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Common Good Conservatism

Countless commentators have observed that the public square is polarized. Political speech has become barbed. The once sober mainstream media are often shrill. It’s a sure sign of the times that people on both left and right feel under assault. Religious Americans worry that, if given a chance, . . . . Continue Reading »

Reclaiming the Household

The decline of the family has roots in the demise of the household. While the two realities are intimately connected, they are not identical. The household is a social form, a domestic community; the family, too, is a social unit, but it shades into the purely biological fact of consanguinity. . . . . Continue Reading »

Reflections on the Revolution

I was born in San Francisco and went to a college barely an hour’s drive from the famous Haight-Ashbury district. It gave me a front-row seat at the beginning of what we now refer to as the sexual revolution. I watched as the young women around me gave in to the onslaught. It was only later . . . . Continue Reading »

Briefly Noted

The Cleansing of the Heart:  The Sacraments as Instrumental Causes in the Thomistic Tradition  by reginald lynch, o.p.  catholic university of america, 260 pages, $65 The sacraments are fundamental to any ecclesiology in which they play a part, and their number, their definition, and . . . . Continue Reading »

A Church in Doubt

To Change the Church:  Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism by ross douthat simon and schuster, 256 pages, $26 It is beyond question that the Roman Catholic Church is currently in the throes of one of the greatest crises in its two-millennium history. In human terms, its future might be . . . . Continue Reading »

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