Matthew Schmitz

The Pew Forum  reports: Reports that the Democratic Party may add support for gay marriage to its party platform are in keeping with a significant shift of opinion on this issue among Democrats nationwide. Just four years ago, in 2008, only half (50%) of Democrats favored allowing gays and . . . . Continue Reading »

Speaking of nuns, Amy Koehlinger’s recent essay at Religion & Politics  makes an unfortunate (perhaps unintentional?) suggestion that the church, and American sisters in particular, only became concerned with the poorest and most marginal post-Vatican II. That can’t be. St. . . . . Continue Reading »

Worth remembering: Few of the outraged critiques of the Vatican’s investigation of progressive nuns mentioned the fact that Rome had intervened because otherwise the orders in question were likely to disappear in a generation. Fewer still noted the consequences of this eclipse: Because . . . . Continue Reading »

A newly ordained bishop of the persecuted Church in China has chosen fidelity  over personal comfort and political accommodation . Bishop Thaddeus Ma Daqin was whisked away just hours after he announced his resignation from the leadership of the Patriotic Catholic Association, or PCA, the . . . . Continue Reading »

Religious liberty is critical, President Obama says in an interview , but not as critical as providing contraceptive coverage: Yeah. Well it’s absolutely true that religious liberty is critical. I mean that’s what our country was founded on. That’s the reason why we exempted . . . . Continue Reading »

Ludger Viefhues-Bailey, the “Distinguished Professor for Philosophy, Gender, and Culture at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, NY,”  sees in Bill Keller’s recent call for Catholics who disagree with their Church to leave an, “important broader . . . . Continue Reading »

The blogosphere is atwitter with news that some  conservatives are turning away from school choice over fears that vouchers might go to Muslim schools. Charles Glenn recently wrote a post useful in thinking through these issues: My paper  confronted head-on the widespread fear, among . . . . Continue Reading »

That’s the advice  that Allison Benedikt of XX,  Slate’s  feminst blog, offers to women who find sex-selective abortion unpalatable: No matter how many ultrasound pics get posted to Facebook, these are fetuses with female genitals or male genitals—not little girls . . . . Continue Reading »

You have to love the caution with which academics, forced by data, endorse stereotypes: It is believed that men, in contrast to women, are more likely to cognitively separate sex from love (Banfield & McCabe, 2001; Duncombe & Marsden, 1999), and though investigators disagree as to the . . . . Continue Reading »

Writing for the Washington Post , Matt Franck steps back from today’s ruling and asks how Christians should respond: Although the Supreme Court has upheld President Obama’s signature health care law, we are bound in this election year to have a renewed conversation on what the federal . . . . Continue Reading »