Extreme freedom can’t be expected to lead to anything but a change to extreme slavery, whether for a private individual or for a city. ∼ Plato’s Republic, Book VIII line 566 The capacity for self-criticism used to be a signature characteristic of the liberal mind, but clearly liberal introspection isn’t what it used to be. In looking … Read more
Sexual liberation and transhumanism share an anthropology. Both view the human person as an emergent phenomenon, and as something malleable. Both view the self as sovereign, the will as ultimately answerable to nothing other than its own prerogatives. Exploring the intersection between these two movements requires me to give an account of technology. In speaking … Read more
“Contemporary liberalism is less a political philosophy than a façade for undermining extant social and legal mores.” ∼ John Safranek, The Myth of Liberalism, 2015. When I first looked into this insightful book of John Safranek titled The Myth of Liberalism, I was struck by the introductory sentence that he cited from Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. … Read more
In an obscure article entitled “Catholics and Liberals: Decline of Détente,” in America magazine in 1974, the eminent Catholic scholar and historian James Hitchcock discussed a profound change that had occurred in American liberalism and argued that its new thinking put it increasingly at odds with Catholicism. Hitchcock was one of a number of writers … Read more
Social issues are messy. They have to do with basic human connections, orientations, and aspects of identity. These include family, cultural community, religion, and relations between the sexes. So they have to do with basic and very complicated aspects of life that people feel strongly about. That causes problems for people who run things today. … Read more
Mary Eberstadt is a master of analogy. In her masterful work Adam and Eve After the Pill, she compared the Sexual Revolution to communism, an ideology that hasn’t so much as failed, don’t you know, as one that simply needs one more good try. Neither empirical evidence, nor high body count, will convince true believers … Read more
Why am I allowed to attend Mass on Sundays? Is it because God has commanded that I worship him, and having a social nature I must do so in union with my fellows within the bounds of the Church founded by Christ for that purpose, on the day he rose from the dead? Or is … Read more
Governments have often minimized religious conflict by establishing one religion and granting it privileges even where others are tolerated. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution left such power to the states, saying only that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion….” Following the enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment, however, the … Read more
Two recent developments in the news brought into focus the issue of liberalism and favored demographic groups. One was the not unexpected reaction of Hillary Clinton and others on the left to the Brussels airport attack by ISIS-linked Islamic terrorists. They were less oriented to considering how to respond to the terrorists and protect innocent … Read more
Last month I noted that Catholics, along with presenting the Faith, should try vigorously to make natural law more visible in public discussion. But how? The very idea of natural law provokes incomprehension today. It favors principles that aren’t engineered or controlled, so they don’t fit into a technological understanding of rationality. Even worse, it means … Read more
Catholics talk about natural law, but what’s it all about? Basically, it’s a system of principles that guides human life in accordance with our nature and our good, insofar as those can be known by natural reason. It thereby promotes life the way it evidently ought to be, based on what we are and how … Read more
We all talk about liberalism and conservatism, and about liberal and conservative Catholics, but what does it mean? Some say it doesn’t mean much at all. They say these are labels attached to arbitrary and even contradictory collections of positions. Liberals say they want lots of freedom and lots of regulations. Conservatives say they want … Read more
Jefferson’s wall of separation has many friends. People who grew up in a nation with a strict separation of church and state are often very proud of that system, which they consider modern, and best-suited for democratic societies today and in the future. This includes both skeptics of all (organized) religions and many religious people … Read more
Faith should penetrate all areas of life—not just the religious, but also the social, the economic, and even the political. Notwithstanding the confused claims of today’s radical secularists, we are not constitutionally required to set our faith aside when entering the world of politics. Separation of Church and state does not mean separation of Church … Read more
The cultural left is intoxicated with the heady fumes of the June 26 Obergefell decision. There are veritable war whoops coming out of the secular newspapers, and the pundits are huffily declaring that the debate is over and that their side has won. George Takei has even seen fit to call Justice Clarence Thomas a … Read more
It is popular today to speak of clashing worldviews as “narratives.” History shows, we’re told, that it is almost impossible for a narrative to imagine a standpoint outside itself. That is what defines it as a narrative. It is only when it has been surpassed by another narrative—as paganism was eclipsed by Christianity and Christianity … Read more
The transcendent aspects of religion have little meaning for most educated Westerners today. They may consider religion worthy of respect or at least toleration when it relates to practical matters like willingness to help others and accept them as they are. Otherwise, it’s “fundamentalist”—strange, irrational, dangerous, oppressive, and very likely fraudulent. So when the issue … Read more
For the past year and a half many Irish commentators, especially those not known for friendliness toward the Catholic Church, have expressed great enthusiasm for Pope Francis. They have interpreted some of his often casual comments about not judging people, about the Church serving as a field hospital, about the need for Church leaders to … Read more
In his trip to the Philippines, Pope Francis once again defended marriage, and he again edged closer to a firm, unequivocal papal statement against same-sex “marriage.” As Francis clearly continues to carefully move in that direction, liberals, both secular and non-secular, non-Catholic and Catholic, are going to feel a severe sense of betrayal and grave … Read more
The final two years of two-term American presidencies are generally seen as their least significant. President Obama’s recent recourse to what some regard as extra-legal measures indicates, however, that we shouldn’t take this for granted. But no matter what political events unfold between now and November 2016, one thing is certain: American conservatives have to consider … Read more