
I want to be clear, at the outset, that this is not yet another blog about Catholic teaching on the morality of homosexuality, nor is it (except indirectly) one more defense of the traditional family. It’s partly (but again indirectly) about the social effects of treating homosexual unions as though they were equivalent to marriage … Read more
During a campaign event in 2011, a feminist stopped Barack Obama in mid-speech to ask him if he supported free contraceptives. Obama replied: “Darn tootin’!” According to Obama’s secularist philosophy, this invented right to free contraceptives trumps the First Amendment’s right to religious freedom. If religious employers object to financing the sex lives of their … Read more