I’m sure it has happened to you: In the course of an argument about some timeless teaching of the Church, your opponent dismisses what you’re saying as “medieval.” In other words, your position (and the Church’s) might have worked well enough when the Black Plague was ravaging Europe, the majority of literate men were … Read more
The pro-life group LiveAction released a video earlier this week where members posing as sex traffickers received advice on their “business” from a New Jersey Planned Parenthood clinic manager. Yesterday, the clinic fired that manager. Today, LiveAction released a second video that shows a similar scenario playing out in a Richmond, VA, clinic. LiveAction president … Read more
Certainly one of the English language’s most charming grammatical dictums (okay, likely its only charming grammatical dictum) is this: “The male embraces the female.” For hundreds of years, the masculine pronoun did double duty, referring specifically to persons of the male sex and generally to persons of either sex. As such arrangements go, the “universal … Read more
…needless to say the nurses will bathe you every day. Your muscles will deteriorate, of course. But so what? You’ll have no need for muscles. You will have no friends,…
The Japanese are in the mist of a serious population decline, with one estimate claiming the citizenry shrank by 75,000 in 2009, an increase of almost 150% from the year prior. As the Japan Times noted in a 2010 editorial: The National Institute of Population and Social Security Research estimates that Japan’s population will dip … Read more
I’m a lifelong Democrat who is now badly disillusioned with the Democratic Party. Why? Because the party has become America’s anti-Christian party, a party that is dominated not just by atheists and agnostics (the agnostics being of that species whose skepticism is the virtual equivalent of atheism), but by atheists and agnostics having an anti-religion … Read more
The New York Times reported yesterday on Pope Benedict’s Christmas message to Vatican hierarchy in Rome where he spoke about the clergy sexual abuse crisis: Pope Benedict XVI said on Monday that the continuing sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church had reached a “degree we could not have imagined” this year, and that … Read more
Anyone looking for a last-minute Christmas gift for those notoriously hard-to-shop-for friends and family members should consider picking up a copy of Anthony Esolen’s latest book, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child. Tony, a regular contributor at IC, has written many beautiful reflections here that comment thoughtfully on the sorry state of … Read more
Each week of Advent I’m highlighting some gift ideas that IC readers might be interested in giving or getting. Here’s this week’s list: Last week I mentioned the Carmelite Monks of Wyoming and their wonderful coffee, but failed to highlight their popular Jingle Bell Java. The Anchoress admits she not only buys it for Christmas … Read more
Is marriage obsolete? According to a new TIME/ Pew Research Center poll, 40% of Americans believe it is. What we found is that marriage, whatever its social, spiritual or symbolic appeal, is in purely practical terms just not as necessary as it used to be. Neither men nor women need to be married to have … Read more
Who is to blame for the suicides of teenage boys “struggling with sexual identity” that have been so highly publicized in the last two months? If we are to believe many media sources, primary blame rests on bullying peers. But I wonder: Is the homosexual community — and the Catholic Church — ignoring the darker, … Read more
Among its mournful fruits, Roe v. Wade has advanced the debasement of sex instruction in our schools. Over a quarter-century after the legalization of abortion, institutionalized “sex ed,” like a caustic agent, has eroded the innocence of our youth. Hence the dark coeval of our time: the murder of unborn children alongside the murder of … Read more
Cybernetics — basically, the science of the brain qua computer — explains much more than we realized. They used to think schizophrenia was due to demons. Then it was bad parenting. Now some think it may be bad brain wiring. They used to think déjà vu (“Hey! I’ve been here before!”) was evidence of reincarnation. … Read more
It has fallen to my lot recently to teach classics in a small high school not far from my house that offers courses for homeschooled students. Most of them come from Christian households, so one may take it for granted in the classroom that traditional moral values are in place. This is convenient in an … Read more
Last week, the USCCB issued its “Review and Renewal of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.” The document contains a series of recommendations to reform CCHD grant awards in response to alarming disclosures that financial support was going to groups that supported abortion and same-sex marriage. Five groups were defunded, but dozens more have been … Read more
“Be right back!” I said to my coworker as I ran to the ladies restroom in my office. Tearing open the Target shipping box, the bright red swimsuit I had ordered online fell into my hands. I slid the strapless, ruched one-piece on and swung open the bathroom stall door to look in the mirror. … Read more
In Ross Douthat’s Sunday New York Times column, he explains why — despite the insistence that the Church today is irrelevant for failing to keep up with the times — hundreds of thousands of Catholics came out for the UK papal visit: [I]n turning out for their beleaguered pope, Britain’s Catholics acknowledged something essential about … Read more
Salon staff writer Tracy Clark-Flory thinks Americans need to be more like the Dutch when it comes to teenage sex. In a recent column, she wrote that Dutch parents can teach their U.S. counterparts about “respect and acceptance of teenage sexuality.” Clark-Flory finds her views supported by a couple of studies, including one from 2003 … Read more
This is probably the best defense of traditional marriage that I’ve read. The writers are respectful of the views of same-sex marriage proponents, which is unusual in pieces like this. One section about the role of the state particularly caught my attention: …Although it is still a radical position without much purchase in public opinion, … Read more
Despite boasting one-fifth of the world’s population, the Catholic Church is by no means a “popular” institution. Classical teachings on abortion, premarital sex, divorce, and especially contraception are thought by many — both outside the Church and within — to reek of old-fashioned ideas of sex at best and, at worst, patriarchal views of women. … Read more