This past March, The Atlantic published an essay by Adrian Vermeule, a Catholic professor of constitutional law at Harvard University, introducing the idea of “common-good constitutionalism” to an audience that I’m sure had never read anything quite like it. At its most basic, Professor Vermeule’s argument unfolded something like this: Human flourishing, or the “good [...]

Catholic integralism holds that the state must confess the Catholic religion. Integralism follows the teaching of Pope Leo XIII (as in his encyclical Immortale Dei) and a host of other popes in denying the liberal doctrine of the separation of Church and state, and proposes instead that the state is truly subordinate to the Church, [...]

China’s record on human rights protections has long been appalling. But, in the past few weeks, a series of interviews with Uighur Muslims who have escaped from China revealed a whole new level of gut-wrenching details about the Communist regime’s oppression. These interviews expose the existence of a long-suspected archipelago of concentration camps (called “reeducation [...]

O God, the cleanest offering Of tainted earth below, Unblushing to thy feet we bring— “A leper white as snow!” In September of 1881, while King Kalākaua of Hawaii was away on his world tour, his regent (and sister) Princess Liliʻuokalani visited the leper colony of Kalaupapa on the island of Molokai. Its administrator was [...]

The black family, as an institution, survived slavery. The black family, as an institution, survived Jim Crow. Under quite unimaginable pressure from systematic and institutional racism, black Americans fought tenaciously to protect the institution of the family. It is evident that blacks understood in their bones that the larger society and certainly not the government [...]

Ignoring concerns about the threats to women’s civil rights, Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, promises to use the Equality Act to promote a long list of transgender rights that will eclipse women’s rights and the rights of people of faith if he is elected. The misnamed Equality Act, approved by the House [...]

For decades, American foreign policy has been off track. The United States has launched wars in far-flung corners of the globe that have not only killed and wounded thousands of brave members of the American military, but our foreign interventions have led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of others, many of them innocent [...]

Across the country this month, many Americans celebrated “wins” for Catholic schools and religious freedom at the Supreme Court—and rightly so. But it would be a mistake to believe that Catholic education is secure without substantial fortification. In fact, the Catholic identity of our schools and colleges may be in far greater danger than it [...]

Everyone can say “the lives of blacks matter,” but you might decline to say “Black Lives Matter.” Here’s why: it’s obvious that the lives of black people matter, but the Black Lives Matter movement is a political movement with a clear agenda and an ideology that goes beyond affirming the sacredness of the lives of [...]

The world’s most famous church goes up in flames. Some look on in shock and anguish. Some are quietly cheered to watch it go, some not so quietly. Some are too busy to notice—there is a great deal else going on these days. As the fire licks the building’s crest, the terrified, the hopeful, and [...]

In genius and influence, according to Christopher Dawson, Abu Hamed Mohammad Ghazali (1058–1111) most resembles Saint Thomas Aquinas. This is indeed high praise. The Persian scholar’s most famous work is The Destruction of Philosophy (Tehâfat el Falâsifah). As a Moslem thinker, he saw clearly the fundamental incompatibility between the Moslem faith and the Greek conception [...]

Bad luck comes in threes, so they say. Sometimes so do good things, as demonstrated by three recent Supreme Court decisions on religious liberty. In a sea of recent bad news in the United States, we should welcome these rulings as a happy interruption that will hopefully provide some protection to the Catholic Church’s work [...]

The first step on the way to solving a problem is to understand what the problem is. Consequently, we can’t look to America’s bishops to offer solutions to our nation’s most pressing problem because most of them simply don’t get it. The biggest problem we currently face is an attempt to overthrow our country’s system [...]

The Fourth of July weekend in Chicago had more to do with firearms than fireworks, with 49 shootings, 60 victims, and 14 fatalities. A 10-year-old girl was killed in her home by a stray bullet, shot through the head. A toddler was killed in his car seat by another stray bullet, shot through the chest. [...]

I have just read a story sent out on July 3 by CWN regarding the suspension of Rev. Theodore Rothrock from public ministry by the Diocese of Lafayette in Indiana, where he was pastor at Saint Elizabeth Seton Catholic Church in Carmel. The offense that brought about his suspension was an item he wrote in [...]

Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510) is among many largely forgotten Renaissance artists. While Michelangelo, Leonardo, Donatello, and Raphael are household names (if mostly thanks to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), Botticelli remains largely forgotten, his works bombarded quickly snapped teenage selfies by largely oblivious teenagers visiting Florence’s Uffizi Gallery. Nonetheless, Botticelli’s paintings are among the most exquisite [...]

Washington, Missouri, until a few weeks ago, was blessedly free from the progressive currents electrifying the cities of the coasts and the upper Midwest. An eavesdropping visitor would have found Democrats sitting cheek to jowl with Republicans, talking in mild midwestern tones—as though civility mattered more than “conviction.” If someone had proposed tearing down a [...]

Karens are everywhere, notes a June 30 article in the Washington Post, and they are the most addictive thing to watch in America’s disastrous summer of 2020. For the uninitiated, a “Karen” is a pejorative term for a white woman who is “perceived to be entitled or demanding beyond the scope of what is considered [...]

Some mock America’s statue-smashers as ignoramuses who do not know what they are doing or why. But there are very good reasons why we see monuments cast down all over the West, including the United States. Let’s not wave this off as mindless stupidity. The radical rule is that the more you destroy, the more [...]

In the Byzantine Divine Liturgy, there is a petition for “a good defense before the awesome judgment seat of God.” I often find that abortion flashes through my mind at that prayer. Given the outrageous atrocity that abortion is in the free world, the free people should expect to answer for it when the Judge [...]