The monster earthquake in Haiti this week wrought unprecedented physical devastation and human misery. The disaster and its aftermath have created a world of pain felt far beyond Haiti — and it may be years before this pain can be fully assuaged. We cannot but empathize with the victims, among whom are neighbors and coworkers … Read more
Catholics in America have more reasons than ever to worry about the future of the law. The legal practice of the Catholic faith in the United States is already becoming difficult because of funding abortions via our taxes, scuttling our philanthropic organizations rather than supporting same-sex marriage, or paying for the artificial contraception of Catholic … Read more
Three Virginia Catholics are leading the resistance against the encroaching power of the Obama White House. As reported in the Washington Post, legislation has been introduced to curb federal power over health insurance, interstate commerce, and gun regulation. Three of the leaders behind this effort are pro-life Catholics: Robert G. Marshall, a delegate to the … Read more
If you haven’t read The Screwtape Letters, you should. In fact, click over there right now and buy it. C. S. Lewis’s harrowing look inside of the mind of a “designated tempter” (he’s just like a guardian angel, except . . . the opposite) isn’t just insightful entertainment; it’s more like reading an intercepted copy … Read more
Over the past decade, the mysterious epithet “neo-Catholic” has been tossed around now and then. I first encountered it courtesy of Rev. Joseph O’Leary, the famed “Spirit of Vatican II” combox denizen who seems to have endless amounts of time to troll the net on behalf of gay causes and no time to, like, … Read more
For Christmas, I received a copy of Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures, written by then-Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. (I was also given some new shirts, in case anyone might think Schall is a one-dimensional man.) In the last section, Benedict questions whether, logically, a man can be an “agnostic” — someone … Read more
Only a few months ago, it was revealed that the Catholic Campaign for Human Development was funding organizations actively promoting abortion and same-sex marriage. As a result, several organizations were defunded, and the CCHD was declared back on track. But with regard to at least one CCHD grantee, The San Francisco Organizing Project (SFOP), that … Read more
Writing for the Catholic Advocate, Matt Smith reports that 39 of the 106 cosponsors of a House bill that would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act are “self-identified” Catholics. Smith, a former associate director of the White House Office of Public Liaison, warns that same-sex marriage activists are trying to bring H.R. 3567 — ironically, … Read more
The answer to this question may, at first glance, seem simple, but it requires its own discernment. We’re not wrestling here with a simple polarity of Sloth versus Diligence. If that were true, then questions of how much energy to put into pursuing natural and spiritual goods would end with the simple answer: “More is … Read more
Culturally deprived and TV-less laggard that I am, I’ve been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD lately — for the very first time. First impressions: Joss Whedon can write rings around everybody else. Second impression: Dickens lives! By that, I mean that Whedon seems to have hit on Dickens’s formula: Create a character … Read more
I have found myself in a brisk correspondence in recent weeks with a Calvinist friend from my school days 60 years ago. The topic touched on in our correspondence entails the redrawing of the moral map of the universe, which has been undertaken in the West since the 1960s. That redrawing arrived on the crest … Read more
The present standoff over abortion funding in health-care reform pits two sets of Catholics against each other: The bishops, supported by pro-life leaders, zealously oppose abortion funding, while prominent Catholic members of Congress just as zealously promote it. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi leads the pro-abortion Catholic pack pushing hard for abortion funding … 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
Not every villain in history can be confined to a single vice. In pointing out, for instance, the Gluttony of François Mitterand, I didn’t mean to clear this polygamous socialist of any suspicion of Lust or Envy. Quite the contrary: As St. Francis de Sales implied when he suggested that giving way to Lust made … Read more
Whom have I in heaven but thee? So cried Asaph the psalmist. It is an astonishing moment in the history of man, for Asaph had looked upon the wicked and seen how they prospered. His feet had well nigh slipped, he says. Yet he held fast to two truths that had been revealed to him. … Read more
Here’s a piece by a Lefty named Annalee Newitz about the insufficiently Lefty liberal power fantasy that energizes stories like Avatar: These are movies about white guilt. Our main white characters realize that they are complicit in a system which is destroying aliens, AKA people of color — their cultures, their habitats, and … Read more
On the Feast of St. Stephen, 1951, from St. Mary Magdalen College at Oxford, C. S. Lewis wrote a Latin letter to Don Giovanni Calabria in Verona (letters published with a translation by St. Augustine’s Press). The day after Christmas, Lewis prays for Calabria “all spiritual and temporal blessings in the Lord.” Lewis adds: … Read more
As I warned when I started my considerations of the Seven Deadly Sins and opposing Virtues, there will be a test. Seven of them, in fact, each inspired by Walker Percy’s quizzes in his satirical work of apologetics, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book. It’s a marvelous book: I only plagiarize the best. … Read more
It’s Christmas time again, and that means, among other things, that revelers around the world are quaffing nog, getting figgy with their pudding, and lifting their voices in song. “Christmas carols are the creed of Christendom,” wrote Frederick Wilhelmsen, and I don’t think he’s half wrong. It’s a pleasure to sing the ancient songs, as … Read more
St. Thomas Aquinas was once tricked by his fellow students who cried out, “Look! A flying ox!” Thomas dutifully went to the window to look, and his peers all laughed at him heartily. Thomas’s reply (and one of the many reasons he’s a saint): “I thought it more likely that an ox would fly than … Read more