Belmont Abbey College is one of the few Catholic colleges in the southeastern United States, located about ten miles west of Charlotte, North Carolina. Unfortunately, its president and chancellor are currently embroiled in a defense of the college’s Catholic identity against eight faculty members who insist on insurance coverage for voluntary sterilization, abortion, and contraception. … Read more
The Monday before last, Canada’s National Post published a speech by abortion doctor Garson Romalis on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of R. vs. Morgentaler. Before I get to the disturbing details, let me offer a little background for the non-Canadian reader. Dr. Henry Morgentaler, of the infamous case, is a Polish-born Holocaust survivor … Read more
At the turn of the last century, Mark Twain loved poking fun at the tidy religious stories that were told in his day, even as he produced his own versions. The stories led to a payoff that dealt a death-blow to wickedness and a cheery boost to saintliness, all neatly summed up in a secondary … Read more
Every All Souls Day at the Sanctus I leave it to the Just Judge to choreograph those assembling around the altar from the Church Expectant and Triumphant. On the list now is Dennis Clinton Graham Heiner (1927-2008), who crossed 38th Street daily for Mass. Outwardly, Dennis had a coddled childhood in New York City, and … Read more
Catholic Charities workers often trace their roots to twelve French Ursuline nuns who, in 1727, began a ministry to children in New Orleans. The Ursulines offered medical care, ran an orphanage, and founded a girls’ school that the order still operates. In 1803, the United States bought the Louisiana Territory from France. In the decade … Read more
Can the recent United Nation’s call for a world moratorium on the death penalty be used to end abortion as well? It may not be as unlikely as it sounds. Hot-button pro-life and pro-family issues have the power to define politicians and their campaigns. Yet the campaign debates on pro-life matters have centered largely on … Read more
Recently there has been a flurry of books from the “New Atheists.” Such figures as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens have been holding forth to state . . . well, not anything new. The reason there is nothing new to say is that there cannot, by the nature of the … Read more
The mission of the Global Fund is to fight HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis around the world. Since 2004, this Swiss organization has received over $3 billion, one third of its entire budget, from the United States. A study just released by the Gerard Health Foundation provides evidence that Global Fund grants are supporting abortion providers … Read more
I wasn’t much of a videogame player when I was a kid — more of a coveter of others’ videogames, really. It started in 1986 when the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was just beginning to hit its stride, and my parents wouldn’t get me one. (Adjusted for inflation, a fully tricked-out NES in 1986 cost … Read more
Remember Candlemas? The folks at Calvary Temple proclaiming “Keep Christ in Christmas” don’t either. The source of our present secularization isn’t the lack of Christ… it’s the lack of Mass. The highway billboards have come down: Keep Christ in Christmas. Or the more eye-catching: _____mas: It isn’t Christmas without Him. I have to hand it … Read more
Fewer films than expected sold this year at Sundance, but there were plenty of highlights in the ten-day festival. What’s likely coming to a theater near you? Fewer films than expected sold this year at Sundance, but there were plenty of highlights in a ten-day festival marked by picturesque snowfalls, strong documentaries, and unlikely sequels. … Read more
It’s not that our Chattering Classes have no actual opportunities for courage. It’s that they assiduously avoid them wherever possible (after all, you could get hurt!). Case in point: this “No, I’m not making this up” blurb for atheist Sam Harris’s Letter to a Christian Nation: I can’t sign my name to this blurb. As … Read more
It is not often that my little town of Oxford, Mississippi makes the national news, but it happened recently. One of our best-known citizens, attorney Richard “Dickie” Scruggs, was arrested along with a few other attorneys, including Scruggs’s son, Zach. According to prosecutors, the Scruggs team tried to bribe a judge for a favorable ruling … Read more
While reading recently the third edition of After Virtue by the great living philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, I was struck once again by the notion of the “philosophia perennis.” This is the notion that there is one, and only one, recurring and inevitable set of mutually dependent universal truths on the nature of man, and of … Read more
This and next month, I want to talk about modern American music because I have been listening to new releases in the stellar Naxos American Classics series, as well as to some other new CDs of American music. Curiously, the one thing of which I may be sure is that very few readers will have … Read more
As we settle into the new year and reflect on the past twelve months, we naturally recall the things that have made us happy, those areas of our lives in which we want to see improvement, and the meaning of life in general. Some see life as the culmination of a series of time-bound goals, … Read more
I am a Catholic living in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, and I chose not to attend the March for Life. That will probably seem odd to many fellow Catholics who share my staunch pro-life views. It shouldn’t. The fact is, the pro-life movement has overlooked a crucial point in the effort to end abortion: … Read more
When I was given the opportunity to live in Washington, D.C., one of the first considerations that came to mind was that I would be able to easily attend the March for Life. Prior to this year, I had attended twice — once as an infant, the second time as a toddler. This year, I … Read more
2007 saw a flurry of secular films that were unabashedly pro-life in their outlook, even when they were far from family fare. Movies such as Waitress; the raunchy, R-rated Knocked Up; Bella; and Juno all achieved measures of success with mainstream moviegoers, from the little independent surprise Bella (which was marketed to church-goers) to the … Read more
Schall was born January 20, 1928, on a farm in Pocahontas County, Iowa. You cannot get more American than that. My mother was Bohemian and my father German-Irish. To my Jesuit colleagues at breakfast on my birthday I hint that this memorable event happened in a log cabin. Most doubt this as too picturesque, while … Read more
