A few months ago, I predicted that the Francis pontificate would seek to establish cordial relations with the Rainbow Reich. (See “While We’re At It,” January 2024, composed late November 2023.) In mid-December the Vatican issued the declaration Fiducia Supplicans, vindicating my . . . . Continue Reading »
God is necessary to prevent civilization from becoming soulless and settling for lifeless bureaucratic or technological substitutes. Continue Reading »
It was good to see Mark Movsesian (“Defining Religion in the Court,” June/July 2023) tackle the issue of judicial religious exemptions for the increasing numbers of religious Nones among us. But I don’t think his guideline for distinguishing “religious” claims from other, conscientious . . . . Continue Reading »
Regime Change is about how a society’s elite ought to conduct itself. Deneen’s answer: An elite must aspire to provide common goods that make a virtuous life probable for normal people. Continue Reading »
“What we are witnessing in America is a regime that is exhausted,” writes Patrick Deneen in his new book. The United States is fabulously rich; our military remains peerless. But on such key metrics as life expectancy and mental health, America is deteriorating, and the indictment of a former . . . . Continue Reading »
Three-quarters of the way through his illuminating new book Regime Change, Patrick Deneen finds the key he’s been groping for over the past several years—the church. Then he drops it again. Continue Reading »
In his 2005 Christmas address to the Roman Curia, the recently elected Pope Benedict XVI said that one main task of the Second Vatican Council had been to clarify the relation between Church and state. The pope stated that in the twentieth century, “Catholic statesmen demonstrated that a modern . . . . Continue Reading »
Russell A. Berman’s essay (“State of Emergency,” June/July) about our nation’s instability in various areas of public life is an insightful and valuable analysis of the fraying of the social bonds that hold together our multi-racial, multi-ethnic nation. There is one sentence, however, that . . . . Continue Reading »
The Holy Father says that he wants the Church to be a listening Church. If so, then he should be listening to a wide variety of voices in the U.S. before making claims that there are a significant number of Catholics in this country who reject Vatican II. Continue Reading »
I am grateful to Edmund Waldstein for his kind response to my essay, and for his writings on these subjects generally. I am especially grateful in this case for his crisp elucidation of the Maritain–De Koninck debate and its implications for contemporary arguments, a subject whose subtleties I . . . . Continue Reading »
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