In Victorian England, Thomas Henry Huxley was the most determined and ardent defender of Darwinism, thereby earning himself the nickname “Darwin’s bulldog.” By parity of reasoning, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League might be called “the pope’s bulldog.” Hardly an insult, let alone an injury, is aimed at the Catholic religion without Donohue’s nipping at … Read more
“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” [Hillary Clinton] said. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article that she said “found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.” If … Read more
Years ago, the word “discrimination” was primarily used to make intelligent distinctions. A discriminating person was one capable of perceiving the crucial difference between good taste and bad taste, between beauty and ugliness, between a cultivated person and a coarse one, between moral good and evil, between normal and perverse. To call a person discriminating … Read more
As readers of this column may recall, I am not a cradle Catholic. Verily, the descendant of pointed Methodists and Calvinists, there was nothing outwardly natural about my reception into the Church a few years ago. For I look out — from over boxes of family archives that I have recently inherited — at my … Read more
When Obama’s Catholic supporters attacked Catholic League president Bill Donohue for his criticism of their candidate, they did not mention Obama’s support for infanticide. The question will inevitably arise for the distinguished group of Catholics supporting Obama as to how they can defend his preference for infanticide in cases where a child survives a botched … Read more
What is done out of love is beyond good and evil. — Friedrich Nietzsche They developed an ethics of pure intention and true love; but their own affair was born from lust, and collapsed in physical and spiritual anguish. The Letters of Abelard and Heloise reveal two personalities of Shakespearean grandeur, great even when they … Read more
We Roman Catholics are in the midst of the First Communion season — dark suits fitted for seven-year-old boys, white dresses and veils for the girls, lots of flash photos, and earnest young faces in prayerful concentration for receiving Christ in the Eucharist for the first time. My memories of First Communion are quite different. … Read more
If Hillary Clinton were elected president, she’d be the second feminist to hold that office. The first was her husband Bill. (If this seems a questionable proposition, hold on. I’ll defend it later.) But “feminism” is an equivocal term, having at least four distinct but related meanings, each of them indicative of a somewhat more … Read more
A few days ago, Russell Shaw offered a thoughtful look at some of the causes, manifestations, and effects of what has been known as “clericalism“: a spiritual and ecclesiastical “caste system” in which the few elite clergy are presumed to enjoy a native superiority — in authority and due respect, in level of and … Read more
Why does the mainstream media insist on describing any Catholic — no matter his or her level of faith — as "devout"? Is it a simple confusion, or is something more troubling going on? Everybody loves a riddle. See if you can guess what ties these people together based on the MSM coverage: Brought up … Read more
The United Nations Millennium Development Goals were ushered in with global fanfare and media hoopla in 2000. It is nothing short of an ambitious renovation of the political, social, and economic structures of the world. Of course, it’s not billed as Development of a Planetary Parliament; it is presented to the world as an … Read more
Pop culture, schools, and the media all tell you that artificial birth control is a wonderful development of modernity. Explaining why they’re wrong and the official Church teaching is correct can be a painful matter. The teaching itself is a difficult one, but if you support contraception, I invite you to rethink your position. Some … Read more
It was impossible not to feel a thrill of pleasure. The newspapers were heralding Boris Johnson’s triumphant win over his socialist opponent Ken Livingstone as mayor of London — part of a nationwide sweep as Conservatives romped to power in local authorities across Britain, trouncing Labour in the local elections. Media commentators started to talk … Read more
Imagine a man who wakes up in the morning with a headache, fever, and chills. The symptoms persist and are there when he goes to bed that night. Next day, it’s the same thing again — headache, fever, chills. This continues day after day, week after week, over and over. Finally the poor man starts … Read more
Very often, if my wife is out doing errands in the middle of the day, I will make up my lunch on a tray and carry it into my study. There I can put a CD on my portable player — it is the only system I have, and it sits in a shelf … Read more
One out of every ten Americans is a lapsed Catholic, according to the Pew Forum’s recently released “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey.” Though the Pew statistics could be disputed, the survey confirmed what any observer of the Church knows: Many cradle Catholics leave the Church never to return. In response to the Pew survey, Inside Catholic … Read more
Open my calendar and you’ll see a mess of red-and-blue-inked outdoor obligations. It is baseball season. With three of our boys participating on three different teams, it looks like once again the local little league has invaded my month of May. I first recognized the insanity of little league baseball a few years ago when … Read more
It would be difficult to find a man who has had a more dramatic impact on his nation’s recent cinematic reputation than Danish writer and director Anders Thomas Jensen. From his early days writing for Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg’s Dogme 95 movement of the 1990s (founded to rectify the perceived stagnation in modern … Read more
When popular columnist Robert Novak observed some Catholic politicians receiving Communion at two stadium Masses celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI, he took a bishop and a cardinal to task over it in the pages of the Washington Post. It’s not necessarily a bad thing for laity to raise a respectful eyebrow at clerics whom they … Read more
America’s position on homosexual activity has radically changed over the past few decades. Fifty years ago, every state criminalized homosexual acts under “sodomy laws.” As recently as 1986, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of such laws. In 2003 there were still 13 states that criminalized homosexual acts (though the laws were rarely enforced). That … Read more