One of Canada’s best-known priests, Rev. Thomas Rosica, CSB, has described the pro-life critics of the Kennedy funeral as “not agents of life, but of division, destruction, hatred, vitriol, judgment, and violence.” Father Rosica is CEO of a Catholic Canadian television network — Salt + Light, endorsed by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops. In … Read more
Having taught both ethics and aesthetics many times in the course of my career, I’ve come to the conclusion that the latter is a much more demanding task. In both cases, the enemy to be fought is the deeply rooted relativism and subjectivism prevalent in our society. But in ethics, there’s always a possibility that … Read more
The first pregnancy test I ever took was three weeks after my wedding day. It was positive. I started vomiting pretty much right then and there. In the following weeks, as I struggled to adjust to my newly married state while waiting tables at a seafood restaurant and battling morning sickness, I lost some … Read more
Knowing that I had spent the summer in England, a fellow law professor recently asked me whether “the Republicans” had hired me to advertise against the president’s health-care plan. My response was, “No, but they could have.” I would have done it for free. Watching the health-care debate from the other side of the Atlantic … Read more
You are in a large church basement on the upper east side of Manhattan. Like all church basements, it freelances as a basketball court, a dining hall, a wailing room for various twelve-step programs. This morning, it’s marriage preparation. Seventy-five couples who plan to marry in the Catholic Church are here for a day of … Read more
With his popularity ratings plummeting and public resistance to his health-care reform proposals increasing, President Barack Obama spoke to Congress and a national television audience for 48 minutes last night. Though touted as his “health-care speech,” the more important subtext was the future of Obama’s presidency itself. He has let it be known that his … Read more
Recently my family and I watched The Sound of Music for perhaps the twelfth time — probably the last great musical that Hollywood ever produced. It made me wonder if I could list the reasons why such a movie could not now be made. These reasons I offer below; but it seems to me that … Read more
This week I’d like to thank my dogged readers for reading about my dogs, and all the other rococo digressions I squirted onto the page in the course of considering the Seven Deadly Sins and Opposing Virtues, because this week we’re done. Fittingly, since I began the series with Sloth, I put off Diligence to … Read more
In the late 1970s, a group of Episcopal clergymen with typical American chutzpah wrote to Pope Paul VI. They said they wanted to become Catholics, and wished for their priestly ministry to be fulfilled by being ordained as Catholic priests. The only problem was that they had wives and children. Paul VI received their … Read more
Roughly a century ago, a modernist scholar complained that Jesus came to proclaim the kingdom of God, but instead all we got was a lousy Church. He’s probably not the only person to have felt a bit disappointed, nor the only one to form the conviction that the Church is a tragic letdown, a mistake, … Read more
In his Ethics, Aristotle tells us that not every action is a mean between two extremes — too much and too little. Some names indicate what is always base. He gives examples: “spite, shamelessness, envy, among feelings; adultery, theft, murder, among actions.” Such actions are unworthy. “Hence in doing these things we can never be … Read more
“To call a spade a spade,” a phrase whose origin can be traced back to Plutarch, is defined by Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable as to be “outspoken, blunt, even to the point of rudeness.” The question of when Catholics should be outspoken, in this sense, has arisen over the heated reactions to … Read more
On July 29, 1997, a representative philosophe of our abortion culture, retired Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, was lavishly eulogized in St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington, D.C., where the Requiem Mass for President Kennedy had been sung in 1963. Richard Cardinal Cushing was relatively constrained back then, because liturgical depredations had not yet switched into … Read more
I married into a guy’s-guy family. War stories, fart jokes, sex tales, and harrowing narratives involving body parts, souped-up vehicles, and confrontations with law enforcement dominated the decidedly not-polite dinner conversation. This was all new and often entertaining to me, coming from a household of enforced manners, feigned politeness, imposed goodwill, and repressed aggressions. Both … Read more
Those of us who have argued for alternatives to individualistic capitalism and the bureaucratic welfare state are often told that we are good at pointing out problems but come up short on solutions — it’s a charge distributists hear often. Nevertheless, Pope Benedict XVI’s latest encyclical, Caritas in Veritate,challenges us to overcome the “market-plus-State” model, … Read more
As the White House backs away from the so-called public option in health-care reform, Catholic experts are hopeful that the proposed government control of the nation’s medical care will be put aside. They argue that rejecting the public option will better serve a culture of life, maintain the present high quality of health care, serve … Read more
Like most of you, I was edified by the pagan, Viking funeral that marked the passing of that champion of life, Sen. Edward Kennedy. I thought it particularly fitting the way they floated his human remains down the Charles River out to the bay in a burning boat made of the car he’d driven at … Read more
I am reading St. Augustine’s Confessions these days, for the second or third time. The whole thing is a great antidote for all that is confused and squalid about our own epoch, but more particularly for the sloth and folly that marks one’s own inner being. The book itself is an astonishing thing. You … Read more
In this Crisis Magazine classic, philosopher Peter Kreeft says that if you know what an apple is, you know enough to recognize the truth of the pro-life argument. I doubt there are many readers here who are pro-choice. Why, then, do I write an argument against abortion? Why preach to the choir? Preaching … Read more
The refugees returning to the Promised Land after 70 years of captivity in Babylon had a problem. He was a killjoy named Haggai, and he was chewing them out for rebuilding their houses. Well . . . that’s not exactly the case. His complaint wasn’t so much that they were building their houses as … Read more
