For those unaware of Sam Harris, his bestseller The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason established him as the American atheist laureate, the Yankee counterpart of the Brits’ Richard Dawkins. Now comes the inevitable follow-up: Harris has composed a Letter to a Christian Nation for our edification. Letter to a … Read more
Paignton is a pleasant seaside town in Devon, in the western part of England. Its wide, sandy beaches are packed in summer, and most of its 1930s houses offer bed-and-breakfast or are rented out as holiday apartments. There are boat trips across the bay to Brixham, where William of Orange landed in 1689—a statue commemorates … Read more
“Most Holy Father, the work that Your Holiness has deigned to entrust to me, I today return to You. . . . May you deign, Holy Father, to allow the entire world to hear your august words,” Guglielmo Marconi beseeched Pius XI at the inauguration of the Vatican Radio in 1931, 36 years after he … Read more
The clash of civilizations is as old as history, and equally as old is the blindness of those who wish such clashes away; but they are the hinges, the turning points of history. In the latter half of the 16th century, Muslim war drums sounded and the mufti of the Ottoman sultan proclaimed jihad, but … Read more
How shall we speak of Mozart? We are always struck by his sprightly lyricism, of course, which offers us immeasurable delight but at the same time brings tears to our eyes—the tears that arrive when we find ourselves hailed with pure beauty. Grandeur, hilarity, bliss, poignancy, joy—what words suffice? I was listening to Mozart … Read more
The record shows that as the need for medical experiments grew, many physicians and others treated institutionalized infants, dying patients, and mentally impaired individuals as not quite persons in the moral sense. Moreover, indigent patients in hospitals were often treated in a similar fashion. . . . Clearly, these ‘vulnerable’ individuals were thought of as … Read more
Except for a few saints and possibly a handful of bishops, Orestes Brownson and Isaac Hecker were the two most interesting American Catholics of the 19th century. They were certainly the most intellectually interesting and, in the long run, the most influential. The matters they agreed on, and especially those they disagreed on, are crucial … Read more
Subjectivism, deconstructionism, postmodernism, multiculturalism—there is a blight on scholarly research today, cast by the epistemic “isms.” No field is safe. Even in physics, the “isms” are attempting to spin every idea as nothing more than one person’s opinion or the accidental product of historical evolution. Physicist Alan Sobel exposed this effort when he sent a … Read more
At an international conference on liturgical music sponsored by the Vatican on December 5, 2005, Monsignor Valentino Miserachs Grau dropped a bomb. Being the head of the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music, and the leading voice for the Catholic Faith in all matters of music, his topic was not merely of academic interest, nor was … Read more
In his first book, The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life, National Review senior editor Ramesh Ponnuru fills a gap, providing the first general overview of life issues written for a popular audience in the last 20 years. It’s a badly needed effort, for the situation has … Read more
Every ten seconds, a man, woman, or child in Africa dies from an AIDS-related disease. According to the USAIDS/World Health Organization (WHO), 40.3 million people now live with HIV infections, two-thirds of them in sub-Saharan Africa. In Swaziland, 42.6 percent of pregnant women test positive for HIV. There’s no cure for this killer, and no … Read more
I never saw James Charles Risk (1913–2005) in a plain business suit. A dinner jacket without decorations was to him tantamount to aboriginal nudity. Lifelong interest in numismatics led to the study of royal orders and decorations, plenty of which garnished his wiry frame. Like all civilized men who find time for high things … Read more
In June 2000, the Los Angeles Times released a poll that found Americans “evenly split” regarding Roe v. Wade, one of the two 1973 Supreme Court rulings that created a constitutional right to abortion. Forty-three percent of respondents indicated that they approved of the decision, while 42 percent disapproved. At the time, the Times’s poll … Read more
Pro-lifers fumed during the 2004 presidential race when John Kerry attacked opponents of embryonic stem-cell (ESC) research as “anti-science” ideologues who sought to block life-saving cures “right at our fingertips.” “This is not the way we do things in America. Here in America, we don’t sacrifice science for ideology,” Kerry argued in an August … Read more
The intense battle to prevent Terri Schiavo’s husband from removing her feeding tube was horrible enough. To think that some American Catholic universities — and their ethics, theology, law, and medical professors — bear some responsibility for Schiavo’s slow death is almost too much to imagine. Yet prior to Schiavo’s death, professors from top Catholic … Read more
Faced with the lurid, tragic landscape of the Catholic Church’s child sex-abuse scandal, some of the laity have posed the question: Where were the nuns when this was going on? Playwright John Patrick Shanley offers a rich, multi-layered response to this and many other related matters — theological, psychological, and moral — in Doubt, a … Read more
I met my guide, Helmut Konitzer, at the airport. A German who visits the West Bank to assist the sisters, monks, and priests living there, Helmut had the look of a well-cut drifter. I wasn’t surprised when he told me his preferred mode of transportation was his motorcycle, especially when medicines have to be delivered quickly … 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
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
“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