Wife and Number Two daughter should not be left unattended in used book stores. That’s how we ended up with the latest additions to our growing array of used (and all but used up) books: What a Young Wife Ought to Know (1901) and a companion volume, What a Young Husband Ought to Know (1897). Both were part of a “Sex and Self” series on how to live a successful Victorian middle class life… . Continue Reading »
Václav Havel, who died this past Dec. 18, was one of the great contemporary exponents of freedom lived nobly. His moral mettle proved true in both the world of ideas and the world of affairs; indeed, few men of the past half-century have moved more surely between those two worlds. In that respect, and for his personal courage, Havel reminded me of one of the American Founders”if, that is, one could imagine James Madison hanging out with Frank Zappa… . Continue Reading »
One of the more fascinating conspiracy theories surrounding the movement toward European integration is the allegation that it’s all a Vatican plot. Of course, spend enough time digging around online and it becomes apparent that the Pope has a hand in just about all significant world events. But this particular accusation, which has cropped up again and again, has a bit more tenacity than the average Internet rumor, and the degree of overlap among the conspiracy peddlers here is rather striking … Continue Reading »
In the Office of readings for January 17 we read of the Abbot’s renunciation of worldly goods, prompted by the scriptural readings of the mass: …entering the church just as the Gospel was being read, he heard the Lord’s words to the rich man: If you want to be perfect, go and sell all you have and give the money to the poor”you will have riches in heaven. Then come and follow me. It seemed to Anthony that it was God who had brought the saints to his mind and that the words of the Gospel had been spoken directly to him… . Continue Reading »
I have long suspected that free-market libertarians aren’t all that different from postmodern relativists who insist that human beings have no natural end, no normative patterns for life. Some recent editorials in the Wall Street Journal confirmed my suspicions. Last Monday, in advance of the New Hampshire primary, a staff editorial assessed Rick Santorum’s economic message, giving him a mixed review. What leapt out, however, was this sharp attack… . Continue Reading »
I know it is a fact, but it is nonetheless hard to picture: Had he lived, Martin Luther King, Jr. would now be seventy-three years old. Everybody of a certain age has memories, if only of television images; many were there when he spoke, others marched with him in Selma or Montgomery, and some of us were, albeit intermittently, drawn into his personal orbit. The last I count as one of the many graces of my life, and it no doubt explains why I read, almost compulsively, just about everything published about the man and the time… . Continue Reading »
Medieval Christians were obsessed with the Song of Songs. No book of the Bible received such intensely devoted attention in commentary and preaching. Bernard of Clairvaux preached eighty-six homilies on the Song and died just as he was getting started on chapter 3. The Song has a much-diminished place in the modern Christian imagination. The time is far past to reverse that trend, but it is worth reversing only if the Song is recovered as allegory… . Continue Reading »
Yesterday’s unanimous Supreme Court decision in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, upholding a small Lutheran school’s right to control its employment of “commissioned ministers” on its teaching staff, is very good news indeed for religious freedom. Congratulations are due to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, to Professor Douglas Laycock of the University of Virginia (who teamed up with Becket in representing the school), and to writers of supportive amicus briefs… . Continue Reading »
Why do adults become Catholics? There are as many reasons for “converting” as there are converts. Evelyn Waugh became a Catholic with, by his own admission, “little emotion but clear conviction”: this was the truth; one ought to adhere to it. Cardinal Avery Dulles wrote that his journey into the Catholic Church began when, as an unbelieving Harvard undergraduate detached from his family’s staunch Presbyterianism, he noticed a leaf shimmering with raindrops while taking a walk along the Charles River in Cambridge, Mass… . Continue Reading »
Sexual harassment training programs are not in short supply. Three states mandate them. Two well-publicized Supreme Court cases prescribe the programs as quasi-vaccines against the maladies of liability and damages. For that reason, countless insurance companies force policyholders to herd employees into PowerPoint-based education sessions conducted by human resources personnel. There is also a cottage industry of consultants offering these courses, mostly in the mandating states… . Continue Reading »
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