Church

The Key to the Bastille: Learning from the Past with Benedict XVI

by Christopher O. Blum

“Show me what a man remembers of his past,” the late Fritz Wilhelmsen once said, “and I will tell you what kind of man he is.” Like Friedrich Nietzsche, Wilhelmsen was inclined to bold affirmation and even bolder denial, and…

Liberal Catholicism: Requiescat in Pace

by Samuel Gregg

With the dust settling on the uproar which followed the Vatican’s April intervention into the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), it’s possible to put this and other emerging trends into a longer-term perspective. The blustering reaction of the LCWR…

Roger Williams and The Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty

by Rev. Michael P. Orsi

The role of individual conscience and religion in American society has been debated since the arrival of the first English settlers. The original intent of the Puritans was to establish a theocracy in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. John Winthrop, its…

Catholic Schools: Toeing the Party Line

by Paul Kokoski

Robbed of much of their vitality by the violent implosion in religious orders, especially those devoted to teaching the young, over the past fifty years, our Catholic schools have struggled to stay alive – and many have closed their doors…

The Speed of Change in the Republic of Rights

by Rev. James V. Schall, S.J.

“I grew up in Kansas. When I began my book Render Unto Caesar in 2006, I had in my mind the America I always knew—or thought I knew. But that America, I admit, has been passing for fifty years, and…

Lawless Christians

by Howard Kainz

We consider that a person is justified by faith apart from works of the law. –Rom. 3:28 We have believed in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because…

Our National Pride

by Fr. Robert Johansen

“I’m proud to be an American.” Those words are more than the refrain of a country-western song. This sentiment encompasses both reflection on our past and national aspiration. We look back on our history and see things we can be…

Hope: When A Loved One Dies in Sin

by Rev. John Jay Hughes

My mother died at age 27. She left a grieving husband and three little children: myself, age six, and my younger sister and brother, ages four and two, respectively. I remember my mother well, her death from pneumonia the day…

Because She’s a Kennedy

by Christian Tappe

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend—yes, one of the Kennedys—recently wrote an inspired piece of moral theology in The Atlantic. And we should all take note. Fresh off a rally with New Ways Ministry, the Maryland-based group of Catholics who promote a “gay…

Authority and Its Discontents

by Christopher Manion

The Church’s response to the ObamaCare Mandate calls to mind this journal’s original name, Catholicism in Crisis. Today the Church confronts a crisis – “an invasion of our religious freedom,” Donald Cardinal Wuerl calls it — and the outcome is…

Bring Me The Head of Maria Stuarda

The thought of a new book, from a proverbially establishmentarian imprint, on Elizabeth I’s spymaster is not one that immediately gladdens the heart. Anyone who has actually been expected to spend time in modern England – rather than simply viewing…

Cardinal Dolan and the New Evangelization

by George Weigel

The irrepressibly effervescent personality of Cardinal Timothy Dolan may tempt some to think of the archbishop of New York and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops as the latest in a line of glad-handing Irish-American prelates, long on…

The Age of the Laity…or the Latte?

by William Fahey

So what will it be? A grande Latte… or Western Civilization? A scone with that… or the meat of doctrine? An extra shot of espresso… or the survival of families? A Moccachino… or the Mystical Body of Christ? Today, the…

Rick Santorum and the Kingship of Christ, Part Two

by William Fahey

This second part of this series treats the experience of Roman Catholics during the Founding era, since this period establishes the particular milieu in which American political rhetoric was forged and continues to find its orientation.

The Irrational Beauty of Conversion

by Christian Tappe

The world is spiraling out of control. It has been, in fact, since its pinnacle eight hundred years ago, but today it seems that any minute now, we’ll hurtle off kilter. The HHS Mandate threatens the religious freedom of all…

Larry Doyle’s “Jesus-Eating Cult”

by Harold Fickett

The reaction of Catholic leaders to Larry Doyle’s recent satiric piece at HuffPo, “The Jesus-Eating Cult of Rick Santorum,” has been exactly the wrong reaction. We have taken offense, demanded apologies of Arianna Huffington, and asked that we please not…

False Premises

by Peter J. Colosi

Earlier this month in a Catholic Exchange piece I said that those in support of the HHS mandate think that the Catholic position prohibiting contraception is irrational; I failed to mention that they also think the prohibition is immoral. This is why,…

The Coming Age of the Laity

by Christopher Manion

To win the culture war, the Church is going to have to break a lot of bad habits. And old habits die hard. A new generation of bishops now recognize the perils of allying with the American government that Pope Leo XIII warned against a century ago.

From the Beginning: The Father and the Son

by Rev. James V. Schall, S.J.

Our civilization is full of thinkers who have claimed to know the Father without Christ. Likewise, we find those who claim the Son can be known by study or by philosophy. He does not “reveal” anything but a visionary, a carpenter, a zealot, a revolutionary. What Irenaeus tells us is that getting it right is important for our very well-being.

Jean-Baptiste Lamy, the Apostle of Santa Fe

by Christopher Check

The man chosen by Blessed Pius IX to restore the Faith to the troubled American Southwest was the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Lamy, who died on the 13th of February in the year of Grace 1888.

Hagia Sophia is No Lady

The primary use of sexual metaphors in Christianity is to convey the balance of activity and passivity, initiative and response, between the Lord and a human soul. We call the Church the “bride” of Christ, and Jesus the “bridegroom” of the soul precisely because of what these terms convey to psychologically normal people…

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