A recent national news story told of the sentencing to prison of a former University of Mississippi student who, after excessive drinking and with a couple of fraternity brothers, during the night put a noose and Confederate battle emblem on the campus statue of racial justice hero James Meredith. Graeme Phillip Harris received six months … Read more
The age of Jenner, Obergefell, and #BlackLivesMatter puts issues of identity at the center of public life. As Catholics and citizens we need to understand what that means. Personal identity orients us in the world. As such, it has both individual and social functions. It enables us to order our lives by telling us what we … Read more
Much has been written about the Pope’s humility, and he himself has often spoken about the need for humility. Yet it is possible to detect a certain amount of hubris in the positions he takes on political and scientific matters. For example, it takes a certain level of hubris for a man to take a … Read more
In a Washington Post syndicated column published last weekend, George Will went after Pope Francis and his coreligionists with phrases that might have been drawn from nineteenth-century liberal Protestant polemics. Among the Pope’s supposed vices are that “he stands against modernity, rationality, science, and ultimately, the spontaneous creativity of open societies in which people and their … Read more
We’ve come to that agonizing point in our political process when each political party must choose its champion. Republicans are trying to decide in whose hands to place their party’s fate. The inexperienced but well-spoken Marco Rubio? Rand Paul, a man of intelligence and conviction who nonetheless selected drone strikes as the issue most worthy of a … Read more
Would you support a Muslim for president of the United States? That was the question asked of Dr. Ben Carson on Sunday’s “Meet the Press.” He replied, “I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that.” The Islamic faith, said Carson in explanation, … Read more
The former students of Pope Benedict have an annual seminar (Ratzinger Schülerkreis) to think about his vast and profound intellectual accomplishments. This year’s meeting was held Castel Gandolfo. On August 30, in the Church of the Teutonic Cemetery in the Vatican, Pope Benedict gave a brief, penetrating homily in German to the group. The general … Read more
I have added my name to a friend of the court brief in the case of Little Sisters of the Poor vs. Burwell. Professor Nathanial Oman of the law school at William and Mary proposed and took the lead in writing this brief, which was joined by a number of concerned law professors. It was written … Read more
Other than the large numbers involved, one of the most striking features of Europe’s migrant crisis is the level of discourse surrounding it. There is an emotionalism about the subject which doesn’t seem quite appropriate to the gravity of the situation. Momentous issues are being decided on the basis of what Peter Hitchens calls “an … Read more
It started as a normal day. I sat down with a cup of French roast and signed on to Facebook. Once again, the word “bigot” was being hurled all over the place. We see this word more and more, mostly in disputes over gay “marriage.” The thing I despise the most about this word is … Read more
As Congress began hearings last week to examine the federal laws guiding the procurement and sale of fetal tissue for medical research, the focus has remained on the role Planned Parenthood plays in harvesting this tissue. We argue that Congressional leaders need to begin paying attention to the end-stage users in the value chain surrounding … Read more
The recent Planned Parenthood videos showing doctors and medical technicians casually describing fetal dismemberment are an instructive slap across the face for all who remain anesthetized to what happens in an abortion. One well-known cable news anchor was visibly upset when discussing the first video with her on-air guest: “Where is your humanity?” she asked. … Read more
Catholic and international media are abuzz over Pope Francis’ trip to Cuba, the third consecutive pope to visit this island thoroughly destroyed by the two Castro brothers. The Castros have utterly ruined this onetime bastion of Roman Catholicism with a cruel, morally unconscionable Marxist-Leninist atheism. A dozen Hurricane Katrinas could not have generated the mass … Read more
“Times have changed. It’s not the nineties anymore.” So says a TV commercial for a brokerage firm. Presumably, the lesson is that investment strategies that worked then won’t work now: the market has changed and so should you. Times have changed in other respects also. The assumptions that one could safely make about the world … Read more
In an incisive talk in Des Moines August 24, Ted Cruz covered the issue of religious liberty in the United States. He was quite aware of the persecution of Christians in the Near East under Islamic regimes. He had a moving chat with the wife of an evangelical pastor imprisoned in Iran. He stated that, … Read more
Here’s a simple exercise in basic reasoning. On a spectrum of bad things to do, theft is bad, assault is worse and murder is worst. There’s a similar texture of ill will connecting all three crimes, but only a very confused conscience would equate thieving and homicide. Both are serious matters. But there is no … Read more
In the 1996 crime drama film A Time to Kill, a ten-year-old black girl named Tonya is violently raped by two white supremacists. She survives and the men are arrested, but before an all-white jury they will likely walk free. So Tonya’s father, Carl Lee Hailey (Samuel L. Jackson), takes the law into his own … Read more
Defenders of marriage and the traditional family continue to lose battle after battle to the purveyors of sexual liberation. So predictable have their defeats become that the judicial coup at the US Supreme Court over same-sex “marriage” surprised no one. Moreover, it finally but slowly seems to be dawning on Christian leaders that much more … Read more
A decade ago I was in graduate school studying international political economy and development, an interdisciplinary course meant to prepare idealistic young Americans for careers in relief organizations and international institutions. The horrors of Srebrenica and Rwanda didn’t seem as distant then as they do now, so genocide—alongside the awfulness of economic globalization—was a hot … Read more
When F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “Show me a hero, and I’ll write you a tragedy,” he might have had someone like Cate Dyer in mind. Dyer is the 36-year-old founder and CEO of StemExpress, the fetal tissue procurement company at the center of the Planned Parenthood scandal. Lauded as a pioneer in promoting life-saving research … Read more