Yesterdays unanimous Supreme Court decision in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, upholding a small Lutheran schools right to control its employment of commissioned ministers on its teaching staff, is very good news indeed for religious freedom. Congratulations are due to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, to Professor Douglas Laycock of the University of Virginia (who teamed up with Becket in representing the school), and to writers of supportive amicus briefs… . Continue Reading »
In his latest Washington Post column , E.J. Dionne considers the newly surging candidacy of Rick Santorum. It is not a particularly memorable or insightful column—in other words, par for the course—but there is one paragraph that makes one’s hair stand on end: Santorum is a . . . . Continue Reading »
I thank R.R. Reno for pointing us to Leon Wieseltier’s essay on Alex Rosenberg’s exercise in reductionism, The Atheist’s Guide to Reality . (And yes, Edward Feser’s review was a real pleasure as well.) Reviews like this do us a double service: while they . . . . Continue Reading »
The two best things I have read on the question of Newt Gingrich’s admitted past adulteries, the forgiveness of his sins upon entering into the Catholic Church, and the relevance of these facts for voters considering his presidential candidacy, are by Frank Beckwith at The Catholic Thing and . . . . Continue Reading »
At 3:00 p.m. EST, I will be on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” program, along with Charles Blow of the New York Times, to discuss this report of the Pew Research Center suggesting that belief in American “exceptionalism” is subsiding. If you look at the full report . . . . Continue Reading »
Over at Public Discourse today, I review Naomi Schaefer Riley’s book The Faculty Lounges , which R.R. Reno discussed here at FT last week . A sample of my take: Why are so many academic departments so ideologically homogeneous? Why are assistant professors so hard at work producing so . . . . Continue Reading »
The other day Joe Carter linked to a BBC item about a debate that was held in Philadelphia, on the question whether the Declaration of Independence was “illegal.” Evidently there were legal scholars on both sides, the British arguing that the Declaration (hence the American . . . . Continue Reading »
On Saturday, this site ran my “On the Square” essay, ” Anaesthetizing America’s Conscience ,” in which I faulted two university presidents, Fr. John Jenkins of Notre Dame and John Garvey of Catholic University, for a missed opportunity to speak the whole truth to power . . . . Continue Reading »
As readers may know, the Obama administrations Department of Health and Human Services is proposing to require every health insurer in the land to pay for, and thus to be complicit in, the provision of contraceptives, including some that would be more accurately described as abortifacients. The rule offers a potential exception on religious grounds, but this exemption, as previously discussed by Christopher T. Haley, Ryan Anderson, and others on this website, is exceedingly narrow and inadequate. … Continue Reading »
Three years ago, my friends Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen (both senior fellows at the Witherspoon Institute and familiar to FT readers) published a short and powerful book called Embryo: A Defense of Human Life —a wonderful combination of scientific and philosophical . . . . Continue Reading »
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