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Campaign 2012: Economy and Empowerment

In his 1958 book, Reflections on America, the great French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain (who took refuge in the United States during World War II) claimed that Americans, for all their commercial endeavors, “are the least materialist among the modern peoples which have attained the industrial stage.” Well, that was then, this is now, and it isn’t Jacques Maritain’s America anymore. Still, there remains a link between money-making and idealism in these United States that is distinctive, and perhaps even unique… . Continue Reading »

A Catholic Wedding

Rex Mottram in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited said of Catholic marriage, “that’s one thing your Church can do,” he said, “put on a good show.” My wife paraphrases: “We hatch, match, and dispatch better than anyone else.” We have been to many weddings where love was obvious and the celebration was genuine. But too often, focus on the God-triune gives way to the trite and sacred rites are replaced by the rote. Unity candles are forgotten as quickly as they are lit… . Continue Reading »

The Conceit of Primacy

Not long ago, while discussing the viability of a continued Eucharistic church given the dearth of priestly vocations, I told someone that the outlook is better than our perceptions would have us believe. In Maryland, Colorado, Missouri, and other parts of the Midwest, for instance, and even in the American South, some seminaries are at capacity… . Continue Reading »

A Review of Christopher Hitchens’ Mortality

A few days before he fell ill, Christopher Hitchens said in an interview, “One should try to write as if posthumously. Because then you’re free of all the inhibition that can cluster around even the most independent-minded writer.” At the time, he was on a book tour in New York promoting his new memoir, Hitch-22. One morning he woke up in his hotel room, “feeling as if I were actually shackled to my own corpse. The whole cave of my chest and thorax seemed to have been hollowed out and then refilled with slow-drying cement.” … Continue Reading »

The Embarrassment of the Catholic Left

There they go again. The usual gang of Catholic theology professors has signed a manifesto, “On all of our shoulders: A Catholic Call to Protect the Endangered Common Good.” It claims to warn us of the grave danger posed by Congressman Paul Ryan. The future of America is at stake! The integrity of Catholicism hangs in the balance! … Continue Reading »

No, Bloomberg Isn’t Banning Circumcision

Few freedoms are more cherished in the United States”and more vigorously surveilled”than the right to religious liberty. For government to discriminate against religious conduct”and make it the subject of heightened government regulation”would run afoul of the constitutional principles at the heart of America’s founding and undermine liberalism’s unequivocal commitment to religious autonomy… . Continue Reading »

An Evangelical Case for a Catholic Sensibility

Evangelicals gladly assent to Jean Daniélou’s claim that the mission of the church “continues the mighty works, the mirabilia Dei, recorded in the two Testaments” and agree that “God still accomplishes his mighty works, in the conversion and sanctification of souls.” Few Evangelicals, though, would make sense of his further claim that “The working of God’s power among us is through the sacraments.” … Continue Reading »

The Catholic Left’s Unfair Attack on Paul Ryan

When my fellow conservatives and Republicans were beating up on President Obama for his “you didn’t build that” remark, representing him as having claimed that business owners didn’t build their own businesses, the government did it, I spoke out in defense of the President. I argued that his artless words should not be seized upon to exaggerate or distort his views on the respective contributions of government and business owners to the success of businesses… . Continue Reading »

Senseless Sermons

An Internet search seems to confirm that the late Baptist minister Clinton Locy holds the world’s record for the longest sermon ever preached. In forty-eight hours and eighteen minutes Pastor Locy, back in February 1955, reportedly preached on every book in the Bible, tossing in as well some remarks on the nuclear age. I can find no record of the actual sermon text itself but the exertion did get him mentioned in Time magazine… . Continue Reading »

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