Cultural appropriation: the label is increasingly applied in concert with those other derogatory words — bigot, homophobe, sexist —to smear those who violate the amorphous tenets of progressive ideology. Popular musician Rihanna was recently accused of cultural appropriation for donning traditional Asian garb for a recent Harper’s Bazaar photoshoot. Kim Kardashain, likewise, is an alleged … Read more
Western civilization is weak, exhausted, dying. Our leaders in the Church – servants in attendance to the Great Physician – can now think of nothing to do but preach this thing they call “mercy.” There is nothing wrong with mercy, of course; but when our clerics use the word, they sound more like hospice nurses … Read more
Reading good books can help save your soul. A liberal education and Christianity share a mutual pursuit of the truth. With the torrential influx of electronic entertainment and the focus on STEM-based disciplines, people today are reading books less than ever before. This is one of the great crises of our time. The National Endowment … Read more
Many religious roads lead a convert to Rome, and a frequent guidebook is something written by G.K. Chesterton: often Orthodoxy. In his new collection of convert stories, My Name is Lazarus, Dale Ahlquist, the world’s greatest living Chesterton promoter, claims that he can name a couple of thousand who followed the fat journalist across the … Read more
Most of us have probably wondered why people who clearly do not believe in Catholicism choose to remain within the Church, actively working to undermine its doctrines, structures, and practices. I have thought of more and more such reasons as time has gone on, some of whose validity has recently been confirmed by my reading … Read more
In the wake of ongoing new reporting regarding sex scandals among many clerics, we have witnessed increased calls for the Catholic Church to loosen celibacy restrictions for the priesthood. Even many devout Catholics have begun to believe celibacy represents an unhealthy repression of sexual urges. To stem the tide of clerical abuse, the Church must … Read more
Each of us knows that certain things are wrong—not because we believe they are wrong, but because they really are wrong. And that applies to the moral relativist as well. If you want to see a relativist sink into a sophistic seizure, ask him about the “virtues” of cruelty, rape, bigotry, exploitation, or the Holocaust. … Read more
Centenarians are not as rare as they used to be and one can profit from their memories. In California, I spoke with a woman who had traveled there from Missouri in a covered wagon. I visited another woman in a retirement home who was the first to hear her English professor at Wellesley College, Katherine … Read more
We had spent the morning with our children at the magnificent Sacré-Cœur Basilica, where we attended Mass. Then we went for a long walk in Père Lachaise, the remarkable cemetery where, among others, are buried Chopin and Jim Morrison. We visited both of their graves. After a very long and blistering hot morning, we boarded … Read more
The current occupant of the Oval Office got there on the promise to “Make America Great Again.” And while Lady Liberty lost some of her luster from the rearguard position of the last Administration, her greatness endures and is the reason America has an immigration problem—scratch that, crisis. Foundations Five decades after America gained independence, … Read more
Seventy years ago in June 1949 George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four was published. On June 7, 2019, the day prior to Nineteen Eighty-Four’s 70th anniversary, The Guardian, the United Kingdom’s leading socialist newspaper, announced: “Why the Guardian is changing the language it uses to describe abortion bans.” What follows in this pronouncement would have … Read more
My family experienced public school for the first time this past semester, and it was … well … memorable, up to and including last weekend’s graduation ceremonies. After 20 years of private Catholic schooling from K through college for our first three children, our youngest daughter, Gracie, ventured across the cultural aisle to finish her … Read more
One year after scientists flipped the switch on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), physicist Lawrence Krauss fretted, “I worry whether we’ve come to the limits of empirical science.” His worry was not unfounded—in the last eleven years and at a cost of over $13B, the sole accomplishment of the LHC has been the confirmation of … Read more
As someone who has never tried marijuana, many would disqualify me from having an opinion. I cannot say how it affects the mind. I cannot calibrate the intensity of the experience nor compare it with smoking or alcohol. Thus, many would say that I am a killjoy who has no right to deprive others of … Read more
The story of the American founding usually begins in the East. In that account, we speak of the War of Independence, the establishment of the American republic, and prominent founding fathers like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. However, there is an older story involving other founding fathers which took place in the West. Nearly 80 … Read more
Halfway through season two of the Netflix hit series Stranger Things, I made the decision to stop watching. Owing to monstrous laziness, I kept putting off writing down the reasons why I stopped. This month, I dumped Netflix altogether. You could say scuttling Stranger Things was of a piece with nixing Netflix (a lovely idea … Read more
“If only I had been there with my Franks!” said the warlord Clovis when he heard the story of how Jesus, innocent of all wrong, had been condemned to death and crucified. It’s easy to be the hero in your own imagination. Eleven men eager to get out of the jury room and get on … Read more
What is the relationship between cultural relativism and moral relativism? In trying to answer this question, we find some remarkable issues converging. If we ignore these convergences, we will miss opportunities to improve upon the moral tenor of our personal lives and the moral character of our society at the same time. Allan Bloom opens … Read more
“I am an historian, not a prophet.” ∼ John Lukacs Clamat enim quodammodo omnis historia, Deum esse (“In a way all history cries aloud that God is”). ∼ Pope Leo XIII For more than 60 years, from the mid-1950s on, John Lukacs wrote and spoke on the passing of the modern age. With his death … Read more
The number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation—dubbed “the Nones”—has been growing steadily for two decades. The Nones are now a slightly larger percentage of the American population than Catholics. But they are not all atheists: half say they believe in God. The problem for many of them is organized religion: over 70 percent … Read more
