“Hey, what are you doing here?” a friend asked when I showed up on Tuesday night to watch the election coverage. “Didn’t you write last Thursday, pronouncing politics unimportant?” Not exactly, I said. Politics is important. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle defines human beings as political animals… . Continue Reading »
It’s not every day that the United States Department of Justice has to remind people that a religion is in fact, a religion. However, the increasingly heated controversy surrounding a proposed mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee has forced its Civil Rights Division lawyers to intervene and counter plaintiffs working to stop its construction on the grounds that Islam is not a religion but rather a “political or ideological movement.” … Continue Reading »
There was something wrong with Zhang’s dog. The Chinese man had bought the Pomeranian on a business trip, but after he brought it home he found the animal to be wild and difficult to train. The dog would bite his master, make strange noises, and had a tail that mysteriously continued to grow. And the smell… . Continue Reading »
On a recent visit to San Antonio to help support an exciting new project, John Paul II Catholic High School, I had the opportunity to re-visit the Alamo, one of my favorite American historical sites, and San Fernando Cathedral, a masterpiece of Hispanic Catholic architecture and decoration… . Continue Reading »
A friend who teaches high school Social Studies recently lamented to me that her students come up from middle school with such a vague idea of what has made America unique among nations since its founding”and what its character has meant to the rest of the world”that she is forced almost to play Devil’s Advocate against the nation’s own history, in order to entice them to its defense… . . Continue Reading »
Today, the United States Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments in the state of California’s appeal of a Ninth Circuit decision declaring unconstitutional a statute enacted in that state which restricted minors’ access to graphically violent video games… . Continue Reading »
Driving home yesterday, listening to the local “Where the music matters” station, I found myself belting out “The Times They Are a-Changing,” to my children’s amusement, and suddenly realized that it’s a really dumb song. I hear it now very differently than when I first heard it as a young teenager … . Continue Reading »
“You are heretics, but it might not be your fault.” In decades and centuries past, that posture of exculpatory condescension often represented the most we could achieve in ecumenical reconciliation. We may not be able to agree on anything else, but we might concede that Christians today are not fully responsible for the divisions of the sixteenth century… . Continue Reading »
A few days ago I was walking along the woodland trails of the national park near my home with my son Patrick and dog Roland (I think I have that the right way around). When we had set out, the sky was overcast, traces of the morning’s mist were still drifting among the trees … Continue Reading »
This weekend, Protestants commemorate Luther’s posting of the 95 Theses on the Wittenberg church door, a call to disputation that marks the symbolic starting point for the Reformation. As Luther slashed through the corruptions of late medieval Catholicism, “priesthood of all believers” rapidly became one of the great slogans of the Reformation… . Continue Reading »
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