We interrupt the presidential campaign to raise this pressing question. Back in 1969, Bill Buckley sent my parents a hilarious book—not his, but his sister’s. Aloïse Buckley Heath was mother of ten rambunctious and inquisitive children, one of whom asked her, some 48 Octobers ago, if Tommy Major’s mother, who lived next door, would go … Read more
In Kenneth D. Whitehead’s short essay in this magazine, the recent liberal Catholic manifesto, All on Our Shoulders, is helpfully but incompletely criticized. At the core of his argument rests the claim that the document constructs a straw man out of Paul Ryan’s 2005 address to the Atlas Society, in which Ryan praised the free … Read more
An organization called Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good came out on October 9 with what it announced was a “Catholic Call to Protect the Endangered Common Good.” It is entitled “On All of Our Shoulders,” and it has no less than 157 signatories describing themselves as “Catholic theologians, academics, and ministers concerned for … Read more
The past four years have witnessed a battle between different generations of Catholics in public life—Generation X Catholics have taken a very different path from Baby Boomer Catholics and those born before the boomers. Generation X Catholics have emerged prominently in the Republican Party. Many who were mentioned this year on Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential short … Read more
After Mass on Sunday, North Carolina pastor Rev. Andre Mangango was approached by a man who, a day earlier, was introduced as Mitt Romney’s running-mate for the 2012 presidential election. “I am Representative Paul Ryan and this is my son,” the man said. Ryan reportedly attended the 7:30 mass that morning with a group of … Read more
Editor’s note: Below is a column by Madison, Wisconsin bishop Robert C. Morlino addressed to the faithful of his diocese that appeared Thursday, August 16, in the Madison Catholic Herald under the title “Subsidiarity, Solidarity, and the Lay Mission.” Here, Bishop Morlino clarifies Church teaching, distinguishing between intrinsic evil that no Catholic in good conscience … Read more
In the wake of the selection of Paul Ryan as the VP nominee, you will be hearing a lot about how Ryan is a bad Catholic because the Bishops criticized the Ryan budget plan. Let me cut to the chase: the USCCB was wrong (at least part of it). The text of the letter issued … Read more
Last night, the best response to the president’s State of the Union address came not from Reps. Paul Ryan or Michelle Bachmann, but from freshman Senator Rand Paul. Earlier in the day, he released a plan to cut the Federal budget by close to $500 billion. Paul’s budget cuts more than five times as much … Read more
I wasn’t able to catch last night’s State of the Union address, so I’ve been poking around this morning to see what I missed. (I might start with reading the full text of the speech here. Apparently there was something about salmon…?) The Wall Street Journal sums up what I’ve been seeing in a lot … Read more