Jonathan B. Coe

Jonathan B. Coe writes from the Pacific Northwest. Before being received into the Catholic Church in 2004, he served in pastoral ministry in rural Alaska and in campus ministry at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

recent articles

Exposing the Left’s Mythology About the Nordic Countries

One of the positive aspects of a particular political party holding power for several years or even decades in a particular city, state, or country is that you can see if their policies really work or not. They don’t have an opposing party to limit their influence so there are no excuses, such as, “Things … Read more

Meditations on the Feast of the Transfiguration

The end of the second chapter of the Gospel of John tells us that, because of the miracles he performed, many people believed in the name of Jesus when he was in Jerusalem during the Passover feast. However, the narrative goes on to disclose that “Jesus did not trust himself to them, because he knew … Read more

Open Borders Is Not a Moral Immigration Policy

“Where there is no guidance, a people falls; but in an abundance of counselors there is safety” (Prov. 11:14). Such ancient Hebrew wisdom is relevant as we look at major public policies through different prisms (empirical, pragmatic, moral, anecdotal, sentimental [i.e., feeling]) and seek to make prudential judgments that will cultivate national stability and human … Read more

Daily Life In Mexifornia

With its elegant prose and page after page that is chock-full of knowledge and wisdom, it is easy to overlook that Victor Davis Hanson’s Mexifornia: A State of Becoming had a singular message for the reader back in 2003 when it was first published. If immigration policy in America isn’t significantly reformed, many places will … Read more

Mexifornia and the Prophetic Voice of Victor Davis Hanson

Classicist and military historian Victor Davis Hanson’s extended essay and memoir, Mexifornia: A State of Becoming, has aged well since it’s publication in 2003, when it was met with significant criticism from both the Left and the economic-libertarian Right, who, according to Hanson, accused him of being a racist, nativist, and isolationist. Its grave concerns, … Read more

The Humility of the Mother of God

About a year before being received into the Catholic Church in 2004, the biggest obstacle to conversion for me, a Protestant, who had moved in evangelical and evangelical-charismatic circles, was not the Church’s Marian doctrines, but the political and economic positions of many of the bishops, who seemed to be, except for their stances on … Read more

Why the Left Is So Seductive

Much has been written in recent decades, and with good reason, about the institutions that shape culture (academia, the mainstream media, the entertainment industry), their liberal bias, and how they can be effective evangelists for the Left. However, this essay will explore forces within the human person—formidable but not irresistible—that go back to the Garden … Read more

The Desert Fathers and the Geography of the Human Heart

“The crown of the monk is humility.”  ∼ Abba Orr, Desert Father, fourth century. The Lenten season is well underway and it would be difficult to find devotional writings more aligned with the spirit of Lent than the words of the Desert Fathers. Two volumes come to mind: The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, translated by … Read more

A Lion Teaches Us About Humility

It’s a small miracle, in our present moment of pronounced decline, that any new Catholic eventually arrives at the destination of robust orthodoxy, fervent spirituality, and luminous sanctity. Recent polls confirm this assertion in disclosing the widespread heterodox beliefs and practices of American Catholics: 65 percent believe that employers who have a religious objection to … Read more

Hearing the Still, Small Voice of Orthodoxy

After his confrontation with Ahab and the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel, where he called fire down from heaven and killed those prophets, Elijah fled for his life, first to Beersheba then to Horeb (I Kings 18:16-19:18). At Horeb the Lord appeared to Elijah, but before this appearance, the prophet experienced a powerful windstorm, … Read more

The Church in the Wilderness

When looking at the American Catholic Church and the surrounding culture, the honest, orthodox Catholic is left with at least two sobering conclusions: we are losing the culture war both outside the American Catholic Church and inside its precincts. The Obergefell v. Hodges decision (same-sex “marriage”) by the SCOTUS put an exclamation point on the … Read more

The New Darling of the Abortion Rights Movement

And last, the rending pain of re-enactment Of all that you have done, and been; the shame Of things ill done and done to others’ harm Which once you took for exercise of virtue. ∼  T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding, in Four Quartets Author and culture critic par excellence, Mary Eberstadt, has chronicled the shift among … Read more

The Gray Lady’s Long History of Journalistic Malpractice

“He who is compassionate to the cruel will ultimately become cruel to the compassionate.”  ∼ Ancient Midrash of the Sages On February 17, 2017, President Donald Trump created a firestorm of controversy when he tweeted that the news media (The New York Times, CNN, NBC, and many more) is not his enemy, but is the enemy … Read more

Good News For Cranky Catholics in a Post-Christian Age

Whereas T.S. Eliot wrote that “April is the cruelest month” in The Waste Land (a fact empirically verified for me by living in Alaska for 9 years), I’ve found that, at least in the decade of the 2000s, October sometimes became my crankiest. 2004 and 2008 come to mind. Both involved a significant pre-election immersion … Read more

Hope in a Time of Captivity and Persecution

In reading the latest essay by Paul Kengor in Crisis, I was taken aback in learning about James K. A. Smith’s misguided and mean-spirited attack on Rod Dreher, Anthony Esolen, and Archbishop Charles Chaput, whose recent books, among other things, offer the self-evident thesis: American culture is going to hell on a hand basket. As … Read more

Our Universities Are Incorrigibly Religious

If he could’ve seen what has happened in many American institutions in the last half-century, especially the university, Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), the famous Italian Marxist and co-founder of the Italian Communist Party in 1921, would be beaming. World War I was a major disappointment for him. Rather than unite against their wealthy “oppressors,” the proletariat … Read more

The Wisdom Of Saint Mary Of Bethany

Six days before the Passover, one day before Palm Sunday, and not long before Holy Week, Jesus came to Bethany to where Lazarus was with his siblings, Martha and Mary (John 12:1-8). Parallel accounts in Matthew (26:6-13) and Mark (14:3-9) tell us that they were at the house of Simon the leper. While Martha served … Read more

Welcome to the Oppression Olympics

I knew crazy things were happening on college campuses but it seems I wasn’t acutely aware how certain precincts in institutions of “higher” learning had become equal parts Orwellian insane asylum and the Theater of the Absurd. By the time you finish reading the article titled “16 Most Ridiculously PC Moments on College Campuses in … Read more

How Prudent Public Policy Staves Off Leviathan

In a recent essay, I claimed that we need an understanding of biblical anthropology to adequately comprehend the agenda behind much of American public policy in recent decades. This anthropology declares that people were created in Eden, for heaven (Phil. 3:20), and the Preacher (Qoholeth) in Ecclesiastes states that God has “set eternity in [our] … Read more

The Perils of Utopian Overreach

With his usual erudition, C.S. Lewis sums up an important aspect of the human condition: The Christian says, “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. … Read more

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