Was it Oscar Wilde who remarked that life imitates art? Whoever said it, the University of Notre Dame campus is living proof that it’s so. Just look at those trees. Last time I visited Notre Dame it was June. The weather was splendid, with that crystalline splendor that only June — no longer tremulous spring, … Read more
The Holy Father, his entourage, and the international media are preparing to visit the Holy Land May 8-15. Pope Benedict XVI will undoubtedly encourage further peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians. But the prospect of a two-state solution to the ongoing conflict has become more remote, as the situation on the ground is constantly changing. … Read more
As my dogged readers know, this year I’ve been fitfully trying to work on a book about the vices and virtues. It has morphed a few times, as projects will, but took its final form as The Bad Catholic’s Guide to the Seven Deadly Sins. I meet with my publishers today to design a cover–which … Read more
Nietzsche’s aphorism, “The Last Christian died on the Cross,” has several interpretations. It is a cry of disappointment: The Christians who followed Christ did not live up to His example. Nietzsche was broken-hearted, even scandalized, by the failure of Christians to live as they ought. He wanted to be like the One who died on … Read more
 As we noted last week, the Catholic tradition of catechesis has tended to break up Exodus 20:17 into two commandments. The ninth commandment bids us not to covet our neighbor’s spouse; the focus of the tenth commandment is on coveting his stuff:  You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet … Read more
Pro-life Catholics fall into two camps on the issue of abortion: those who see it first and foremost as an individual moral failing, and those who consider it primarily a social moral failing. Â There is nothing mutually exclusive about the two positions, of course, but that isn’t the problem. The real issue here is … Read more
“The Holy Father should not be coming to the Holy Land without visiting Gaza.” The bitterness in his voice was obvious as the professor at Bethlehem University talked to me about Pope Benedict XVI’s visit next month. I found that his attitude is the rule, rather than the exception, among Palestinian Christians in the Holy … Read more
In this Crisis Magazine classic, Mark Shea lays out the case for the bodily resurrection of Jesus. You may be surprised how strong it is. “Jesus came to give us moral guidance, and to prove he meant business, he let himself be killed and seen after death, so we would listen and be good.” Not … Read more
Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor Brad Gooch; Little, Brown & Company; 464 pages; $30 Perhaps the most fascinating thing about Flannery O’Connor is that she is fascinating at all. Compared to other 20th-century literary figures, she lived a dull life. She never lost her mind. She didn’t sleep around. She didn’t have a drinking … Read more
People who study economics are often told that modern capitalism is an outgrowth of a certain English Protestant or agnostic tradition represented by writers such as John Locke, David Hume, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill. The notion of a link between capitalism and Protestantism owes a lot to Max Weber’s famous thesis The Protestant … Read more
Palestinian Christians are wondering aloud whether the upcoming visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the Holy Land will bring greater media attention to their dwindling numbers. They fear that, at the top, the pope’s agenda will be dominated by his continuing effort to smooth the ruffled feathers of Muslims (after his2006 Regensburg speech) … Read more
As Catholics and Americans, it’s clear from recent events that we have just embarked upon a long and dangerous Lent. It’s a secular Lent, with no resurrection promised, with tempting spirits aplenty, and no guarantee we will refuse their bread transformed from stones, their angels to cushion our fall, their kingdoms on offer for kneeling … Read more
“Set amid the foothills of historic Bull Run Mountain in Haymarket, Virginia, Bull Run Golf Club is surpassed only by the beauty that surrounds the course.” GolfGuideInc.com   Enjoy a day of golf at the award-winning Bull Run Golf Club… and help support InsideCatholic.com at the same time!   On Monday, June 1, … Read more
My wife and I have become eager viewers of old movies. In particular we have grown to love the films directed by John Ford, not only those recognized as masterpieces, such as Stagecoach, Rio Grande, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance — we have enjoyed all the rest, too. We loved Drums … Read more
As we come to the Ninth Commandment, we again arrive in disputed territory. As you will recall, the Ten Commandments can be and have been split up differently so as to yield ten and not eleven commandments. Some Protestants break apart the First Commandment (yielding what I call the 1.5 Commandment against graven images). The … Read more
The Grayson-Himes Pay for Performance Act of 2009 is ostensibly designed to prevent corporations that receive bailout money from wasting it on undeserved bonuses and executive pay. Already passed (along party lines) by the House Financial Services Committee, this law would make it illegal to award executives with “unreasonable or excessive” compensation, and it specifies … Read more
Over dinner at the Ambassador Hotel in East Jerusalem, I talked with Danny Seidemann, a Jewish man from upstate New York who moved to Israel as a youth more than 30 years ago. Danny is recognized worldwide as an expert on the religious and cultural differences that divide, and potentially unite, Jerusalem. “The Christian community … Read more
Communism was never popular in America, and no American group was more fervently anti-Communist than the Catholics. The American bishops, like the Vatican, had condemned Marxism before 1900 for its atheism, its violation of natural law principles, and its theory of inevitable class conflict. They condemned the Russian Revolution of 1917 that brought Lenin and … Read more
White Guard Mikhail Bulgakov, Yale University Press, 310 pages, $18 “Great was the year and terrible the Year of Our Lord 1918, the second since the Revolution had begun.” So opens White Guard, the new and utterly admirable translation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s first novel, written some 83 years ago when the author was just 22. … Read more
Four years ago, I was in the hospital, laboring to deliver our seventh child. My husband paced the floors, and a television tuned to Fox News blared from a corner of the room. Â Terri Schiavo was dying. And the world was watching. Â I watched, too. Between contractions, waves of nausea, and breathing exercises, … Read more
