A short time ago, in my parish church, I sat through a fevered Marxist exhortation that passed for a homily. I was not particularly surprised. I had suffered similar experiences in lecture halls listening to my colleagues delivering lectures on what purported to be contemporary history. Some elements of our national culture, in education and … Read more
The past 100 years from 1917 to 2017 have been an encapsulation of the protoevangelium, when God told the serpent “I will put enmity between you and the woman.” This 100-years-war has signified a most pronounced phase in the enmity. It began in 1917 with both (what are the odds?) the revelation of Our Lady … Read more
The Greeks invented philosophy. They gave us Herodotus, the father of history, too. Their philosophy of history was cyclical, meaning they believed history had highs and lows, but lacked purpose. The Christian intellectual tradition first proposed that history moves in a linear fashion, corresponds with progress, and culminates with a utopian end point. Modern day … Read more
Last November Pope Francis issued his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel) and it immediately met resistance from some conservatives who charged Francis with Marxism. Francis denied the accusations, insisting there was nothing in the exhortation that contradicted the Church’s teaching on social doctrine. The attention brought to Marxism in the Catholic … Read more
The Roman Catholic Church in China has been persecuted by the Chinese communists for some six decades — essentially since the nation fell to communism in 1949. As faithful Marxists, Beijing’s despots perceived any allegiance to God or the Church as a threat to their domination, and they acted accordingly. So much of the Church was forced to go underground.
God has granted me a reprieve. Seven whole days have passed without a major American state abolishing marriage, or a Catholic hero dying prematurely at 98. That frees me up to return to the happy task of unfolding a layman’s understanding of the market economy, viewed through the lens of Christian ethics and prudent political … Read more
Last week I promised to explain in a few short columns the social science of economics — the discipline that describes how everything gets done among all the human beings on earth. It might sound like a daunting task, but I bring to it all my skills as a Catholic humor columnist and English professor, … Read more
In this summer’s much-anticipated movie Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the titular Professor Jones is forced to stare into the hollow eyes of the equally titular artifact. As Indy’s will breaks under the skull’s strange hypnotic gaze, a Soviet agent (Cate Blanchett) fantasizes about how she will use the mystical object … Read more