So it looks like it’s Romney. Now what? Now we do our best to help him defeat Obama, for various reasons. One oft-overlooked reason is that there’s a very good chance of the Republicans taking over the Senate, and that’s quite important. The voters who’ll vote for Republican senators sometimes won’t show up at the polls … Read more
“I’m proud to be an American.” Those words are more than the refrain of a country-western song. This sentiment encompasses both reflection on our past and national aspiration. We look back on our history and see things we can be proud of as a nation, and we look forward to dream of pride in what … Read more
Hand-in-hand with the Hollywood portrayals of Catholic priests and devout believers as evil, stupid, cruel, or unhinged is the academic Left’s long-established hostility to the Church. But the academic setting of its critiques doesn’t make them any less false and cartoonish. The recent controversy over public funding of contraception, as well as Rick Santorum’s presidential … Read more
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend—yes, one of the Kennedys—recently wrote an inspired piece of moral theology in The Atlantic. And we should all take note. Fresh off a rally with New Ways Ministry, the Maryland-based group of Catholics who promote a “gay positive” view, Townsend felt moved to weigh in on the Church’s teaching on homosexuality. And … Read more
The Church’s response to the ObamaCare Mandate calls to mind this journal’s original name, Catholicism in Crisis. Today the Church confronts a crisis – “an invasion of our religious freedom,” Donald Cardinal Wuerl calls it — and the outcome is far from certain. The Mandate is only one in a flood of attacks that will … Read more
When the Witherspoon Institute’s task force on religious freedom released its monograph, Religious Freedom: Why Now?, earlier this month, the answer to the question in the title seemed obvious. The controversy occasioned by the Obama Administration’s mandate that all health plans pay the cost of contraception was in the front of the news, and the … Read more
Why won’t American Catholics get behind the very Catholic Rick Santorum? From New Hampshire to Nevada, he has lost the Catholic vote in nearly every state where Republicans have gone to the polls to elect their nominee for president. The only slight exception is Tennessee*, where he carried the Catholic vote by a whopping one … Read more
Ideologies are unavoidable and, in a sense, indispensable. Irving Kristol (WSJ, July 17, 1980) stated that the Right needed an ideology if it hoped to win the battle against the Left. But a number of conservatives strongly protested the statement, having for generations depicted ideologies as incompatible with true conservatism, as being essentially leftist in … Read more
Let us begin with what is most excellent and lasting in the work of the late Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn—his profound understanding of, and unyielding opposition to, the Left. According to the Austrian-born polymath, the Left has its roots planted firmly in democracy. In its modern form, that object of near worship owed its birth to … Read more
Next week, Pope Benedict XVI will visit Cuba in an effort to repair relations between the country and the Church. Perhaps he should pay a visit to the United States as well. As the Papal visit draws near, there is cautiously brimming hope that the Church will be able to make further strides in Cuba. … Read more
A few days ago, the Drudge Report brought me to a link that I thought for a time simply had to be an early April Fool’s Day joke, but is instead dead serious: How Engineering the Human Body Could Combat Climate Change.
For three years, I had the privilege of calling the New York City borough of Manhattan home. I say it was a privilege because many Americans don’t get the chance to visit, let alone to experience on a daily basis the beauty which is New York City’s organized chaos. There’s something about “the city” that … Read more
“Duh.” With that word, House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi gleefully delivered a fatal blow to her Republican colleagues who had launched a major political battle against the contraception mandate issued by President Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services. Pelosi was referring to her Republican colleagues who held a congressional hearing earlier that day to … Read more
When the Obama administration made the decision not to exempt Catholic hospitals and universities from the mandate to provide insured employees with contraceptives, morning after pills, and sterilization without a co-pay, one of those consulted was Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood. Richards obviously has a special interest in having contraception covered, since dispensing contraception … Read more
Pat Robertson Says Marijuana Use Should be Legal. From the deep Crisis Magazine archive, Jeff Tucker has a few thoughts of his own on the issue. Many Catholics have developed a bad habit of mind. They believe that if they are against something, it should be against the law — or, alternatively, if they are for something, … Read more
I recently had a chance to take a careful look at the testimony of Sandra Fluke before the House Democrats. What I saw disturbed me greatly, and not simply because I am a Catholic who strenuously opposes Obama’s assault on religious liberty. There are a number of other assumptions at work in the thinking of … Read more
This second part of this series treats the experience of Roman Catholics during the Founding era, since this period establishes the particular milieu in which American political rhetoric was forged and continues to find its orientation.
A Loudly-Delivered Homily Recently this video, of a homily given by Father Sammie Maletta of St. John the Evangelist parish in St. John, Indiana, has been making the rounds of the Catholic blogosphere. Give it a listen, if you will. My reaction to this video was: “Thank God for this fine priest.” Examining the reactions of … Read more
The reaction of Catholic leaders to Larry Doyle’s recent satiric piece at HuffPo, “The Jesus-Eating Cult of Rick Santorum,” has been exactly the wrong reaction. We have taken offense, demanded apologies of Arianna Huffington, and asked that we please not be exposed through satire to the virulently-anti Catholic opinions of the Church’s opponents. Doyle’s piece, … Read more
It all started at the Tune Inn. The age-old dive on Pennsylvania Avenue Southeast has been the launching pad for countless forays into “innovative policy initiatives,” and this one was no exception. A few Capitol Hill staff alumni had gathered for an informal reunion in the back room, beyond the louts, the lobbyists, and the … Read more