Ideologies are unavoidable and, in a sense, indispensable. Irving Kristol (WSJ, July 17, 1980) stated that the Right needed an ideology if it hoped to win the battle against the Left. But a number of conservatives strongly protested the statement, having for generations depicted ideologies as incompatible with true conservatism, as being essentially leftist in [...]

The big argument among Latin America's Catholics today may be symbolized thus: Gustavo vs. Hernando. Gustavo Gutierrez is a sensitive, intelligent priest of Lima, Peru, the father of liberation theology. In his early writings (The Theology of Liberation, 1971), more than in his recent writings, Gustavo has argued that "class struggle" is a fact of [...]

On January 30, 1987, the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado filed a petition on behalf of client Hector Rodas, requesting that Rodas be given a lethal injection or other “medicinal agent” to provide him with a “comfortable, dignified demise.” Rodas was a 34-year-old auto mechanic and illegal immigrant who became a quadraplegic after a [...]

The Catholic Church has done it again. It has dissented from the conventional wisdom of the “progressives” of our time. It has said what it thinks on the technologies of birth. What I like best about the Catholic Church is its self-respect. In an age when most church leaders elsewhere burn to appease the cultured [...]

Revisiting Christian philosophy can mean at least two things: taking a look at Leo XIII’s Aeterni Patris, the encyclical issued August 4, 1879 which ushered in the renewal of Thomism, or recalling the magnificent responses to Emile Brehier’s 1931 article, “Is There a Christian Philosophy?” It can also mean a third thing, not unrelated to [...]

Editor's Note: On July 3, 1986 Nicaragua's Sandinista Government expelled from the country Bishop Pablo Antonio Vega, vice president of the Nicaraguan bishops' conference, for criticizing the Sandinistas and, allegedly, for statements supporting the contras. The expulsion was condemned by John Paul II and the U.S. Catholic Conference. In a statement to the press in [...]

Don’t even think of eating your lunch on the steps of the Church of St. Andrew, which faces the broad plaza now called Cardinal Hayes Place in downtown Manhattan. For visitors to the plaza — bordered on the north by Pearl Street and just a shout from the Brooklyn Bridge — the steps of St. [...]

“Why’d you do that?” Lester yelled. "Do what?" I replied. "Ya folded my drawing! Ya didn't have to do that!" The whole thing was bizarre, right? Here was a kid in a man-sized body having a baby-sized tantrum over a folded sheet of paper. Lester kept pacing back and forth furiously waving his drawing in [...]

Among its many dimensions, the Curran case focuses attention on the social role of the theologian in our time. Father Curran and his supporters argue that theologians have the right to pursue their researches (more precisely, their speculations) freely, unmolested by threats from outside the academy. Only in such a serene, tolerant environment, it is [...]

To my brothers and sisters in the Catholic community and to all men and women of good will. Today we observe Respect Life Sunday. It is most important that we take this special moment to become more conscious of the precious and immeasurable gift of human life and stand fast to protect it. For discouragingly, [...]