The Church, it is sometimes said, thinks in terms of centuries, not years or decades … or election cycles. Without intending to minimize the importance of this upcoming election and its implications for economic and foreign policy matters, it’s worth reminding ourselves that a long game is being played as well, a game with civilizational … Read more
Writing about the Republican National Convention in August, New York Times columnist David Brooks fretted that the Republican Party has been captured by a “hyperindividualistic mentality,” and he commended Condoleezza Rice’s celebration of “larger national goals—the long national struggle to extend benefits and to mobilize all human potential.” Last month Brooks reinforced this claim by … Read more
Not long ago in Iowa Governor Romney caused a slight kerfuffle when he said he did not have any specific legislative proposals for the right to life. Almost immediately he added that he would, however, reinstitute Mexico City Policy. Ho-hum. Mexico City Policy is often touted by candidates and by office holders as pro-life bona … Read more
I want to be clear, at the outset, that this is not yet another blog about Catholic teaching on the morality of homosexuality, nor is it (except indirectly) one more defense of the traditional family. It’s partly (but again indirectly) about the social effects of treating homosexual unions as though they were equivalent to marriage … Read more
October is the month of the Most Holy Rosary, a devotion associated in modern times with the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Fatima in 1917, during the First World War. Mary asked for prayer and penance, which she always requests in these private revelations that echo the public revelation in the Gospel: “Repent, … Read more
One thing that defenders of the sexual revolution will not understand is that, although the act of intercourse is private (or better be), everything else about sex is public. I don’t simply mean that people will know that John and Mary are in a “relationship,” horrid denatured word, or that sexual intercourse results in those … Read more
Following is the homily given October 14 by Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore and the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington on the occasion of the Marian Pilgrimage for Life and Liberty. On this beautiful autumn Sunday in … Read more
The past four years have witnessed a battle between different generations of Catholics in public life—Generation X Catholics have taken a very different path from Baby Boomer Catholics and those born before the boomers. Generation X Catholics have emerged prominently in the Republican Party. Many who were mentioned this year on Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential short … Read more
I continue to read more and more from Catholics upset with Joe Biden’s defense of the Obama Administration’s HHS mandate in the vice-presidential debate. I got news for you. It’s worse than you think. During the debate, Biden’s opponent Paul Ryan challenged the HHS mandate: “Look at what they’re doing through Obamacare with respect to … Read more
The most interesting moment of the second 2012 presidential debate came in the final minutes, when Barry Green, the last of the 82 supposedly undecided voters handpicked by the Gallup Poll, asked Governor Mitt Romney to describe the biggest misperception that the American people have about him as a person and a candidate. Predictably, he … Read more
Election 2012 is upon us. Many are calling it the most important election in their lives. The candidates and supporters have routinely emphasized that the Presidential candidates, their platforms, and their voting records are complete opposites. The two main parties in the United States have extremely different visions on nearly every issue of importance. And … Read more
Democrats for Life in America (DFLA) was founded in 1999 on the premise that approximately one-third of Democrats are pro-life; and it has been valiantly championing the pro-life cause in congressional and presidential elections since that time. The pro-life Democrats include many who are against unrestricted elective abortions, and/or who favor exceptions for rape, incest, … Read more
He blasted big business, Wall Street, big oil, General Motors, “excess profits,” “millionaires” and the “wealthy.” He called out the “corporation executive” for not paying his “fair” share. He attacked “GOP” tax cuts that “spare the rich” and “benefit millionaires.” He advocated wealth redistribution from greedy “corporations” to “health insurance” and “public works projects.” He … Read more
Upon issuance, the Obama Administration’s requirements concerning health insurance were immediately recognized as a threat to religious liberty. Less obvious is the fact that such infringements, and many that will be far worse, are endemic to the modern welfare state and were bound to emerge sooner or later. To begin with, there is the king’s … Read more
The recent decision by a federal court in Missouri to reject one of the lawsuits challenging the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) “Obamacare” mandate, requires near universal carrying of insurance plans that cover, gratis, contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs raises troubling questions about how the courts generally are going to rule on the … Read more
What strikes me most powerfully about the defenders of the sexual revolution is their immovable abstraction. Always the matter is couched in terms of rights, or individual desires—what I want, what I may pursue. That this sexual laissez-faire destroys the common good, by undermining families and rotting whole neighborhoods from within, seems not to matter. … Read more
In an age that seems to believe that Christianity is an obstacle to liberty it will prove provocative to insist, contrary to such belief, that Christian faith is essential to liberty’s very existence. Yet, as counter-intuitive as it may seem to disciples of the progressivist zeitgeist, it must be insisted that faith enshrines freedom. Without … Read more
In 2008, Barack Obama stole a chunk of religious voters from the GOP by clothing his secularist and socialist positions in quasi-religious garb. “People of faith” received their own slot on his campaign web site, a mere two tabs down from the “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender community.” Obama “valued” the religious, as he put … Read more
Apart from short intervals of confusion, every society has networks of influential people who cooperate to maintain their authority and advance their goals. There is always a ruling class, and we have seen that the Sixties were a period in which a new one consolidated its position. That class, which for the most part still … Read more
Dr. Rowan Williams is retiring as the Archbishop of Canterbury to take up the post of Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge. His “valedictory” book, Faith in the Public Square, is attracting considerable media interest. I was prompted to buy it after reading Dr. William Oddie’s particularly colorful review in the London Catholic Herald. Oddie concluded … Read more