On the eve of the last Super Bowl, two men were discussing the great American ritual of watching football on television. The older man admitted that he just didn’t do that anymore. In times past, he said, he’d seen his share of TV football, but twelve or fifteen years earlier he’d become aware that his … Read more
John was only an eight-year-old boy when he had the situation first explained to him: “The judges who run our country just decided that a mother who’s pregnant with a baby doesn’t have to have that baby if she doesn’t want to.” “So what can she do instead?” “She can go to the doctor and … Read more
The recent controversy over the termination of a pregnancy at Phoenix’s St. Joseph’s Hospital, which Phoenix bishop Thomas Olmsted determined to have been a direct abortion and thus a grave moral evil, has generated a secondary controversy over the meaning of the Church’s traditional moral principle of “double effect.” Some have argued — mistakenly, in … Read more
The first thing to note about the perpetual virginity of Mary is that it’s the natural extension of the dogma of the virgin birth. Many modern people assume that, at its core, the virgin birth was basically a stunt. That is, the common modern assumption is that the meaning of Mary’s virginity is pretty much … Read more
In 1939, Albert Einstein penned a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt. The letter was instigated, and largely written, by Hungarian immigrant and physicist Leo Szilard, who was concerned with the technological aims of the Nazi regime. After hearing the eminent British physicist Sir Ernest Rutherford dismiss the idea of obtaining useful energy from nuclear reactions, … Read more
Driving rain and wind pummeled the house all night, rattling the cistern boxes, bellowing down the chimneys, and pouring sheets of water against the windows. Although the wind died down the next morning, rain peppered steadily for three more days. With this sudden dumping of water on already saturated ground and into already full streams, … Read more
I want you to hit me as hard as you can. That’s what Brad Pitt asked of Ed Norton on the silver screen back in 1999. Norton complied, and a cult phenomenon was born. Before David Fincher directed Social Network, a dark film about existentially desperate young men struggling to create meaning by way of … Read more
I was recently delighted by the sting operation performed against Planned Parenthood by Live Action, whose members posed as a pimp and a prostitute, intending to test the organization’s willingness to enable the exploitation of underaged girls and expose its cynical disregard of the human dignity of women. None of this should surprise those of … Read more
“Chu lai! Chu lai!” Guang-Zhong Gu awoke in the pre-dawn hours, bathed in the sweat of a balmy Shanghai September. Unfamiliar voices barked, “Come out! Come out!” Lights overhead flashed on. The cold steel snap of ammo clicked into machine guns. Fists pounded at the doors lining the long corridors of the Xujiahui Seminary, normally … Read more
Last week, we looked at the basic evidence for the perpetual virginity of Mary: the “why the Church thinks that the record shows, as a matter of historical fact, that she remained a virgin” evidence. But, of course, the question remains, “Why does the Church think this is a big deal?” There are, after all, … Read more
Recently I paid my $1.99 and downloaded the new iPhone app for confession. Seeing the app was subtitled “a Roman Catholic App,” I figured it wasn’t going to suffer from “Catholicism Lite.” (Whether the new app would meet the demanding standard of John Allen’s “Taliban Catholicism,” I was about to find out.) Since its release, … Read more
John Allen, senior correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, routinely uses the phrase “Taliban Catholicism” to describe “an exaggerated allergy to anything that smacks of secularism, liberalization, or corruption by modernity — an angry form of the faith that knows only how to excoriate and condemn.” Allen says it’s become part of the “standard stump … Read more
For 27 years, the International Bulletin of Missionary Research has published an annual “Status of Global Mission” report, which attempts to quantify the world Christian reality, comparing Christianity’s circumstances to those of other faiths, and assaying how Christianity’s various expressions are faring when measured against the recent (and not-so-recent) past. The report is unfailingly interesting, … Read more
Many years ago I was attending my first faculty reception at my first formal faculty appointment, at Stanford, and was met at the receiving line by the sponsoring dean with a warm handshake and the baffling words, “I want to tell you that I have the greatest admiration for your Church.” The two of us … Read more
This being V Month, I thought it might be novel to turn our thoughts away from PC obsessions with sex and have a little fun subverting of the Dominant Paradigm. To that end, I thought it might be good to run a little series on the perpetual virginity of Mary, both the evidence for it … Read more
Aristotle said that there are some things we would want to have even if they did not give us pleasure. His examples were sight and hearing. St. Basil the Great (330-379), in his wonderfully titled Detailed Rules for Monks (N.B.: Jesuits are not monks, though they have no problem with St. Basil), wrote: “Love of … Read more
Are there aliens out there? Nothing is more likely to grab headlines than the latest speculation about extraterrestrial life. Here, a Vatican theologian speculates and organizes a conference; there, a scientist says he’s analyzed 500 planets and is convinced that the cosmos is a cold, empty and lifeless place. Still others insist the sheer size … Read more
Some time ago, an online discussion of NFP took an interesting turn. I remember it especially because I got off a pretty good zinger. (And that’s what we Catholic bloggers do to advance the kingdom of God: We zing people.) The Other Guy’s argument went like this: Sure, sure, the Church permits NFP to space … Read more
Pope John Paul II was a brave man. Speaking the truth in unstable and unfriendly countries, standing boldly against the popular demise of morality, traveling furiously even when weakened by sickness—no one could deny his courage. But the pope did more than just model strength for us: He called us to it. His apostolic exhortation, … Read more
Where can you find a Catholic chaplaincy at an institution of higher learning that’s looking to expand its church to seat 1,400, because the current 850 seats just aren’t enough? South Bend, Indiana, perhaps? Well, no, actually: College Station, Texas, where the Catholic chaplaincy at Texas A&M, St. Mary’s Catholic Center, is setting a new … Read more