What do Dr. Victor Frankenstein and the architects of the euro currency have in common? Answer: They both created monsters. The euro is not “money” any more than the monster created by Dr. Frankenstein was a man. Whatever resemblances there may be to the genuine article are merely superficial. Nor is government needed to create … Read more
When I was a child, I thought that living through a degenerate period would be great fun – one big party. Guns blazing, fast cars, beautiful girls, plenty of adult beverages – at least that was my idea of it from having watched movies about the Roaring Twenties with James Cagney. Now, as an aging … Read more
No one would guess it from even a passing acquaintance with popular television shows, but there is increasing concern among parent and professional groups about the sexualization of girls. Responding to this concern the American Psychological Association appointed a taskforce to study the problem in 2006. The resulting report shines a light on a real … Read more
It won’t make the news to report that teens occasionally, or even habitually, indulge in activities of which their parents disapprove. Nor should it come as a surprise that the young folk attempt to hide this behavior; thus it has ever been as long as there have been parents, teens and the rules that sometimes … Read more
Tilman Riemenschneider may not have had the full complement of five talents, but however many he was given, none did he bury. Father, master sculptor, entrepreneur, civic leader: his was the busy life of the successful late-medieval artisan. Yet for all of his immersion in the affairs of this world, his sculpture remains as a … Read more
The Fortnight for Freedom, which ends today, July 4, will hopefully be a great boon to Catholics across the country. Despite the Supreme Court’s recent decision to uphold Obamacare as a tax, hopefully the Fortnight, organized by the United States Bishops, has brought unity and resolve to American Catholics. But I fear that in the … Read more
In the first part of this essay, I suggested that an educational system dominated by the philosophical baggage of logical positivism and reductivist materialism, animated by fear of “falling behind” others in math, science, and technology, and focused primarily on training students for a job, had left America’s children bereft of the knowledge and skills … Read more
Independence Day concludes the Fortnight for Freedom mandated by the U.S. bishops, a two-week period of reflection and prayer on the defense of religious liberty that began on the vigil of the liturgical memorial of St. Thomas More. In July 2012, we may be grateful that none of us faces the headsman’s axe, as More … Read more
“We need …to speak frankly with each other when our freedoms are threatened. Now is such a time. As Catholic bishops and American citizens, we address an urgent summons to our fellow Catholics and fellow Americans to be on guard, for religious liberty is under attack, both at home and abroad.”[1] One is compelled to … Read more
“Personally, I’d prefer a kinder, gentler set of relationships: more like the give-and-take of an elegant dance than the rough-and-tumble of the full-contact sport that is the modern hook-up culture. For that to happen, however, parents would have to remember that teaching their children how to dance, how to date, and how to court and … Read more
This article orignally appeared at Library of Law and Liberty I had been writing a post speculating on why John Roberts might have joined the progressives to uphold Obamacare in the Sebelius case when I came upon the story by Jan Crawford reporting that Roberts had changed his vote in the case. That Roberts changed … Read more
In this third and final part of my series I will: (1) comment on the relation between the Supreme Court ruling and the HHS Mandate; (2) outline a set of reasons given by Cardinal Dolan for which the Bishops are reticent to speak on contraception, and offer a comment to each; and (3) offer some … Read more
The Kennedys, Nancy Pelosi, Vice President Joe Biden. These are the names that Americans think of when they are asked to name the top Catholic political figures. Former Senator Rick Santorum, a Catholic, of course made a recent resurgence in the political world after the Republican primaries, but there are few new Catholic stars in … Read more
Do you assume America is a free country? Do you assume religious freedom is guaranteed in America? Most of us learned that in school and have taken it for granted ever since. In other countries people might have to worry about whether and how they can practice their religion. Not here. This is America, after … Read more
“After all, what would life be like without fighting, I should like to know? From the cradle to the grave, fighting, rightly understood, is the business, the real, highest, honestest business of every son of man. Every one who is worth his salt has his enemies, who must be beaten, be they evil thoughts and … Read more
“We’ve grown hoarse saying this is not about contraception, this is about religious freedom,” Timothy Cardinal Dolan has repeatedly insisted, regarding the lawsuits opposing the HHS Obamacare Mandate. I beg to differ. On both prudential and metaphysical grounds, it is about contraception. On the practical level, in politics, as Grover Norquist reminds us, you don’t … Read more
Last week I received a mailing from Caritas of Birmingham, in Sterret, Alabama. It was an invitation to come to the four-storey Tabernacle of our Lady’s Messages at Caritas, where a visionary, Marija Pavlovic Lunetti, is slated to receive five messages and apparitions during the 2012 gathering from July 1 to July 5. Caritas is … Read more
Set twenty-seven years before the events of Ridley Scott’s 1979 iconic sci-fi thriller, Alien, Prometheus sees a team of scientists, employed by the sinister Weyland-Yutani Corporation; accept an ancient invitation from a mysterious star map which appears to promise the answers to some of mankind’s most profound questions. In search of the origins of man, … Read more
The Global Picture As we all know, there are forces at the highest level of global politics and industry working towards the goal of spreading “reproductive rights.” Back in 1995 in The Gospel of Life (pars. 16 – 17), Pope John Paul II described the situation like this: The Pharaoh of old, haunted by the … Read more
Envy is one of the most potent causes of unhappiness. It is certainly the most joyless of the Seven Deadly Sins. It was envy of God that caused the fall of the angels and the devils come into existence. It was envy that brought on the fall of our first parents. The devil envied their happiness, … Read more