I’m collecting the essays day by day in big batches from a post office in central London. By the end of this month, when the deadline arrives, there will be hundreds and hundreds of them, and I’ve already made arrangements, as I do every year, for a team of judges to meet at a venue … Read more
I begin by asserting a principle that, if one troubles to read Scripture, the encyclicals of the popes, and the decrees of ecumenical councils, is simply unassailable. It is this: There is an inner identity between Catholic teaching on sex and Catholic teaching on the society. Pope Leo XIII is quite clear on these matters. … Read more
Unless you’re willing to assert that homosexual behavior is immoral or unnatural (or both), you’ll have a hard time making an effective case against same-sex marriage (SSM). It won’t be impossible, just exceedingly difficult. Perhaps you’ll be able to reinforce the convictions of those who, like yourself, are already opposed to SSM. But you won’t … Read more
When I was growing up, it was widely believed that colleges and universities were the part of our society with the widest scope for free expression and free speech. In the conformist America of the 1950s, the thinking ran, few people dared to say anything that went beyond a broad consensus. But on campus, anyone … Read more
While plenty of scholars continue to debate Shakespeare’s Catholicity (or lack thereof), there are other English Renaissance dramatists whose Catholicism is less conjectural. One such Catholic is Elizabeth Cary (Lady Falkland, officially), the first known woman to publish an original play in English with the Tragedy of Miriam the Fair Queen of Jewry in 1613. … Read more
The late South African economist William Hutt, in his 1964 book, “The Economics of the Colour Bar,” said that one of the supreme tragedies of the human condition is that those who have been the victims of injustices and oppression “can often be observed to be inflicting not dissimilar injustices upon other races.” Born in … Read more
Even as the nation’s bishops react with alarm to a recent Montana Supreme Court ruling allowing physician-assisted suicide, their efforts are being undermined by ethics and law professors at several Jesuit universities. Last week, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops approved a statement describing assisted suicide as “a terrible tragedy, one that a compassionate society … Read more
If you have an organ transplant in Belgium, there is a small chance that you will owe your life to someone else’s death by euthanasia. The complex job of matching donors and recipients in Belgium — where euthanasia has been legal since 2002 — is handled by an organisation called Eurotransplant. In 2008, in a … Read more
When President John Garvey of the Catholic University of America (CUA) courageously announced this week that he would end the university’s 30-year experiment with co-ed dorms, he offended modern sensibilities. ABC News interviewed college students who — although not CUA students, and therefore not affected by the CUA policy — seemed insulted by what appeared … Read more
How should academics comport themselves when visiting a dictatorship? More specifically, what should they do and not do when presenting a paper at an academic conference hosted by a government that denies academic and other freedoms to its own population? These were the questions that accompanied me to Tehran in July 2010 as I prepared … Read more
Five years ago, I made the argument for Hoosiers as the greatest sports movie ever and lamented the absence of great baseball films. Hoosiers is still the gold standard, but a confession is in order: There is a great baseball movie; it ranks right up there in the cinematic sports pantheon; and on this golden … Read more
May was flush with the most colorfully camouflaged spy networks in every government, and the Allied bombing of Sicily and Sardinia on May 19 and 20, as prelude to the invasion of Italy, punctuated one of the most celebrated espionage tricks of the war: Operation Mincemeat. As the brainchild of Admiral John Godfrey, director of … Read more
The German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831) began his education as a Lutheran seminarian during the cultural ferment that we now refer to as the French Enlightenment. Later, as a philosophy professor at Jena, in a chapter in his 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit on “the struggle of the Enlightenment with Superstition,” he offered a … Read more
Increasingly, Catholic colleges and universities are struggling to find sure footing when it comes to the rocky terrain of proving their Catholic identity. For many of these institutions, the days of being able to shrug off outside scrutiny may be gone. On May 26, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) found that one Catholic college … Read more
Two years ago, I wrote a column for this site titled “Graduation 2009.” As I come to the end of this scholastic year, I would like to return to the same topic: What do college graduates learn before they graduate? Depending on the student and the faculty, the answer ranges from “not much” to “an … Read more
For the first time in history, less than half of Americans now live in married-couple households. The new finding by the Census Bureau reflects the most profound change in the nature of American society ever to have occurred, yet practically no one talks about it. Only 48 percent of American households are made up of … Read more
“I killed my brother. But it wasn’t murder. I did what I had to, to stop his pain.” — Dr. Remy “Thirteen” Hadley, House “Can you not read the signs of the times?” Perhaps Christ’s most ominous warning, it echoes down the centuries as an admonishment to every generation of believers. Why are we always … Read more
As health care costs continue to rise and a growing number of Baby Boomers approach old age, end-of-life issues are looming larger than ever in the public debate. What is “the right to die”? How should we, as a society, approach questions of health care, treatment for the elderly, and euthanasia? The Patients Rights Council, … Read more
Not satisfied with a general failure to teach students basic arithmetic, the structure of the English language, the history of our nation, the rudiments of the physical sciences, and enough geographical knowledge to distinguish Sweden from Switzerland, the legislators of the state of California have determined to require that the public schools teach “Gay Studies.” … Read more
So here I am in the Holy City for a week, to attend a family wedding and restore my shattered nerves. Too many months spent teaching Great Books in rural New Hampshire is enough to reduce a civilized man to a bag of broken glass, and I need at least a week of taking subways … Read more
