This is probably the best defense of traditional marriage that I’ve read. The writers are respectful of the views of same-sex marriage proponents, which is unusual in pieces like this. One section about the role of the state particularly caught my attention: …Although it is still a radical position without much purchase in public opinion, … Read more
“Submit yourselves one to another, as in the Lord,” says St. Paul, and then he follows his command with a list of applications, involving relationships among husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and servants, citizens and their magistrates, and all Christians and their elders in the Faith. The Christian life, as the saints and … Read more
Last week, I mentioned that a Boston-area Catholic school had declined to re-enroll a boy with lesbian parents, but that the archdiocese was looking to place the student in another Catholic school. On his personal blog yesterday, Cardinal Sean O’Malley defended the archdiocese’s decision: In Boston we are beginning to formulate policies and practices to … Read more
Yesterday, 150,000 people (give or take) packed St. Peter’s Square for Pope Benedict’s noon address. My view was literally a sea of people. In fact, that was my view from all sides. Normally, I hate crowds, but this was really inspiring. It always is when thousands of people are quiet, listening to the pope, and … Read more
Decades ago — nearly four of them, I think: around 1971 — I was reading an account of the problem of homelessness in Boston. It was a study done by clinical psychologists, and it contained one interesting factoid that remains in memory to this day. The investigators found that 95 percent of the street people … Read more
It might surprise some to learn that the basic idea behind the “welfare state” did not originate with either Marxist revolutionaries or bleeding-heart liberals, but rather with a head of state usually identified with conservatism: Otto von Bismarck. Faced with a growing threat from the German socialist movement, in the 1880s Bismarck established four programs … Read more
I have enjoyed the exchange about “Where All Find A Home,” the Maryland bishops’ recent statement on the Catholic response to immigration, in the columns and blog of InsideCatholic.com. This is exactly the type of conversation the bishops hoped would come about when they issued the statement and I know they are glad to … Read more
If you want to see President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s legacy, look around you. Scores of agencies created during his tenure are still around, including Social Security and welfare. The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression Amity Shlaes; HarperCollins; 390 pages.  Reviewed by Martin Morse Wooster  If you want to see … Read more
Senator Sam Brownback was traveling between events while campaigning in New Hampshire when I spoke to him last week. Despite criticism, Brownback has kept the abortion issue at the top of his agenda for the nation, and recently finished among the top three candidates in the Ames Straw Poll. I called him to ask about … Read more
Prominent writer, thinker, and Crisis Magazine co-founder Michael Novak sat down with Italian scholar Alia K. Nardini to discuss neoconservatism, Catholicism, and the future of the West. ♦ ♦ ♦ Alia K. Nardini: Professor Novak, generally people in Italy and the rest of Europe want to know how much American neoconservatives share with the Republican … Read more