A common trope in social policy debates is to claim that the public’s changing opinion on the policy at stake, rather than the policy’s moral or substantive justifications, merits changing the platform of one’s preferred political party. This notion seems recently to have taken root on the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, and … Read more
The Sixties wanted Paradise Now: a paradise that ignores the distant and difficult in favor of the immediate and effortless. We wouldn’t transcend life’s conflicts and difficulties by striving after a higher unity, we’d abolish them by denying them recognition. Each would do his thing and follow his bliss, and all would be well. As … Read more
In Civics 101, we learn about the venerable mainstay of democratic republics—the separation of government into Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches. Properly employed, this separation should result in a beneficial “balance of power,” preventing usurpation of power by any particular branch. Working as expected, the legislature makes the laws, the executive enforces them, and the … Read more
This past year America has seen a trumped up “War on Women” that claimed women’s freedom depends on “reproductive rights.” At the height of the Presidential election, the Obama camp courted the female vote with an exhortation to “vote like your lady parts depend on it” (in an e-card on the Obama campaign Tumbler that … Read more
Would you ever want to be buried alive? It’s a question Tom Stoppard raises in his absurdist drama, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. In the play, the titular Rosencrantz considers this riddle when he contemplates the experience of being a corpse in a coffin. Even taking into account the fact that you’re dead, it isn’t … Read more
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Ministry of Love promoted nothing but hatred and the Ministry of Truth spread nothing but lies. Although totalitarianism of the kind described and analyzed by Orwell has all but disappeared from the face of the earth, give or take a country or two, totalitarianism of another, softer kind is marching its … Read more
Those who do pro-life work every day watched slack-jawed as a true-blue pro-lifer got garroted by the Republican and conservative establishment. Even today, weeks after the national electoral debacle, they’re beating up Todd Akin for Republican losses. Hardly a post-election think piece gets published that does not further tan Akin’s hide. But, does anyone think … Read more
The barely restrained euphoria that erupted after gay marriage marked its first wins at the ballot box in this month’s election overstates the significance of those victories for the future of marriage in the United States, leading social conservatives are saying. Voters in four states approved same-sex marriage questions on the ballot: Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, … Read more
Of the 427 weddings in my present parish during the past eleven years (I have lost count of all the others), the band—for want of a better word—at the most recent reception was the loudest I can remember. Conversation was impossible, so some of a certain age complained loudly but not loudly enough and others … Read more
The rebellious fervor of the Sixties, with its rejection of traditional standards and authorities, seemed a sudden break from what came before. At a deeper level, however, those developments simply brought to fruition what had long been in the works. What happened at that time was a further step in a centuries-long process of social … Read more
In the July issue of the scholarly journal Social Science Research (SSR), Professor Mark Regnerus (pictured) published an article detailing initial results from his New Family Structures Study. His results suggested that adult children who had been raised, for at least a brief time, in families with a gay, lesbian, or bisexual parent were more … Read more
The many analyses of the 2012 election results are not saying much about what may have been the central and fundamental problem: democracy. Notice that I do not say a democratic republic—that was the nature of the American political order as fashioned by our Founding Fathers—but a democracy. A generation ago, Martin Diamond, Winston Mills … Read more
At the top, at least, the Obama campaign was premised on a clear vision of citizenship. As a matter of course, the President spoke words of good will toward his fellow Americans, promising that those who heard him were joining him in a great enterprise. He gestured toward our responsibility to our neighbors and our … Read more
Television and the blogosphere were alive the day after the election with conservative pundits calling for the GOP to forget social issues, to walk away from abortion and marriage, because these issues lost Romney the election. Big time political consultant Mike Murphy said on MSNBC that the GOP does not know how to appeal beyond … Read more
Voting patterns of this last election give ample support to the notion of the divided country, and it is now virtually obligatory to bemoan polarization while calling for unity in our fragmented polis. As obvious as our polarization seems, perhaps disunity is not the real problem; instead, perhaps we already have a unity, just of … Read more
Like millions of conservative Americans, I spent last night with hope and fear, followed by sinking disappointment at what my fellow Americans had chosen to do with our country. That disappointment has not gone away. But it has been tempered, as all our disappointments should be tempered, by a realization of just how little we … Read more
Public witness on issues of public concern is natural for Catholics because we have a commitment to the common good and to the dignity of each human person. Those two pillars—the common good and the dignity of every human person—come right out of Scripture. They underpin all of Catholic social thought. That includes politics. Politics … Read more
Pursuing the Catholic vote, both campaigns are focusing on the number one issue for many Americans: Fixing the weakened economy and helping those Americans suffering from the downturn. When Mitt Romney announced the Catholics for Romney coalition last month, Catholic observers were delighted to see that none other than the Vice-Presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan … Read more
In the current presidential campaign, I have heard some serious Catholics express reservations about voting for Mitt Romney because of the abortion issue. True, they are aware of how rabidly pro-abortion Barack Obama is. They may even consider him—correctly—the most pro-abortion president the U.S. has ever had. He has a consistent track record of embracing … Read more
In Kenneth D. Whitehead’s short essay in this magazine, the recent liberal Catholic manifesto, All on Our Shoulders, is helpfully but incompletely criticized. At the core of his argument rests the claim that the document constructs a straw man out of Paul Ryan’s 2005 address to the Atlas Society, in which Ryan praised the free … Read more