In an op-ed published after the election, former Governor of New Jersey Christine Todd Whitman wrote, “Unless the Republican Party ends its self-imposed captivity to social fundamentalists, it will spend a long time in the political wilderness.” And who are these “social fundamentalists?” In Whitman’s political lexicon, they are “the people who base their … Read more
The immigration debate is singularly polarizing in our political climate today. From cries for “compassionately conservative” acceptance of those immigrants doing the jobs “Americans won’t do,” to Tom Tancredo’s insistence that “the pope’s immigration comments may have less to do with spreading the gospel than they do about recruiting new members of the church,” the … Read more
Last weekend, we attended a funeral Mass for a four-month-old baby girl. She was the beloved daughter of my husband’s cousin and his wife. These are the kinds of life events that threaten to expose me for the faith fraud I fear that I am. It’s easy to say we have faith when all goes … Read more
We have long known of the collapse of morals and fidelity to Catholic teaching on many Catholic campuses. Now we have national survey data to prove it. You may have seen the front page of the recent National Catholic Register. The Cardinal Newman Society’s new national survey of students at Catholic colleges and universities — looking … Read more
Bound up with the biblical understanding of God from the get-go is the conviction (one almost wants to call it the foregone conclusion) that God knows the future. Â This isn’t always necessarily the case with those delightful works of pagan imagination called “the gods.” In some pagan myths, one gets the impression that the … Read more
Last week, we at St. Mary’s Church in Greenville, South Carolina, found ourselves in the midst of a perfect media storm. The Sunday after the election, Rev. Jay Scott Newman, the parish rector (I serve as a weekend assistant), published his usual column for the parish bulletin, in which he commented on the election … Read more
Joseph Cao is a Catholic lawyer and former Jesuit scholastic from New Orleans. He is running as a Republican for the Congressional 2nd district seat in Louisiana presently held by Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA), who is best known for the $90,000 found in his freezer. The election will be held December 6. Few candidates for public office … Read more
Starting today, the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) is holding its annual meeting in Providence, Rhode Island. This is the second meeting since the group’s then-president Francis Beckwith shocked his peers by announcing his return to the Catholic Church and resigning from the presidency, which he has already described on this site here. Last year Beckwith … Read more
Ordinarily this column is devoted to people I have known. Our current national crisis is an excuse for me to mention three exceptions. I cannot say I really knew Winston Churchill, but once my father took me to see him when he was visiting Bernard Baruch in Manhattan. He had no idea who I was … Read more
 I joked in a previous column that the vice of Avarice was associated with one political party, and Envy with another. Were that entirely true, we could say that the recent election marked a new era in vice — one where Greed is no longer good, but Envy’s exquisite.  These questions are never … Read more
 Adolf Hitler aspired to be a painter, and he became a tyrant. As a painter he was mediocre, but his understanding of art’s power was second to none. Hitler knew that conquering Europe would require more than war; it would call for a complete domination of the culture, especially its art and architecture.  … Read more
On May 5, 2007, I resigned as president of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS), and two days later I resigned my membership, one I held for more than 20 years. I did so because I quickly realized — after news of my April 29, 2007, public reception into the Catholic Church had spread like wildfire … Read more
The newest Bond pic borrows too much from that other spy franchise. Â Â When you get older, fellow agent Rene Mathis tells James Bond, “villains and heroes get all mixed up.” Â Indeed, a conspicuous moral ambiguity infects virtually every scene in Quantum of Solace, the long-awaited follow-up to 2006’s franchise “reboot” Casino Royale. … Read more
The nurse approached my bed impatiently, extended her hand, and snapped, “Hand me your birth plan.” I could only shake my head, as another contraction gripped me. “No,” I sighed as the moment eased, “I didn’t get to writing that down.” My nurse broke into a smile. She took my hand — the one without … Read more
Redeemed: A Spiritual Misfit Stumbles Toward God, Marginal Sanity, and the Peace that Passes All Understanding Heather King, Viking Adult, 256 pages, $24.95 There have been times, in the course of raising my little brood of Young Catholics, when I have sighed and wondered, “What does religion have to do with my children, with their … Read more
Toward the end of the 1880s, Francis Marchese, publisher of the New York Italian newspaper Il Progresso Italo-Americano, wrote about his fellow countrymen in New York: "The Italian colony are exploited economically and morally by other Italians and by Protestants. The Italians are hated, treated like animals, persecuted worse than the Negro." In … Read more
One of the great strengths of the Roman Republic was its courageous realism. When Hannibal defeated the Romans in the first great encounter between the two armies, a battle in northern Italy, the leaders of the city called the people together to give them the news, and the opening words of the announcement were these: … Read more
Discussing the moral sense of Scripture would seem easy. After all, we’re talking the Good Book here. Even when they were busy abandoning Christianity as supernatural revelation from God, Americans for the past couple of generations still tended to treat the Bible as a Solid Moral Code Enshrining Tested Values with some lingering respectability. … Read more
Justice Harry Blackmun’s eyes do not meet those of his visitors. Sitting on a desk in a painting, he faces the elevators on the 27th floor of the federal courthouse in Saint Louis, Missouri, surrounded by pictures of himself and summaries of his opinions, but he glances away to his right. To his left, the … Read more
I read an interview recently that is worth commenting on. The subject notes: I was feeling conflicted because my Catholicism is so deeply important to me. It was my sense of connection to the Almighty, to humanity, to my heritage, my upbringing . . . . And my Catholicism informed my view of the … Read more