Our Partial Pacifism

by Matthew Schmitz

I am inclined to blame pacifism for our embrace of torture Continue Reading »

11 Dec 2014 0

Best Books (Not) of 2014

by Helen Andrews

Many excellent books were published in 2014, but I did not read any of them. Here are the three best books I did read this year, each of which speaks to our current moment despite being technically well out of date. Continue Reading »

11 Dec 2014 0

A Broken Immigration Debate

by Pete Spiliakos

In 2010, 54 percent of Americans thought our immigration system was broken. Today, that number is 74 percent. Aaron Blake of the Washington Post contends that this means “immigration reform” is winning.This seems a strange comment, because public fears about our defunct immigration system don’t guarantee better policy. We could, by a seeming lack of options, simply exacerbate all that is worst in our current immigration system. Alternatively, critics of the current system could begin the process of creating a broad-based reform coalition. Continue Reading »

11 Dec 2014 0

Kowtowing to Moscow = Bad Ecumenism

by George Weigel

In his tireless work for Christian unity, St. John Paul II often expressed the hope that Christianity in its third millennium might “breathe again” with its “two lungs”: West and East, Latin and Byzantine. It was a noble aspiration. And when he first visited Orthodoxy’s ecumenical patriarchate of Constantinople in 1979, perhaps the successor of Peter imagined that his heartfelt desire to concelebrate the Eucharist with the successor of Andrew would be realized in his lifetime. Continue Reading »

10 Dec 2014 0

The New College Counterculture

by Ryan Shinkel

Hip. Suave. Chic.” These are not the words from a car commercial. They are what Princeton student Christian Say wants to pop into people’s heads when they think of the Princeton Anscombe Society. Named after the late British philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe, the Princeton Anscombe Society was started by Cassandra L. Hough and other Princeton undergrads in 2005 as a reform-minded reaction to the fact that on campus casual sex had become the norm. They chose Anscombe as their inspiration because, while bearing the trappings of an independent modern woman with her cigars and monocle, she defended so well Christian Sexual Ethics to secular audiences through reason alone. Likewise, the PAS sought to provide a rational voice for sexual integrity, conjugal marriage, and the significance of the family. Eventually, Mrs. Hough and others began receiving emails and letters from students across the country asking for advice on how to establish their own chapters. Thus the Love and Fidelity Network (LFN) was created. Continue Reading »

10 Dec 2014 0

The Last Man and the First Man

by Ralph C. Wood

Scanning half a dozen major journals for obituaries devoted to the most important mystery writer of our time, P. D. James (1920–2014), I was astonished to find that not one of them mentioned her serious Anglo-Catholicism, much less its shaping presence in her fiction. This, despite one murder occurring in a church (A Taste for Death, 1986), a novel set in a theological college (Death in Holy Orders, 2001), another named Original Sin (1994), still another titled directly from the Book or Common Prayer (Devices and Desires, 1989), as well as an apocalyptic Christian allegory (The Children of Men, 1992). Continue Reading »

9 Dec 2014 0

My Year in Reading

by Wesley Hill

Every December since my college days a few friends and I have started an email thread to swap stories of our reading experiences over the course of that year. We follow a typical top-ten format, often mimicking the two or three-sentence recap style of similar lists that appear increasingly early, like the post-Halloween Christmas marketing blitz they augment, in periodicals and websites. But we go deeper than that, too, trying to discern patterns in our interests and correlating our reports with what we’d enjoyed or endured outside the pages of books in the intervening months. Continue Reading »

9 Dec 2014 0

Should Children Make Up Their Own Minds About Religion?

by Jason Stubblefield

I don’t make my kids go to church; I want them to make up their own minds about religion.” I overheard the line from a parent sitting at a nearby restaurant table, and have heard the adage countless times. Continue Reading »

8 Dec 2014 0

Time to Challenge No-Fault Divorce

by Thomas F. Farr and Hilary Towers

High in the catalogue of social pathologies afflicting marriage and the family in America stands our system of family law, the central purpose of which is to enforce no-fault divorce. In a letter to the Holy Father and the recent Extraordinary Synod on the Family, almost fifty international scholars and religious leaders joined us in urging the Church to consider the effects of no-fault divorce, along with other barriers to faithful, lifelong marriage. Continue Reading »

8 Dec 2014 0

Why Christians Care About Sex

by Andrew T. Walker

A new study out this week shows widening gaps in how different demographics in America approach sexuality and family. The Relationships in America study, produced by the Austin Institute, looks at “how social forces, demography, and religion continue to shape attitudes about family and intimate relationships.” The findings are notable, boosted by a survey that draws from 15,738 respondents ages eighteen to sixty, a very large and representative sample of the general population of the United States. Continue Reading »

5 Dec 2014 0