February 14, 2014
by Karen Anderson
I claim there ain't Another Saint As great as Valentine. —Ogden Nash On Sunday, February 9, the Catholic Church celebrated World Marriage Day. This Friday, February 14, the universal Church will not celebrate St. Valentine's Day, even though everybody else will. This even though he has been venerated by Catholics for about 1,700 years [...]
January 30, 2014
by Matthew Hennessey
Social science is a sham. That’s what I take from Helen Rittelmeyer’s superlative February 2014 First Things essay, “Bloodless Moralism.” Claims to objectivity are a smokescreen—those who profess to explain political, economic, or social behavior are almost always motivated by personal interests and natural biases. They are often at least as politically minded—if not more [...]
September 25, 2013
by Joseph Meaney
The latest exclusive papal interview published in the Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica and in translation by 16 other Jesuit publications around the world, resembles the interview on the papal plane returning from the Rio de Janeiro World Youth Days. In both cases the pope fielded a wide range of questions and spoke extensively; 10,000 [...]
September 23, 2013
by Scott P. Richert
Pope Benedict XVI, according to the New York Times, wanted a smaller, purer Catholic Church. Pope Francis, if the Times is to be believed, is well on the way to making the first part of his predecessor's putative vision a reality, by driving all of those who remain faithful to Christian moral teaching out of [...]
March 4, 2013
by James D. Agresti
In a recent National Public Radio broadcast and accompanying article entitled "Morning-After Pills Don't Cause Abortion, Studies Say," NPR journalist Julie Rovner reported that the Obama administration's contraceptive mandate doesn't force people to pay for abortion-inducing drugs. The article focuses on drugs commonly known as "morning-after" pills, which actually can be used to stop pregnancy [...]
February 15, 2013
by George Neumayr
To the dictators of relativism and their allies in the chattering class, the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI is seen as an occasion for celebration and a chance to lobby the Church for a liberal successor. The mischief is already underway, as seen in such headlines as: “New Pope should not condemn contraception, says cardinal.” [...]
August 24, 2012
by Matthew Hanley
No one would have expected the New York Times to react favorably to Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan, most well-known for advancing a budget proposal, as his Vice Presidential running mate. On that score, the Times and the rest of his detractors are predictably portraying him as an extremist. They cast Ryan’s budget proposal [...]
March 20, 2012
by Robert Yates
If you haven't heard yet, the New York Times recently published a full-page “advertisement” by the “Freedom From Religion Foundation” (FFRF) viciously attacking the Catholic Church. Even some not typically inclined to rush to the Church's defense have noted the particularly mean-spirited and bigoted nature of the propaganda piece. What has followed in the wake [...]
March 20, 2012
by Carolyn Moynihan
I am thinking about quitting the New York Times. Ever since I took my present job six years ago I have been frequenting the website of what is generally regarded as the leading paper of record in the United States and, frankly, I find it sadly predictable. A Timesheadline on any topic that matters to [...]
January 25, 2012
by Balazs Mezei
Hungary made front page in the newspapers of the world only a few times during its post-World War II history: in 1956 when its anti-Communist uprising was shattered by Soviet tanks, in 1971 when Cardinal Mindszenty was allowed to leave the country by Communist authorities, and in 1989 when Hungary contributed to the collapse of [...]
January 16, 2012
by Paul Kengor
If Mitt Romney gets the GOP nomination, prepare for a season of class warfare in America unlike any before. Not only has President Obama been pushing class warfare unceasingly for three years now, but his chief strategist, David Axelrod, has been employing precisely this tactic against Romney, and well before Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry [...]
January 6, 2012
by Patrick J. Buchanan
In what The Washington Post called "a bold act of political defiance," President Obama Wednesday announced the recess appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Cordray's nomination had been blocked by a Senate filibuster. There was no way he was going to win approval in 2012. Enraged Republicans denounced the [...]
December 21, 2011
by L. Brent Bozell III
In 2008, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics. At that time, it wasn't hard to imagine the Swedes were rewarding Krugman for eight years of blasting George W. Bush. In other words, the Nobel Prize truly matched its namesake: Alfred Nobel invented dynamite. Krugman regularly throws rhetorical [...]
November 30, 2011
by Walter E. Williams
Benefiting from a hint from an article titled "Is Harry Potter Making You Poorer?", written by my colleague Dr. John Goodman, president of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis, I've come up with an explanation and a way to end income inequality in America, possibly around the world. Joanne Rowling was a welfare mother [...]
October 28, 2011
by Philip Lawler
Two weeks have passed since the indictment of Kansas City’s Bishop Robert Finn. The bishop’s critics are demanding his resignation, while his defenders protest his innocence. Let’s step back a pace, and put the matter in perspective. The indictment of an American bishop is a big story—a huge story, an unprecedented story. Yet oddly enough, [...]
September 23, 2011
by Michael Cook
For the past year, it has been bioethical bow, scrape and grovel time in Washington DC. After learning that American public health researchers had infected about hundreds of Guatemalans with venereal diseases between 1946 and 1948, President Obama had to telephone his Guatemalan counterpart to apologize. He then set up a commission to investigate [...]
July 20, 2011
by George Weigel
Twenty years ago, the American Catholic thinker Michael Novak put his head together with his friend Rocco Buttiglione, a distinguished Italian thinker, to see what might be done about educating a new cadre of young Catholic leaders in the social doctrine of the Church. John Paul II’s recently released social encyclical, Centesimus Annus, seemed an [...]
June 29, 2011
by John Zmirak
June is a good month for surrenders. On June 25, 1940, France capitulated after Germany's lightning defeat of Allied armies. The armistice that took effect that day ceded more than half the country to foreign occupation, and relegated the rest to management by those Frenchmen willing to collaborate with Germany -- supposedly to preserve some shred [...]
June 10, 2011
by Michael Barone
There's an awful lot that's stale in the debate on government energy policy. Some stale arguments are nevertheless valid: It's dangerous to depend heavily on Middle Eastern oil. Others have increasingly been seen as dubious: that global warming caused by human activity will result in catastrophe. There's stale talk about federal and state laws that [...]
June 7, 2011
by Carolyn Moynihan
Nobody is perfect. Anybody can be weak when the opportunity presents itself. Even habitual offenders against prevailing mores can be treated with indulgence; after all, they are only human and besides, they happen to be amusing or admirable in other ways, or they have a difficult background to contend with, or... Some people feel [...]