My best friend still makes fun of me for something I said on a liquor-tilting night last century. Fired by some undergraduate combination of sudden conversion and Southern Comfort, I misexplained to her, “It’s just that my worldview is so unified!” Â This is one temptation of a certain kind of bookish Catholic. (Cradle Catholics … Read more
Last week, I chronicled something of the bafflement that ensued as I was confronted with the weirdly malleable term “neo-Catholic.” Judging from the combox discussion that followed, many readers share the tremendous confusion surrounding the term. Did it denote converts or those who loathe converts? Was it code for “neocon” or for non-neocon? Was it … Read more
Bryan Cones, the managing editor at U.S. Catholic, is upset that I used the word “fake” to describe Catholics United and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good. Two weeks ago, I criticized those organizations for supporting the Senate health-care bill containing abortion funding. At the Huffington Post, Cones calls me out: Hudson appoints himself … Read more
Earlier this week, you may have read Deal’s appeal for support on behalf of InsideCatholic. This Website and blog exist solely because of generous supporters and readers like you. So if you visit regularly — or even sporadically — please consider supporting us. No amount is too small. The owner of another Catholic site once described InsideCatholic as “the … Read more
The temptation to have sex before marriage is as old as marriage itself. More than 1,600 years ago, St. Augustine, grappling with his desires, cried out to God, “Give me chastity . . . but not yet!”What is chastity? The word is often used to mean simply abstaining from sex, as if it were equivalent … Read more
The Future Church: How Ten Trends Are Revolutionizing the Catholic Church John L. Allen Jr., Doubleday, 480 pages, $28 According to the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, at the conclusion of His time on earth Jesus entrusted to the apostles and those who would come after them a mandate that was, and still … Read more
Vatican II’s “Declaration on Christian Education” was clear that parents “must be recognized as the primary and principal educators” of their children. Your school’s attitude toward this foundational principal of Catholic education is the single best measure of the faithfulness of your local Catholic school. Indeed, the school should not only welcome your involvement as … Read more
What does a word mean, if it can mean anything? Is there a difference between a word meaning anything, and one that means nothing at all? This isn’t merely a semantic problem if that word is “marriage.” When I maintain that the definition of marriage has been all but lost, I intend both senses of … Read more
On Tuesday, former president Jimmy Carter told NBC Nightly News, “I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African-American.” Â I have some questions for Carter: On what grounds do you label thousands of people as … Read more
In the late 1970s, a group of Episcopal clergymen with typical American chutzpah wrote to Pope Paul VI. They said they wanted to become Catholics, and wished for their priestly ministry to be fulfilled by being ordained as Catholic priests. The only problem was that they had wives and children. Paul VI received their … Read more
A friend who returned from a visit to France last week was enlivened by his experience of the new ecclesial communities there. He met members of the Community of the Beatitudes — a mixed community of men and women, married and celibate, who live a life with apostolic work and evangelization, Carmelite spirituality, and beautiful … Read more
In this Crisis Magazine classic, Benjamin Wiker says we have an obligation not to be unnecessarily distracting to others at Mass. Â Â As I have not received nearly enough hate mail of late, I thought it best to write something else on modesty, this time modesty at Mass (see my first article, “Drawing a … Read more
This year, just like last year, Gay Pride weekend coincided with the feast of Corpus Christi. Washington, D.C.’s Pride parade was fairly restrained: It featured a cornucopia of Episcopalians, and all the marchers went out of their way to sweetly drape beads over the little elementary-school girls standing in front of me. There were Affirming … Read more
Eight years ago today, a famous American philosopher died who had lived as a Catholic the last year of his life. Not so long ago, his name — Mortimer J. Adler — was synonymous with the “great books” approach to education he had pioneered with Robert Hutchins at the University of Chicago in the 1940s … Read more
 Bits and pieces of my mother’s childhood in Mexico have trickled down to me through the years, usually at unexpected times. As a child, she would tell me of the ceremonies in her village during Holy Week, the posadas during Advent, and the processions through the fields on the feast of St. Isidore, the … Read more
 Modern communitarian political thought began as an academic reaction to the publication of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice in 1971, which sought to establish liberal philosophical assumptions as universally valid. Since then communitarianism has developed as a more penetrating critique of liberalism, though it has in turn been criticized for failing to develop … Read more
In this Crisis Magazine classic, Thomas E. Woods, Jr. cuts through secular nonsense about religion’s alleged threat to civilization and progress. Â Â It’s the same argument we’ve heard so many times before, except now with increasing frequency and intensity: The world’s troubles are caused by religion. If only people would at last abandon these … Read more
In this Crisis Magazine classic, Mary Jo Anderson looks at the qualities that make a great bishop… and points to those strengths in action. Â Â Notwithstanding the sex-abuse scandal that has buffeted the Catholic Church in the United States, Catholics genuinely admire bishops whose courage and dedication have made a difference in their dioceses. … Read more
Bishop Thomas Wenski celebrated a Mass of Reparation this past Sunday in Orlando at the Cathedral of St. James. Although the Mass was offered in reparation for transgressions “against the dignity and sacredness of human life,” the one specific transgression prompting the liturgy was the decision by the University of Notre Dame to invite President … Read more
“The lunatic is on the grass.” It was an hour before midnight. Ten-year-old James was in his bedroom, alone, when he was suddenly gripped by terror. A Pink Floyd song rang out through the empty room. The radio turned on by itself. “The lunatic is on the grass. The lunatic is in the … Read more