A debate about—of all things—Abraham Lincoln has broken out in the context of the Supreme Court’s calamitous and ridiculous Obergefell decision that imposed faux marriage on the whole country. More than 60 legal scholars invoked Abraham Lincoln in a recent document urging both private citizens and officials at all levels of government to view the … Read more
Doctors of America need your help to defund Planned Parenthood and a unique opportunity is coming for Catholics to help them. A rare debate will occur at the American Medical Association (AMA) meeting in Atlanta from November 14-17. As a member of the AMA “House of Delegates” (HOD), I have attended meetings nearly twice a … Read more
For months, the news has been flooded with stories about waves of “migrants” descending on Europe from war-ravaged Syria and elsewhere in the Mideast. We also hear about repeated attempts by lesser numbers of people to slip into Europe by sea, usually with the aid of smugglers, from North Africa. This is against the backdrop … Read more
The fact that more than sixty percent of the Irish electorate supported an amendment to the nation’s constitution recognizing same-sex “marriage” caught many people by surprise last spring. They may have been clinging to an outdated image of Ireland as a bastion of devout Catholicism. Unfortunately there further disturbing changes that are being advanced. One … Read more
Few things are certain in this world, but this I believe with untroubled confidence: liberal Catholics are on the wrong side of history. Our Lord has already assured us that the Church will stand the test of time, and “the gates of Hell will not prevail” against it. Ours isn’t the first era in which … Read more
International migration occurs in varied settings and raises a variety of issues, so much so that sorting them out would be difficult even if some of them weren’t so inflammatory. The issues are basic as well as numerous, and go to the nature of the common good, the nature and purpose of national societies, and … Read more
Twenty-five years ago, a small group of activists charged the New York City Saint Patrick’s Day Parade with being a public gesture of pure homophobia. They built their case around the allegedly bigoted “Catholic character.” The trial was held before the judges of the left-leaning secular media. A jury composed of the general public yawned, … Read more
“The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.” ∼ G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy What good will another hatchet job do? It’s easy, I’ve discovered, to invite criticisms ranging from the condescending (“Are you a bad writer, or just poorly educated?”) to the … Read more
You’ve no doubt heard about the “clock boy”—the 14-year-old Muslim student who brought a self-made clock to school to show to his teachers and was then detained by police on the suspicion that the clock might be a bomb. The media pounced on the story as a classic case of Islamophobia, the president complimented Ahmed … Read more
In a recent interview in America (October 12, 2015), in which the editor of the flagship Jesuit journal, Fr. Matt Malone, S.J., sat down with the vice president of the United States, Joseph R. Biden Jr., a series of soft balls were thrown and, to no one’s surprise, every blessed one was slammed right out … Read more
Kim Davis is an innocent victim both of cowardice of churchmen and the smug eagerness of certain priests to put her in her place. First, a few largely uncontested facts: it was Vatican personnel who invited Davis to meet the pope in Washington DC. Neither Kim Davis nor anyone connected to her requested the meeting. … Read more
If every cloud has a silver lining, we can say that the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump has—whatever his detractors may say—served some useful purposes. Those most critical of Trump speak of his followers as delirious, as if they were in the grip of some dreadful political fever. Nevertheless, a fever can be useful to … Read more
Although Poland remains one of the world’s most Catholic cultures, in recent years its government has pushed an agenda separating Catholicism from decision-making in public life, often at odds with Poland’s Constitution and society itself. However, this is now coming to an abrupt halt with the ascent of President Andrzej Duda: young, charismatic, media savvy, … Read more
Until 1947, few Americans knew about Thomas Jefferson’s comment, made in a private letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, that the First Amendment’s guarantee against a federally established church made a “wall of separation between church and state.” It was in that year, in the case of Everson v. Board of Education, that the Supreme Court … Read more
The Synod on the Family will address many issues vital to the survival of the family—with one notable exception. It’s ironic that while the bishops are discussing ways to strengthen the Christian family, they are simultaneously helping to enable the spread of a family system that is inimical to the Christian view of marriage. The … Read more
I teach first-year rhetoric and composition to freshmen at a fairly large university squarely in the center of the American Midwest. In September, as part of the introductory unit, we cover some basic rhetorical concepts, including the famous “triangle” of rhetorical appeals: logos, ethos, and pathos. Logos, I explain, is the appeal to reason: does … Read more
In 1886 a terrible drought turned the plains of Texas to a vast expanse of dust. The United States Congress responded by appropriating $10,000 for seed for Texas farmers, who were in dire straits. This proposal was not folded into some enormous all-or-nothing bill, but was its own thing, to be voted for or against, … Read more
What do Catholics do when late-term abortion is declared “sacred ground,” and “gay marriage equality” is treated in our fundamental law as a basic requirement of justice and decency? We should stand our ground, of course, but that’s easier said than done. Man is social, and today he must find ways to live with others … Read more
So often in contemporary Catholic and Christian circles, there is a tendency to abandon any reference to Christ and his Church when debating thorny marriage issues in our culture. For those of us in Australia who have not suffered the judicial over-reaching that was witnessed in the US, the debate is still open. Yet, those … Read more
Besides doing something about certain lawless decisions made by our black-robed masters, something must also be done about how we came to such a place where they can cast their gaze across the fruited plain and whatever catches their fancy becomes the law of the land, indeed higher than the Constitution. Roe was bad enough, … Read more