The panhandler was at the I-470 exit at Blue Ridge Boulevard when I first saw him. That’s about 101st Street on Kansas City’s Southside. He looked bad. Unkempt, he was holding a makeshift sign with a typical message, and trying to make eye contact with people who did not want to make eye contact with him. I was in no position to stop and wave the usual dollar kept on hand for such encounters… . Continue Reading »
In the wake of Pope Francis’ virally circulated airplane interview, orthodox Catholic writers from every corner of the blogosphere have united in defense of our Holy Father, against the bizarre and ignorant statements of the popular media. Whether attacking the Times et al. for skewing the story to advance their own agenda, or complimenting the pope for using an unsuspecting press to help him broadcast Gospel truths, almost all such authors have agreed in insisting that there was nothing contrary to doctrine in the matter of our pontiff’s remarks. On this point, I certainly agree as well. “Judge not” is hardly foreign to Christianity… . Continue Reading »
The small oratory at Littlemore”dark but warm, dominated by red damask hangings that exude Victorian piety”is the room in which John Henry Newman was received into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church. Newman is most famous for that act, and that is why the Catholic Church celebrates his feast day today, on the anniversary of his reception, and not on the day of his death, as is customary. Those of us who have followed in his footsteps from evangelical Protestantism through Anglicanism into Catholicism revere him. For us he is a guide and patron who spurred us on and captures what we thought and felt with prose, intellect, and holiness to which we can only aspire… . Continue Reading »
From his present location in the communion of saints, Father John Courtney Murray, S.J., who died in 1967, is probably indifferent to the various ways his work on Catholicism and American democracy is misconstrued in the 21st century. But those who think that Murray still has something to teach Catholics about the American experiment in ordered liberty must regret that Murray’s thinking continues to be misrepresented in some Catholic quarters and misapplied in others… . Continue Reading »
Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, assassinated while celebrating mass in 1980, has long been an icon for the Latin American left. Now, with reports that his cause for canonization has been “unblocked,” he may be on his way to be declared a martyr and saint of the Catholic Church… . Continue Reading »
Natural evil is one of theology’s greatest challenges, but I have long thought it has a simple solution. Let me express it in four propositions: First, Satan is a fallen angel, which is indicated, however obliquely, by the so-called gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. Second, that cosmological event makes the world the site of a great struggle between good and evil. Evolution (not the theory, but the actual process), with its gambling on chance and seductive appeal to self-interest, is the product of that struggle. … Continue Reading »
In Jennifer Senior’s highly entertaining interview with Antonin Scalia, she asks the Supreme Court Justice about Pope Francis and he responds, “He’s the Vicar of Christ. He’s the chief. I don’t run down the pope” … Continue Reading »
American evangelicals and serious theology are not terms that just naturally snuggle up to one another with easy equipoise. That, despite the fact that Jonathan Edwards, the greatest theologian America has yet to produce, stands at the headwaters of the evangelical tradition. The diminution of the evangelical mind since Edwards”and not only in theology”has been often rehearsed… . Continue Reading »
Thomas Jefferson’s religion has been controversial for over 200 years, since at least the 1800 presidential race. The latest flare-up was over popular conservative Christian writer David Barton’s recently published Jefferson Lies, which the publisher withdrew last year after the exposure of numerous distortions in Barton’s attempt to baptize Jefferson as a virtual evangelical fellow traveller. Secular historians have typically painted Jefferson as a religious freethinker… . Continue Reading »
Whenever I criticize the Wild West ethics of the in vitro fertilization industry, I hear from heartbroken people who tell me they would do “anything” to have a baby. I sympathize with the heartache of childlessness. But the willingness of many to do”and of the IVF industrial complex to sell”anything leads to a “me first” sense of reproductive entitlement… . Continue Reading »
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