Baron Friedrich von Hügel was born in Germany but spent most of his life in England, having married into the distinguished family of Herberts. He was a popular spiritual writer in the Anglo-Catholic sphere of the early 20th century. One of his works, The Life of Prayer, is a short treatise that questions the assumption, … Read more
When the attacks—legal and otherwise—on Confederate monuments and heritage began to ramp up, I warned in various venues that it would not stop there. And, of course, such disparate characters as Kate Smith and Columbus followed in that train. But ever since the eruption of riots across the nation and the rest of the Western … Read more
The most striking thing about the killing of Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta was that up until the moment the police officer was about to place a cuff on his left hand, Brooks had been obeying police instructions and conversing pleasantly with them. Then, suddenly, he turned wild and struggled mightily with the two officers. What … Read more
“Yes, I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down. They are a form of white supremacy. Always have been…. All murals and stained glass windows of white Jesus, and his European mother, and their white friends should also come down. They are a gross form of white … Read more
“We could have a summer of love.” — Jennifer Durkan, Mayor of Seattle “At last I am free!” declared Martin Niemoller, holding a small book as the prison door was locked behind him. He had been allowed to keep a Bible, and his words would have been an inscrutable paradox only to those who do … Read more
“An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex,” he wrote. “It is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex.” This isn’t the … Read more
“Catholic social doctrine talks about taking care of those who can’t take care of themselves, people who need help. With regard to abortion, I accept my church’s position that life begins at conception. That’s the church’s judgment. I accept it in my personal life. But I refuse to impose it on equally devout Christians and … Read more
What if we treated the issue of race in our criminal justice system as we do in our medical system? That is, not as a cause but as an index. What do I mean? Statistics in the criminal justice system show that blacks are more likely to be arrested for violent crimes, incarcerated, and victims … Read more
“When men follow justice, the whole city blooms, the earth bears rich harvests, and children and flocks increase, but to the unjust all nature is hostile, the people waste away from famine and pestilence, and a single man’s sin may bring ruin on a whole city.” — Hesiod From Rome to Washington, the Successors to … Read more
As anno domini 2020 limps into another month, we are all bound to hear a thousand times, “I can’t believe it’s June already!” (or some slight variation thereof.) We heard it in May, and in April before that. This is one of the strangest side effects of the coronavirus crisis: it has wrecked our sense … Read more
Editor’s note: This open letter was written by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò to President Donald J. Trump in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and anti-police riots in the United States. It is reprinted here. June 7, 2020 Holy Trinity Sunday Mr. President, In recent months we have been witnessing the formation of two opposing sides … Read more
“There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.” So wrote Vladimir Lenin. The Communist Revolution which he engineered did seem to pack many decades of change into a relatively short time. The old tsarist order was quickly overthrown, and, almost overnight, Russia was transformed from a Christian country to an … Read more
Only the gifted pen of a Tom Wolfe could have minted the generation-defining sobriquet, radical chic. It first appeared in a long monograph in New York magazine in 1970, where the author wrote a withering piece describing a fashionable cocktail party at the West Side apartment of Leonard Bernstein. The impresario had invited the glitterati … Read more
On May 25, 2020, the Calgary, Alberta city council passed a “conversion therapy” bill by a vote of 14-1. According to the bill, any councilor who offers to reduce a person’s same-sex attraction or reaffirm a person’s birth sex is subject to a fine of up to $10,000. The by-law also applies to anyone making … Read more
“To fight racism, Catholics must hunger for justice like we do for the Eucharist.” This was the headline of a joint editorial piece published on America, the Jesuit magazine, upon the aftermath of a week’s worth of mob protest, extensive looting, and the disintegration of public law and order. In just a few words, the … Read more
“The counter-revolution will not be a contrary revolution, but the contrary of revolution.” — Joseph de Maistre Should Catholics be excommunicated for holding views on race which are found to be insufficiently woke? The Jesuits seem to think so. In a June 1 editorial, America magazine urged Catholics to “hunger for [social] justice like we … Read more
Six or seven centuries “are like an evening gone” when tracing the course of common sense, and so James Madison found no anachronism in conjuring the shades of Juvenal and Cleon, more than six centuries apart, to make a point about the perils of the right and wrong manipulation of human will. He asked with … Read more
Pope Leo XIII, born 210 years ago this year, is perhaps best known for his Marianism. He was one of the Church’s greatest promoters of the Holy Rosary, and was the first pontiff to embrace the title of Mediatrix for Our Lady. Yet Leo was one of the great thinkers of the modern age, having … Read more
Call the generation of which I am an exceedingly junior member either “the Baby Boomers” or the “Generation of ’68” and you evoke two similar but distinct images. The first makes one think of self-indulgent hippies-turned-self-indulgent old people; the second, revolutionaries-become-establishment. While neither is completely accurate, neither is entirely false. Like it or not, the … Read more
“Active shooter at Naval Air Station in Corpus Christi.” That was the breaking news story on Thursday morning. It turned out that the shooter was no longer active, having been “neutralized” after wounding a member of the base security force. As it happens, I was in the middle of writing a piece—the article you are … Read more