Much has been made of pro-abortion politicians flaunting their Catholic identity and receiving the Eucharist. The U.S. bishops, in their June statement “Catholics in Political Life” and at their November meeting in Washington, D.C., backed away from confronting wayward Catholics like Senator John Kerry and Senator Ted Kennedy who clearly ought to remain seated at … Read more
A tip to travelers: Avoid Zekistan. It has crummy tourist amenities and lethal concentrations of lead. I found this out back in June, patrolling one side of a city street in the country’s capital. I was hunting for fedayeen with Alpha Team, a stick of four light infantry troopers. Across the street, Bravo Team … Read more
Paris, Saturday, January 14, 2004. We are at Maillot Gate, a few steps away from the Champs Elysées and the business quarter of La Defense. On the left is the 34-story skyscraper of the Hotel Concorde La Fayette—a disruptive landmark amid the gorgeous town houses whose plush façades date back to the end of the … Read more
Aizawl, Mizoram State, on the India-Burma border: It was dusk as we made our way down the mountainside to the headquarters of the Chin National Front (CNF). We were a motley crew—a deputy speaker of the British House of Lords, a retired surgeon, a British doctor living in Australia, a journalist-turned-human-rights advocate, a bearded, beer-drinking … Read more
Last month, Jesuit Rev. Lawrence Biondi, president of St. Louis University, resigned from the board of directors of Tenet Healthcare Corporation. Biondi had served on the board since 1998, most recently as chairman of Tenet’s ethics committee, for which he was eligible for annual compensation of more than $100,000. Biondi, like many Catholic college presidents, … Read more
On September 29, 2003, a frustrated Rev. David Mullen sent a letter to newly installed Archbishop Sean O’Malley of Boston, pleading for help. “Talking About Touching” (TAT), a controversial safety education program designed for children in kindergarten to fourth grade, had just been accepted in the Archdiocese of Boston. He wrote: I am most … Read more
Bjørn Lomborg is an associate professor of statistics in the Department of Political Science at the University of Aarhus, Denmark. In 1998, he published four articles offering a statistician’s look at the environment in the leading Danish newspaper. His findings initiated a massive debate throughout the European environmentalist community. He later expanded his articles into … Read more
Imagine a rash of fires, lit by fire chiefs, in certain ghettos of Eastern Europe during the 1930s. A synagogue burns to the ground in Kraków, another in Prague, a Jewish community house in Danzig, the Beth-salem Orphanage in Leipzig, and yet another synagogue in Bratislava. All are destroyed. Imagine that half of the leaders … Read more
Not long after we moved onto our country property, I thought I’d amble over and see Fred Number Two. We had just bought the property from Fred Number one, and I thought it best to get to know both Freds, since they were our new neighbors and being neighborly was, of course, one of the … Read more
For over half a century, well-intentioned, well-educated people in the West were taught to dread an inevitable “population bomb,” caused by a worldwide explosion of births and a dearth of resources. Examples abound: • In 1946 Julian Huxley, first head of UNESCO, wrote, “War is a less inevitable threat to mankind than is population increase.” … Read more
“The Grail,” Langdon said, “is symbolic of the lost goddess. When Christianity came along, the old pagan religions did not die easily. Legends of chivalric quests for the Holy Grail were in fact stories of forbidden quests to find the lost sacred feminine. Knights who claimed to be “searching for the chalice” were speaking in … Read more
Lately, I have been hearing a lot about how the primitive Church was not Roman Catholic. I don’t know why it is, but this information keeps bursting upon me in the most unlikely settings—a lunch party near the sand dunes, cocktails on the upper east side—where a kindly soul informs me between sips of … Read more
Serrin Foster is bombing. All around the Temple University lecture hall, bored faces drift in and out of attention — expressionless college women staring and still, college men telegraphing their waning interest by twisting in their seats. A round woman’s tiny eyes glare coldly from beneath her eyebrow rings. I’ve been assigned to shadow Foster … Read more
“Pro-choice” Catholic politicians support abortion mostly for political reasons. The U.S. bishops say this is unacceptable. So why do they accept it? “Do you know what the Negro is?” Leander H. Perez once asked in 1965. “Animals right out [of] the jungle. Passion. Welfare. Easy life. That’s the Negro.” As a state judge and … Read more
"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 being raised in any particular religion myself, it wasn’t until later that I discovered that this view of Jesus’ death and resurrection (which I heard … Read more
When I was 13, I considered entering the Jesuits, but they told me when I inquired that they did not take candidates until they had completed high school. So I went back to a choice that was attractive to me for other reasons, the Congregation of Holy Cross at Notre Dame, Indiana, whose spirituality … Read more
His baby had seemed real to him from the moment when Rosemary spoke of abortion; but it had been a reality without visual shape-something that happened in the dark and was only important after it happened. But here was the actual process taking place. Here was the poor ugly thing, no bigger than a gooseberry, … Read more
A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, Garry Wills is a remarkably learned man. Graced with a powerful and confident mind and an elegant style, Wills is a forceful writer, with a clarity of conviction that is all too rare nowadays. Devoted to the rosary, the Mass, and the creed, he is deeply pious. But, above all, he … Read more
Shakespeare stands as a wonderful anomaly. It could be argued that no artist in the history of the Western world enjoys both the critical and popular esteem of Shakespeare. His poems and plays continue to enchant generation after generation; his rich language saturates modern speech — whether we realize it or not. What accounts for … Read more
Congress was out of session on January 22, but Representative Bart Stupak, a Michigan Democrat and coauthor of legislation to ban human cloning, had arrived at his office in the House Rayburn Building around 8 a.m. From his window, you could see morning commuters heading off to work on I-395. Stupak was here early to … Read more