The great political, social, and moral issue of the present day is the authority of the natural and normal. Accepting that authority means accepting a vernacular form of natural law, and thus a belief that the world has an innate way of functioning that is presumptively good. We can understand a great deal about that … Read more
I haven’t seen Philomena but I’ve noticed it’s been getting a lot of attention: many TV ads, awards nominations, numerous interviews with the stars, with the book’s author, and with the real-life Philomena Lee. Then I read some reviews of the film and realized why the media was giving it so much play. It’s about … Read more
“It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Now, mostly dead is slightly alive.” ~ Miracle Max As you bundle up, you can’t suppress the wry grin. First, there’s the plummeting temperatures which never seem to make it back up … Read more
Religious Liberty has been on our minds a lot lately. The HHS mandate, same-sex marriage initiatives, and recently, the Duck Dynasty controversy with television network A&E, have put the issue squarely before us. In late December, CNA published an article about Camille Paglia, a 1960’s generation “feminist lesbian professor” who is reported to have “harshly … Read more
Did you know that January is National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention month? According to the White House, this is a time to reflect on modern-day slavery and “renew our commitment to ending this scourge in all its forms.” A project of the United Methodist Church, on the other hand, is committing to emphasize “reproductive … Read more
It’s official, ladies and gentlemen! The Theory of Evolution via Natural Selection is no longer a “theory”; it’s confirmed science! At least, that’s what USA Today would have us think anyway. In a column entitled “Evolution is Not a Matter of Belief,” Tom Krattenmaker proclaims, “As settled science, evolution is not a matter of opinion … Read more
This new school of writers and thinkers that I have called the New Homophiles are not without their critics. How could they not be? After all, while they want a warmer embrace from the Church, they want more than that and some of it seems at variance with the wishes and perhaps even the teachings … Read more
Unexpectedly, I came across a reference to NBC re-making Rosemary’s Baby into a four-hour mini-series; press reports suggest that shooting has already begun this month. With this news, a fear began to grip as my thoughts returned to the original. Strange tales grow up around movies. Like many before and since, Rosemary’s Baby has had … Read more
Birth control is a touchy subject that Evangelicals find extremely difficult to discuss. But as the President’s health care mandate officially launches and its oppressive contraception enforcements are questioned, some Evangelicals are reconsidering their embrace of oral contraception, or what is commonly referred to as the Pill. Evangelical leaders like Dr. Albert Mohler who question … Read more
Following the devaluation of babies in the developed world in the 1970s and 80s, babies became scarce and, consequently, desirable once again. Now, any means used to make babies is seen as good, as long as pregnancy occurs at a convenient time. Some cannot conceive naturally. The prevailing view is that those who cannot do … Read more
It seems that in a piece I wrote last week deploring the sharp decline in fertility rates across the affluent West, not everyone agreed with my thesis that a world without children is not something we should welcome, and that couples therefore ought to be encouraged to have more of them. One irate reader had … Read more
WHETHER COMMON CORE EDUCATION IS CONTRARY TO CLASSICAL EDUCATION Objection 1. It would seem that the Common Core State Standards Initiative is not contrary to classical education. For, as the classical education movement is aimed at broad-based learning, Common Core education provides standards that are broadly applied across the country to prepare students with twenty-first … Read more
About a month ago, up at 2am with a sick baby, I found myself watching a documentary about the modern-day descendants of prominent officials of the Third Reich. Entitled Hitler’s Children, it examined the lives of modern-day descendants of high-ranking Nazi officials such as Hermann Goring, Heinrich Himmler and Rudolf Höss. None of them Nazi … Read more
David Freddoso recently asked the question: “What Would Aquinas Say about Legalizing Weed?” In particular he argues against what he considers to be a specious argument from David Brooks that legalizing marijuana is akin to endorsing it. In his piece, “Weed: Been There. Done That” Brooks notes: Laws profoundly mold culture, so what sort of … Read more
Tourism, as anyone with a passport can tell you, has become a very big business, particularly in places that no longer thrive in the customary practices of industry and commerce. Take Genoa, for instance, one of Europe’s largest cities along the Mediterranean coast and still the grandest seaport in all Italy, whose bright and shiny … Read more
A young man and woman arrive at the office of the town clerk to procure a marriage license. They’re all smiles, until the secretary hands them a document to sign, wherein they read this remarkable sentence: “The State, conceding to the parents the making of their children’s bodies, asserts its primacy in the making of … Read more
There must be something about New Zealand that brings out the megalomania in movie makers. It recently was announced that James Cameron, that titan of trite who brought us the “morality tale” of Titanic (with rich people falsely portrayed as scrambling for other people’s places on life boats, as if to say all rich people, … Read more
On the one hand, there is pop music … aimed at the phenomenon of the masses, is industrially produced, and ultimately has to be described as a cult of the banal. “Rock,” on the other hand, is the expression of elemental passions, and at rock festivals it assumes a cultic character, a form of worship, … Read more
At year’s end Pope Francis was named 2013 “Person of the Year” by two very disparate publications, and while the Roman pontiff tends to loom large on the world scene in almost any year, it is not entirely clear why this time around he was selected both by Time magazine and by an LGBT publication, … Read more
Every one has seen it. At least, it seems so at this time of year. You can’t avoid seeing that 1946 classic appearing on television. Everyone at the office loves it, of course, even those who haven’t seen it. Everyone has their favorite scene, the bits they like to quote. Unexpectedly, some become quite poetic, … Read more
