In my last column, I noted that the California Supreme Court was about to decide on the constitutionality of gay marriage in that state. The verdict is in, and a law defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman has been overturned. By a 4-3 decision, the court declared the state’s Defense … Read more
The Catholic Left is hanging itself right before our eyes. Having never come to grips with the Church’s teachings on sexuality, they are now tightening the noose on themselves in public. It is not a pretty sight. This month alone they have embroiled themselves in a debate with three separate archbishops, with no end in … Read more
A learned friend of mine recently wrote an op-ed piece for a newspaper in which she argued that the drive for same-sex marriage is not simply about same-sex marriage; it is also about winning moral approval for homosexuality. If society, acting through the state, tells us that homosexuals can marry one another, then it is … Read more
We all have strange and contradictory wishes concerning what prices should be. We are outraged at what is happening to the price of gas and food. We don’t think they should go up. In real terms, we want them to fall, and they have fallen in the last decade and a half. That’s a good … Read more
A colleague of mine was once in over his head with investors to whom he owed millions of dollars. On one particular day, they paid him a polite visit at his home, asking about the status of the investment and hoping for some indication of how soon they would receive their promised return. My colleague … Read more
The California Supreme Court has followed Massachusetts in finding that the “right to marry” includes the right to call a same-sex relationship a marriage. In doing so, they have done violence to the concept of marriage. They have ignored the difference between “may” and “can.” It is not that two persons of the same sex … Read more
Item: The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality. For the utterly confused atheist in your life, here’s another testament to the fact that atheism can’t stand to be in the same room with itself for too long. Here, the author tries to crib a little bit of consolation from the theistic tradition while hoping nobody … Read more
His Quaker parents had gone to Baoding, then Paotingfu, some 80 miles from Beijing, to teach English for the Chinese government, following the Boxer Rebellion. Richmond Lattimore was born there in 1906 and was taught by his parents. A sister, Eleanor, later wrote children’s novels about China, and brother Owen became one of the century’s … Read more
When Bill Donohue accused Rev. John Hagee of anti-Catholicism, the liberal media accepted his opinion as authoritative. After Donohue accepted Hagee’s letter of regret and announced “case closed,” the same media accused Donohue of lying to help John McCain’s candidacy. Donohue’s veracity is unquestioned if it allows the media to bash a Christian leader aligned … Read more
InsideCatholic.com talked to Dale O’Leary, author of One Man, One Woman: A Catholic’s Guide to Defending Marriage, about the controversial new California court decision paving the way for same sex marriage. ♦ ♦ ♦ InsideCatholic: With the California Supreme Court overturning a voter initiated ban on same-sex marriage, are advocates for traditional marriage losing the … Read more
I once met a mother of triplets in the parking lot outside of Wal-Mart. Her three babies had bright, blinking eyes, honeyed hair, and rosebud lips. They reached toward their mother with chubby arms, dimpled at the elbows, and made the most delicious slurping sounds as she scooped them from their car seats and plunked … Read more
There are a few times in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian when the Pevensie children have trouble getting their heads around the changed landscape of Narnia. Having spent a year back in England as adolescents, they return to Narnia to find that 1,300 years of history have passed, and their skills are needed … Read more
These past two years, Catholics in England haven’t celebrated Ascension Day. This has meant the breaking of a tradition stretching back more than a thousand years. Even during penal times, when the Faith was persecuted, this 40th day after Easter was marked as a holy day, and all who could manage it went to Mass, … Read more
If I had a time machine that could set me down in any place and time, I’d choose the Eagle and Child pub in Oxford on a Tuesday night in 1950, when C. S. Lewis was reading selections from his Chronicles of Narnia. He’d be there before a roaring fire with J. R. R. Tolkien … Read more
Evangelicals, like all orthodox Christians, vigorously affirm the Doctrine of the Incarnation — the faith of all Christians that God the Son, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary and became man. Evangelicals, like Catholics, believe this doctrine with every fiber of … Read more
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
