Imagine if the great Dominican theologian and philosopher Thomas Aquinas were to come here to Charlottesville to meet another great thinker whose given name he shared. What if these two Thomases, Aquinas and Jefferson, were, through some suspension of time, to dine together? … Continue Reading »
It was just about a year ago that Anne Rice”who two years earlier had chronicled her return to the Catholic church in the best-selling Called Out of Darkness; A Spiritual Confession”announced via Facebook that she was “quitting” Christianity:
I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being ‘Christian’ or being a part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen… . . Continue Reading
In 1939, on the eve of World War II, Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain published a book stating that anti-Semitism had become a “pathological phenomenon.”
Maritain’s warning was welcomed by concerned believers, and even the secular press. The New York Times praised Maritain’s insight that “hatred of Jews and hatred of Christians spring from a common source; and the same men who began persecuting Jews are now persecuting Christians, and more or less for the same reason.… . . Continue Reading »”
In an article for Haaretz (subsequently picked up by the über-aggregator The Huffington Post), Mira Sucharov reopens the “particularism vs. universalism debate,” arguing the utter superiority of universalism and the foul depravity of particularism in strident terms“even to the extent of invoking everyone’s favorite debating tactic: tying the other side to Hitler. Surprisingly, this is the smaller of the two major problems with her argument.… . . Continue Reading »
One night, not long after we learned of our daughter’s Down syndrome diagnosis, my wife and I were lying in bed when she pointed to her pregnant belly and said, “You know, we’ve been talking about this child as if she were imaginary, but she’s here in the bed with us now.” It was a powerful moment for me. I believe I became prolife right then and there… . Continue Reading »
Until recently, few evangelicals had much to say about “social justice.” Leftish evangelicals like Ron Sider, Jim Wallis, and Tony Campolo, along with Evangelicals for Social Action and Sojourners, virtually cornered the market. Other evangelicals wrote on inequality, race, and poverty, but mostly in reaction… . Continue Reading »
It is a truth universally acknowledged that it is only a short road that leads from grammatical laxity to cannibalism. At least, it should be universally acknowledged. Human beings are linguistic beings through and through, after all. Because of our miraculous, almost certainly extra-natural capacity for symbolic communication”uttered, written, or mimed”we are the only terrestrial species that possesses a history… . . Continue Reading »
July is the month when fans of the award-winning series Mad Men, which follows the lives of 1960s Madison Avenue executives, eagerly await a new serving of high drama and retro-chic fashion. But since the fifth season has been postponed to next year, Maddicts will have to content themselves with revisiting already-released episodes. One of these, the episode “Maidenform” from season two, is especially worth a second look, for it is a curious window into the truth of Catholic teaching on human sexuality… . Continue Reading »
At Wheaton College I taught “Biblical Interpretation and Hermeneutics” to exceptionally bright, motivated and faithful students. I approached the course from the perspective of the history of interpretation, for, with Peter of Blois, I was convinced that we stand like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, that premodern interpreters had much to say to us moderns who struggle to approach the Bible as Scripture instead of a random collection of textual artifacts. Desiring to rescue the works of the ancients from time’s oblivion and man’s neglect, each semester we sojourned through twenty-five hundred years of interpretation.… . Continue Reading »
Recognizing that the abortion-on-demand position is becoming politically unpopular, many abortion-rights moderates are becoming increasingly more vocal about finding a middle path”at least rhetorically. The shift has been occurring for more than a decade, but it became more noticeable after the 2004 presidential campaign. By 2008 the solidly pro-abortion candidate Hillary Clinton felt comfortable arguing … Continue Reading »
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