Will Hoyt: Wayfarer in a New World
Hoyt’s latest book is a last shot across the bow of the ship, warning us about the fast approaching and all engrossing technocratic world.
Why the Church Has Failed to Convert Modern Man
A couple of months ago I noted that we live in a time in which connections like family, kinship, religion, and inherited culture and community are dissolving. The feeling against borders and Brexit shows that even national connections are disappearing in the minds of many people. But a time of dissolution is also a time … Read more
A Letter From Spain in the Year 2050
In the year 2050, Spain, once a proud global empire of strong-willed people, has become Brussels’ poster child. Few countries have transformed their anthropology so thoroughly and quickly. Modernization, technocratization and Europeanization have been pushed so dramatically that it looks like an EU super-vassal state. The quest for democracy has long since given way to … Read more
Living in the Zombie Age
The Sutherland Springs shooter, who took the lives of 26 men, women, and children in a small Texas church, was, like scores of others before him, one of the living dead. Dylan Klebold, James Holmes, Adam Lanza, Stephen Paddock, and Devin Patrick Kelley represent what the apostle Paul warned would characterize the latter days: people … Read more
What “Hate” and “Bigotry” Mean Today
Everyone seems to agree that haters and bigots are bad people. The belief makes some sense. If someone’s way of viewing others is based on aversions that don’t regard truth or justice then it’s basically malicious, at least in the extreme cases the words “hate” and “bigotry” suggest. So it seems that Catholics can buy … Read more
Logan, Technocracy, and the Abolition of Man
The newly released film Logan, the final appearance of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, the metal-clawed and brooding member of the X-Men, is indeed a film heavy on violence and profanity. It does, however, offer a fascinating view of what is possible when man uses technological advancement divorced from any conception of nature and the good. … Read more
What Every Evangelist Needs to Know
Editor’s note: The following address by Bishop James Conley of the Diocese of Lincoln was delivered at the Spirit Catholic Radio/Catholic Answers Evangelization Conference in Omaha on October 29, 2016. This version has been slightly shortened. ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ Dear friends in Christ, I am very glad to be here with you for … Read more
The Advantages of Natural Law Over Ideological Fantasies
Last month I noted that Catholics, along with presenting the Faith, should try vigorously to make natural law more visible in public discussion. But how? The very idea of natural law provokes incomprehension today. It favors principles that aren’t engineered or controlled, so they don’t fit into a technological understanding of rationality. Even worse, it means … Read more
The True Benedict Option for Our Time
Catholics who concern themselves with political and social issues, and non-Catholics who believe in a social order that takes natural law and human nature seriously, face trends that seem overwhelming and point toward a social order with no concern for most of what makes us human. Hence the talk about the “Benedict option,“ which seems … Read more
The Left vs. Human Nature
The Left does not like the idea of human nature. It tells them they are not free to do what they want. From a factual perspective, it tells them people do not change much, so the way things were in the past is mostly how they will be in the future. From a moral perspective, … Read more
What is the Church’s Political Role?
For more than 1500 years the Church was a major influence on Western politics. That is how it should be. Ultimate standards matter, and if the Church doesn’t explain what they are and how to apply them someone else will. It’s not an improvement when her authority gives way to that of journalists, advertisers, TV … Read more
How to Accentuate the Positive
In recent decades the Church has tried more than ever to accentuate the positive. As a result, she talks less about rules and prohibitions than in the past. Those things are important, the thought seems to be, but they exist for a purpose, and the positive teachings tell us what the purpose is. After all, … Read more
Escape Egalitarian Tyranny with Socratic Questioning
Last month I discussed how the assumptions and language of public life today, which are based on commercial and bureaucratic concerns, are biased against Catholics. To make matters worse, the all-pervasive electronic media, increasing reliance on commerce and bureaucracy in everyday affairs, and changes in the purposes of formal education, along with its radical expansion, … Read more
Catholics Must Reject Elite Discourse
It seems that Catholics have been getting nowhere in the public square lately. The problem is not just losing ground on this issue or that, but an increasing inability to get our issues recognized as real and legitimate. That’s true not only with moral issues, but also with more basic ones like the rationality of … Read more
Don’t Let Social Engineers Define Normality
The great political, social, and moral issue of the present day is the authority of the natural and normal. Accepting that authority means accepting a vernacular form of natural law, and thus a belief that the world has an innate way of functioning that is presumptively good. We can understand a great deal about that … Read more
Conservatism: Its Meaning and Prospects
Conservatism at bottom is resistance to the technocratic project, the modern attempt to turn the social world into a sort of universal machine for the maximum satisfaction of preferences. That project has been growing up for a long time. It comes out of an understanding of knowledge and the world with its roots in the … Read more
Be Hopeful: The Lunacy Can’t Last Forever
In a recent piece published in Crisis I commented on the features of our public life that led the Supreme Court to assert that support for the natural definition of marriage is simply an attempt to harm people. One reader wrote to say he found the piece both convincing and horrific. He noted that it … Read more