Let’s say you go to the doctor with a pain in your gut, and the doctor very astutely discovers that you have been poisoned. He knows how and when it happened. He knows the precise kind of poison that victimized you. Then he gives your prescription: more poison in higher doses. You would be at … Read more
The following will explain the most important idea in the history of social analysis. The notion (actually, it’s a description of reality that is all around us but rarely noticed) has been around for many centuries. It was first discovered by late-medieval monks working in Spain. It was given scientific precision in the classical period. … Read more
Catholic discussion of economic policy usually takes place on a ridiculous level of abstraction. What is fairness, and can the market accomplish that? Shouldn’t the civic order bear responsibility for the health and well-being of its members? How can we balance the demands of social equality and individual ownership? These are all very high-minded questions, … Read more
Professor Richard Beck offers a provocative and well-written look at a truth that hardly anyone else is willing to state. In his piece “How Facebook Killed the Church,” he argues that our new connectivity through Facebook and cell phones, and the broader digital world of Twitter and Skype, is hammering away at the foundational social … Read more
After years of going nowhere, economic theory in the Catholic world just got a big upgrade from none other than the head of the Vatican’s bank. Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, a one-time private banker and professor of financial ethics at the Catholic University in Milan, has headed the Institute for Religious Works since 2009. Writing in … Read more
New Zealand has implemented the people’s parts and the Mass ordinary of the third edition of the English Roman Rite Missal, while the United States can look forward to the replacement of the current lame-duck Missal, which dates from the Age of Aquarius, with the corrected translation this time next year. Dignity, solemnity, and the … Read more
For years I’ve puzzled over the question of why Catholics have such trouble coming to terms with economics. This problem applies only to modern Catholics, for it was Catholics in 15th- and 16th-century Spain who systematized the discipline to begin with. That was long ago. Today, most of what is written about economics in Catholic … Read more
Checking out at the grocery store the other day, I paid for my sack of rolls. The checkout person handed me my bag. “Thank you,” I said. “You’re welcome,” she said. I walked away with a sense that something was wrong. Do checkout people usually say “you’re welcome” and nothing else? Not usually. Usually they … Read more
Postmodern man — and postmodern woman — don’t know how to give a good party. It’s up to Catholics to reclaim this lost art and share it with the world. Why? Because good parties are intrinsic to our Catholic faith. The liturgical year is punctuated with a wide array of feast days and celebrations, many … Read more
Boredom during the liturgy is something all Catholics have felt from time to time, and it’s never justifiable. No matter how mundane the architecture, how dull the homily, or how bad the music, what’s taking place on the altar is a miraculous sacrifice that gives us the grace for salvation. That reality should be … Read more
It usually starts with the missalettes — those lightweight booklets scattered around the pews of your parish church. They contain all the readings of the Sunday Masses, plus some hymns and responses in the back. There’s nothing between the covers that would offend an orthodox sense of the faith, and most of the songs are … Read more
The season of Lent is upon us, sending one of the few signals Catholic musicians hear outside Christmas and Easter. The message: The music should be sort of slow and penitential, unless we’re talking about one of those cheesy modern upbeat songs about our "Lenten journey" to work for social justice. Is … Read more
The Catholic Church in the English-speaking world has a serious problem, and it is becoming ever more apparent in the digital age: It maintains a copyright on its ritual texts and charges royalties for printing and distributing them, while admitting only narrow exceptions. The Catholic Church is alone among major denominations in using this pay-to-pray … Read more
Catholics are seriously annoyed at the way the holiday season is changing. If you are among them, you are probably already annoyed at this article, because I didn’t say Christmas season. It is Christmas, for goodness sake, so why can’t we just say that? I received an e-mail the other day from Amazon.com headlined, “The … Read more
One of the most gripping and spiritually terrifying novels I’ve encountered is Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. The story is well known from many film versions, none of which does the story justice, since the visual inevitably puts the focus on the horrors of the painting itself. This is really a distraction, because … Read more
As angry as many people were about the bailout of Wall Street, something else makes people just about as angry: falling stock prices. It is probably for this reason that Washington decided to take the risk and push one of the more outrageously extravagant spending programs in the history of the world. The benefits of … Read more
A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World William J. Bernstein, Atlantic Monthly Press, 494 pages, $30 It was the year 1600 and coffee had become wildly popular all over Europe, just as it had been popular all over the Muslim world since its discovery 900 years earlier. The sitting pope was Clement VIII. His … Read more
There is much to celebrate in the collapse of Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch; not the fall of these companies in particular, but what the fall represents. It shows the impossibility of holding onto wealth and power in a free society that is always in flux. And this is as it should be. I’ll explain … Read more
Barack Obama’s tax advisers recently posted a piece in the Wall Street Journal about their candidate’s tax plans. Their article was designed to triangulate, painting their candidate as a tax cutter and the Republican opposition as a secret tax raiser. It was well-written and well-argued — not that you can really trust anything you read … Read more
In my hometown, the peace rallies are always sponsored by the Unitarians. Actually, it is they who are the participants too.  Ain’t My America: The Long, Noble History of Antiwar Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-Imperialism By Bill Kauffman, Metropolitan Books, $25, 304 pages    In my hometown, the peace rallies are always sponsored … Read more