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
Religious philosopher Michael Novak, cofounder of Crisis Magazine, was the 1994 recipient of the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion. According to many observers, Novak’s influence played an important role in the drafting of Centesimus Annus, Pope John Paul II’s 1991 encyclical on Catholic social teaching. In particular, Novak’s work is seen within the Holy … Read more
When I wrote a book on happiness in 1995, I was required to read a number of the popular self-help books on the subject. It was only dogged persistence and several strong cigars that got me through them. But lo and behold, at the suggestion of a friend, I took a look at the best-selling … Read more
Many years ago, in 1948, a book was published that had an immediate dramatic effect on its readers. It was written by a young man, Thomas Merton, and told the story of his riotous youth, conversion to Catholicism, and entry into the Trappist monastery at Gethsemani, Kentucky, in 1941, when he was twenty-six years old. … Read more
During four years of college and seven of graduate school, most of it in philosophy and theology, I heard only one lecture on virtue — the virtue of art. Thus I consider it miraculous that the language of virtue has returned to public discourse. But the virtues don’t tell the whole story about human life. … Read more
On May 11, 1879, Rev. John Newman had been in Rome for some weeks when he was called to the Vatican by Pope Leo XIII and was informed that he was to be made a cardinal. It was not a surprise, since then-Father Newman had already been unofficially told the previous year that this great … Read more
I have loved reading since I first put “see,” “spot,” and “run” together, and so one of the great joys I anticipated from motherhood — not in vain — was the pleasure of revisiting childhood books and being introduced to ones I’d missed the first time around. At first there were board books and Pat … Read more
Once, when asked his philosophy, Franklin Roosevelt answered simply, “I am a Christian and a Democrat.”  As always with Roosevelt, there was more to it than that. He was not just a Christian, but a Protestant, an Episcopalian, a descendant of Huguenot and Yankee New Englanders on his mother’s side. And he was not just … Read more
Nothing is more deadly to discourse than Johnny One Note launching another pitch for his particular crusade. I risk sounding a familiar theme only because I just witnessed powerful evidence favoring its cause. I refer to an overwhelming, positive reaction shown by a congregation to a Gregorian chant Mass, given at Saturday five p.m., the … Read more
It is common for Catholic politicians to say that they are personally opposed to abortion, but that they must accept the law and the rights of others to have a choice in the matter. They are, then, personally against but politically in favor of the right to abortion. Although this is a familiar stance, the … Read more
During four years of college and seven of graduate school, most of it in philosophy and theology, I heard only one lecture on virtue — the virtue of art. Thus I consider it miraculous that the language of virtue has returned to public discourse. But the virtues don’t tell the whole story about human life. … Read more
A friend of mine, a cradle Catholic who doubts her faith, asked me what she should teach her four-year old about religion. “Everything,” I said, “heaven, hell, God, angels, sin, grace, forgiveness, don’t leave anything out.” “How can I do that,” she responded, “when I’m not sure myself?” Such attempts at parental honesty can leave … Read more
I have often learned my most valuable lessons from my worst enemies. In graduate school I spent several years wrestling with the texts of the atheistic philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who taught me one unforgettable lesson: Those who lack the tragic sense of life are apt to invent realities to replace the one they cannot face. … Read more
In my 15 years with Crisis Magazine, the Morley Institute, and now InsideCatholic, the conversation that most often reoccurs is the one about the fate of the Catholic university and college. It begins inevitably with alumni complaining about the latest anti-Catholic outbreak on the hallowed grounds of their former college campus and ends with their … Read more
The purpose of higher education is the pursuit of truth, and throughout history men and women have devoted their lives to it. One such man was Mohandas Gandhi. Born in 1869, the son of uneducated parents, he was a mediocre student and a self-described coward who feared ghosts — into adulthood, he slept with a … Read more
Imagine one body with two heads. The twin giants of the Catholic literary revival of the early 20th century, G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, were so much associated in the eyes of the reading public that they together became the butt of the caricaturist’s humor and the satirist’s wit. Most famously, George Bernard Shaw, in … Read more
Richard McGuire is the nom de guerre of a father who is trying to document the crimes of his four children for a hearing at the human-rights tribunal of The Hague. These are some of the lighter moments he captured over seven years — with no help from the NSA — that can be revealed … Read more
Sixty years ago, Catholicism — for the first time — stood at the center of American literature. Katherine Anne Porter, Flannery O’Connor, J. F. Powers, Pietro di Donato, and Mary McCarthy represented the front rank of contemporary fiction. Meanwhile poets like John Berryman, Allen Tate, Robert Lowell, John Frederick Nims, and Robert Fitzgerald became the … Read more
“You’re a married priest? I didn’t know we had married priests. I think the Church should let all her priests marry.” Words like these have greeted me frequently since my ordination to the priesthood in 1983, with dispensation from the rule of celibacy. I always assure those who favor optional celibacy that both my … Read more
The Myth of Pope Joan Alain Boureau, translated by Lydia Cochrane, University of Chicago Press, 2001, 385 pages, $60 Pope Joan is one of the most tenacious myths of the Middle Ages, told and retold by Catholics and anti-Catholics alike since the 13th century. It is said that beautiful young Joan, an Englishwoman born in … Read more
