Matthew J. Franck

Next autumn will mark forty years since I arrived on a college campus as a freshman. I’ve never left the academy since then. I have been student or teacher at many types of institutions: the small liberal-arts college, the “Research I” state university that completely dominates a small town, . . . . Continue Reading »

Last year I posted in this space a reading plan of my own devising for working through all of Shakespeare's works. I made some work for myself when I created this plan, because I settled on reading plays Monday through Friday, and sonnets and other poems on weekends. Thus it needs annual . . . . Continue Reading »

When directly asked by Mormon friends and family members (yep, I’ve got LDS folks in my family), I have been privately critical of the LDS church’s support of the Utah legislature’s “compromise” on “discrimination” and religious freedom last spring. I think the church, from a position . . . . Continue Reading »

It is an unavoidable preoccupation of our political class to speak and write obsessively about the political impact of, well, everything. Pope Francis’s visit to the United States is a Very Big Thing to talk about in this respect. Whom will he afflict, and whom will he comfort? Will the Left chafe . . . . Continue Reading »

Recent revelations that Planned Parenthood is trafficking in human organs—obtained from unborn children killed in the organization’s abortion clinics—have prompted a righteous outrage from many commentators. Anyone with a shred of decency is appalled at the barbarity for which Planned . . . . Continue Reading »

Those of us who know Ryan Anderson have certain adjectives that come naturally to mind when we think of the country's most visible and effective under-40 defender of the truth about marriage. (And if I thought about it, I might drop the “under-40” qualifier.) Fearless, composed, tenacious, . . . . Continue Reading »

First tale: A tenured sociologist at a prominent research university, with a couple of books under his belt on related subjects, publishes the first-ever research, using a nationally representative sample, on the young-adult outcomes for kids raised by people who have same-sex romantic . . . . Continue Reading »

Decades ago when I was a graduate student, I found myself in one of those extended bull sessions of a kind to which grad students in political science are prone, with half a dozen people discussing everything from texts in political philosophy to current affairs. 
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While Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone holds the line on the teaching of orthodox moral doctrines of the Catholic Church out in San Francisco, here in New Jersey a theology teacher in Immaculata High School in Somerville is threatened with dismissal from her position for . . . agreeing with orthodox moral doctrines of the Catholic Church. Continue Reading »

Yesterday, in a brief order published at the head of an otherwise miscellaneous list, the Supreme Court made a summary disposition of University of Notre Dame v. Burwell, the case involving the university's resistance to the HHS contraception-sterilization-abortifacient mandate under Obamacare. Here is the whole of what the Court said: Continue Reading »