A friend recently sent me a remark by one Msgr. Alfred Gilbey, a onetime chaplain at Cambridge’s Fisher House who was often called “eccentric” (but that mostly meant that he was a believing and practicing Catholic priest in a chaotic time). I’m sure his words will come as news to many. In an article in … Read more
Appearing Sunday on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Sen. Barack Obama tried to undo the damage done by his Saddleback Church interview with Rick Warren — specifically his comment that the question of when an unborn child receives human rights was “above [his] pay grade.” “Was that phrase too flip?” Stephanopoulos asked Obama. “Probably,” Obama … Read more
None of this year’s Catholic presidential candidates (Sam Brownback, George Pataki, Rudolph Giuliani, Joe Biden, Wesley Clark, Christopher Dodd, Dennis Kucinich, and Bill Richardson) earned a nomination from either of the two major political parties. Arguably, however, the Church had its highest profile in a presidential race since 1960 with this past Democratic primary. Unfortunately, … Read more
Greater Than You Think: A Theologian Answers the Atheists about God Rev. Thomas D. Williams, L.C., FaithWords, 192 pages, $13.99 In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God’s existence. — Sir Isaac Newton It would seem improbable that a Christian might, in a scant 192 pages, bring sound … Read more
A very tangled situation arises in one of Shakespeare’s lesser-known plays, Measure for Measure. This is to say nothing particularly arresting; after all, what do we come upon in any of his plays but tangled situations? We all know the agonies and cross-currents in Hamlet and Macbeth, of course. (To my own mind, King Lear … Read more
“I’ve gotten more phone calls in the last two days than I received the entire two months I’ve been working for McCain.” J. R. Sanchez, head of McCain’s Catholic outreach in Florida, isn’t the only one experiencing this among religious and social conservatives. One Catholic activist from San Francisco told me she was offering to … Read more
As worldwide Anglicanism implodes, Catholics may remember the heady days of Anglican-Catholic ecumenical relations. In 1966, the last great archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, met with Pope Paul VI in the Sistine Chapel. The archbishop and the pope embraced and signed agreements to begin the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission. The pope gave … Read more
Joe Biden’s voting record on abortion in the United States Senate is likely to cause heartburn for two groups of people: ardent pro-choicers and Catholic bishops. Biden is a Catholic; and yet for the last ten years, according to the National Right to Life Committee, he has voted the “wrong” way 88.5 percent of … Read more
Sometimes the Church’s public face in a given country can make you proud, and sometimes it has to make you a little sick. American Catholics can justly take satisfaction that our bishops were almost alone in beginning the fight against abortion; the Southern Baptist Conference, of all things, at first backed Roe v. Wade, and … Read more
Last month, I reported on the persecution of Christians in Iraq and the continued vulnerability of their remaining communities. Extortion and violence by Muslim extremists have driven 500,000 Christians out of Iraq — about one quarter of the 2,000,000 Iraqis who have left the country since the beginning of the Iraq War. And another 2,000,000 … Read more
 It was only a few years ago that I began exploring Christianity after a life of atheism. I’ll never forget the time I was up late at night, feeling lost and slightly depressed as I searched around the Internet for arguments in favor of God’s existence, and I stumbled across a series of heated … Read more
An atheist who bears an uncanny resemblance to Jack Chick theorizes on What Rome Is Up To when a couple of Catholic sources remark that the discovery of life on other planets poses no particular threat to the Catholic Faith. This piece is a classic example of how sin makes you stupid. Our Bright knows … Read more
Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living Our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life Charles J. Chaput, Doubleday, 258 pages, $21.95 Twenty years ago, Richard John Neuhaus foresaw a new era of Catholic engagement with American society and politics. “This can and should be the moment in which the Roman Catholic Church in the United … Read more
"Hello. My name is Steve, and I’m a ‘traditional’ Catholic." So begins my admission of membership in a disparate group that, as you’ve already read, is far too well known for its bitterness, anger, and lack of evangelical spirit. I don’t like being typecast in this way. Just because I have a profound … Read more
Ever attended a clown Mass? Me neither. To be sure, I’ve seen lovingly photographed liturgical bizarrenesses from time to time chronicled on the Internet. And I’ve seen some enthusiasts for the Latin Mass often talk as though such stupid liturgical antics are happening everywhere all the time and that they alone stand between the Church … Read more
Habitually, I call justice the most terrible of the virtues. It is a virtue; we are to render to another what is due. But by itself, even though rendering justice is an honorable act, it is cold and impersonal. This is why Aristotle always held that friendship was more important than justice. Friendship went beyond … Read more
I’m genealogy crazy, to my wife’s occasional dismay. As of a few years ago, I’d traced most of my ancestral lines back to about 1600, but one particular branch was giving me problems: the Kendalls, the source of my middle name. Two years ago, I discovered my grandmother’s grandfather, Adelbert A. Kendall, but I couldn’t … Read more
Some time ago, a friend of mine introduced me to a wonderful bit of parody that begins: Awake from your slumber! Arise from your sleep! The homily’s over! It wasn’t too deep! It brings to mind the old joke that the difference between a liturgist and a terrorist is that you can reason with a … Read more
The Anglican Church is cracking up, Rev. Dwight Longenecker argued yesterday. Today, David Mills wonders about the fate of our closest kin: the Anglo-Catholics. Â Catholics who keep up with Anglicanism may have observed that the whole thing seems to be visibly coming apart. Â On the one hand, at June’s rally of the world’s … Read more
St. Peter, as the legend goes, was fleeing the persecution in Rome when he met Christ going the other way. The Lord asked him, “Quo Vadis?” — where are you going? He might well be asking the members of the Anglican Communion the same question. Their reply would be, “We’re not quite sure, Lord, but … Read more