Did Jesus legitimize the concept of a secular state? Many people, including well-intentioned Christians in today’s polite society, seem to think so. The “proof-text” they point to is Christ’s famous retort in St. Matthew’s Gospel, “render unto to Caesar that which is Caesar’s, but render unto God that which is God’s.” Yet a closer examination, [...]

Here’s a rule of thumb: if The New York Times is praising you, you’re doing something wrong. On March 8, the Times ran an article by Tara Isabella Burton called “Christianity Gets Weird.” It’s about an Extremely Online phenomenon called—yes—“Weird Christianity.” According to Ms. Burton, what Weird Christians (like herself) “have in common is that [...]

Observing the evolution of the responses of governmental agencies, hospital advocates, and political lobbyists to the novel coronavirus from my vantage point within the medical system has raised my level of concern about its likely enduring legacy on American medical practice. The disruptions imposed by our current situation have the potential to dislodge obstructive barriers [...]

Great hopes and boundless resources are being poured into global efforts to fight the Covid-19 pandemic. This is a unique moment of unity and solidarity when humanity has mobilized to save lives. Billions of people are making sacrifices like staying home and shutting down events and businesses to keep others safe. This moment is particularly [...]

As of this writing, just five percent of Americans have not been on some form of lockdown over the past seven weeks to curb the spread of Covid-19. As society reopens, politicians, pundits, and business leaders are divided over the next step. So is the Catholic Church. In some areas not hammered so hard by [...]

What would James Madison and Thomas Jefferson—the philosophical and logistical masterminds behind the historically influential Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom in 1786—have to say about the latest ruckus over religious liberty in their beloved Old Dominion? Lighthouse Fellowship Church, a church located on tourist-friendly Chincoteague Island, is suing Virginia Democratic Governor Ralph Northam, whose [...]

Edmund Burke once said, “People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.” By the grace of God, as a society we have not reached [...]

Today, the Little Sisters of the Poor were back at the U.S. Supreme Court, hoping finally to bring their eight-year legal battle to an end. While several of the justices seemed inclined to side with the Trump administration’s expanded religious exemptions to the contraceptive mandate, I’ve been surprised to see much of the opposition to [...]

And so it has come to pass in these strange and dangerous days that an American cardinal is being criticized—and even exhorted to resign—for expressing support for an American president. But those who are critical of New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan for taking part in a conference call with President Trump, and later complimenting the [...]

Hatred comes first, and reasons follow after. In our time, from what I can see, political hatreds are the worst, because they are proof against any appeal to real things. Realities have receded, and the phantoms of imagination, of mass entertainment and its passions, rush in to take their place. Let me explain. We used [...]

Rod Dreher lives in fear. It comes out in his life and certainly in much if not most of his writing. Just this week he was writing about (what else?) the coronavirus, commenting on his blog at The American Conservative, “This thing is going to be with us a very, very long time. It will [...]

Each year on May 1, the Catholic faithful celebrate the feast day of Saint Joseph the Worker. This feast day, instituted by Pope Pius XII in 1955, was meant to provide downtrodden laborers with a spiritual patron, as well as an alternative to the communist labor agitation that was prevalent at the time. The Catholic [...]

There is a great deal of division among Catholics across the globe today regarding the way in which the hierarchy have dealt with the pandemic. Some feel that by closing churches and forbidding the Sacraments to the faithful, those bishops who have done so have betrayed the flock. Others believe that they are showing prudence [...]

Upon hearing the puerile remarks of Governor Andrew Cuomo last week, Chesterton came to mind. The lapsed Catholic governor is usually prone to inanity and offense, but this reached new heights: “We have turned the corner on the Coronavirus plague. It was not faith or prayers that did it. Only hard work and science.” To [...]

On the Saturday of the Easter Triduum, Virginia governor Ralph Northam signed Senate Bill 868, called the Virginia Values Act, which “prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in housing, public or private employment, public spaces and credit transactions,” according to the Washington Post. It also provides “causes of action,” allowing [...]

The Muslim world’s reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic helps to highlight some important aspects of the Islamic faith. It also reveals some important differences between Islam and Christianity. Of course, there are similarities as well. The main one is that Muslims, like Christians, are praying to God to spare them and their loved ones from [...]

The coronavirus crisis has certainly put a lot of things into perspective —and not just the value of relationships with our family or how much money we really need to get by. What counts as essential medical service has also become a topic of national conversation. This is most salient in regard to abortion, though [...]

Last week, President Donald Trump wished the country “Happy Good Friday,” and all hell broke loose. Suddenly, everyone was an expert on Catholic theology—or, at least, the emotional rubrics going along with Holy Week. Sure, most religious folk would not use the phrase “Happy Good Friday.” But most religious folk understood what he was trying [...]

George Cardinal Pell has walked out of solitary confinement a free man. Accordingly, we Australian Catholics might be said to have won a battle. But we have not won the war. We are not within a million miles of winning the war. On present indications, we lack, humanly speaking, the slightest capacity not just to [...]

“The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to [...]