Listening to the radio the other day, I heard a professor from one of America’s more distinguished institutions of higher learning explain what is motivating the “angry mobs” who have been raucously denouncing President Obama’s health-care plans: racism. When asked for evidence, the professor offered this: Some of the angry people made it plain that … Read more
I have long chronicled the decline of moral values in America, but I must admit that even I was shocked to read recently that the Centers for Disease Control has estimated that nearly 40 percent of American births in 2007 occurred out of wedlock. Perhaps it’s unsurprising when teenagers or members of lower socioeconomic classes … Read more
This past Sunday, as I attempted to get my wriggling, squeaking, squirming children settled in our pew for what usually amounts to a liturgical rodeo — see if you can keep them on their best behavior for eight seconds without getting thrown out of the church — I noticed the arrival of two women in … Read more
In a previous article, I suggested that the Church in Canada has capitulated to the fads and heresies of the day without a good fight. Let me fill in the details. Â In the province where we spend the summer, the Church long ago abandoned all of its grade schools, high schools, and hospitals. Read … Read more
In the late afternoon of July 10, President Obama met privately with Pope Benedict XVI for just over 30 minutes. According to official Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi, S.J., “The president explicitly expressed his commitment to reducing the numbers of abortions and to listen to the church’s concern on moral issues.” On July 13 in … Read more
What happens when you concede, without a fight, to the spirit of the age? As riven with strife as the Catholic Church in America has been, I think it is instructive to take a look at a place where there is no strife, because there was no battle. I’m speaking of our good neighbor to … Read more
As I’m writing this column at the tail end of my first trip to Vienna, some of you who’ve read me before might expect a bittersweet love note to the Habsburgs — a tear-stained column that splutters about Blessed Karl and “good Kaiser Franz Josef,” calls this a “pilgrimage” like my 2008 trip to the … Read more
Don’t tell me about the world. Not today. It’s springtime and they’re knocking baseballs around fields where the grass is damp and green in the morning and the kids are trying to hit the curve ball. — Pete Hamill I once knew a woman who, when preparing the first fruit salad of summer, would lop … Read more
This morning I sent my column on the future of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process to Michael Sean Winters — a writer at America magazine — in the spirit of collegiality. What I got in return is the implication on the America blog that I am either anti-Semitic or am aiding the rise of anti-Semitism among … 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
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
Liberals believe that the American principle of religious liberty requires not only the separation of church and state, but also the separation of religion from politics. They argue that a prohibited “establishment of religion” exists whenever government promotes religion at all. Some conservatives agree that government should be neutral between religion and its opponents, but … Read more
President Barack Obama has selected a pro-abortion Catholic governor, who has been told by her bishop not to present herself for communion, to head the Department of Health and Human Services. Writing last year in his diocesan newspaper, Bishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, discussed a meeting with Gov. Kathleen Sebelius where he told … Read more
This is Dr. Joseph Wright’s response to specific criticisms of his work on the study, "Reducing Abortion in America: The Effect of Socioeconomic Factors." We received this via E-mail, and have been unable to find it posted elsewhere, so we have uploaded it here. ♦ ♦ ♦ Each year over a million unborn children … Read more
What an interesting coincidence that Barack Obama will be sworn in as president the day after we celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. Will Obama finish King’s work of equality — which is also the unfinished work of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Lyndon Johnson? Many societies have been divided into a dominant … Read more
Running across the back of my house here in Manchester, Massachusetts, there is a narrow porch leading to a deck that looks out onto a lawn surrounded by hemlocks and rhododendron. My father was an amateur ornithologist — he thought of himself simply as a “bird-watcher” — so all six of us children, now in … Read more
The implosion of Catholic religious orders in the 1970s shook the foundations of the Catholic Church in America, threatening both the financial viability of parish schools and the transmission of faith and morals to subsequent generations. Decades later, the clergy sex-abuse crisis produced another earthquake from which the Church has yet to recover. Â Most … Read more
This year we Americans approach Thanksgiving with ruffled feathers and quivering wattles, alert for the edge of the axe. Our country’s 50-year joyride has hit the wall, and we wait for the "jaws of life." The imaginary wealth that puffed up our investments and inflated our national salary has blown like a mist back to … Read more
We Catholics are commonly urged to “engage the culture”; not to flee for monasteries of our own making, but to work within the institutions of mass media, mass education, mass marketing, and mass entertainment to advance the banners of Christ, our King. I do not wish to criticize those who toil at that thankless task. … Read more
One of the great strengths of the Roman Republic was its courageous realism. When Hannibal defeated the Romans in the first great encounter between the two armies, a battle in northern Italy, the leaders of the city called the people together to give them the news, and the opening words of the announcement were these: … Read more