In the National Marriage Project’s exhaustive 2011 “State of Our Unions” report, a sidebar among the analyses and graphs draws attention to a subset social scientists tend to ignore in their ubiquitous research on marriage and parenting: big families. Noted researcher Alan Hawkins explains the dearth in blunt terms … Continue Reading »
When the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) raised a reasonable objection to the HHS mandate connected to the Affordable Care Act”a rule which will require all employers (including organizations like the Little Sisters of the Poor and the Sisters of Life) to betray their consciences and include free sterilization coverage and free contraception and antiabortion drugs in their health insurance plans”White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was dismissive. “The bishops,” he asserted, “never supported health care reform to begin with.” … Continue Reading »
Has the Catholic Church gone soft on Communism? It seems an absurd question, given the Church’s record against it, but one might have thought as much, given some of the commentary leading up to Pope Benedict’s visit to Cuba… . Continue Reading »
The family has been planning to take advantage of our little patch of suburbia to plant a small flower and vegetable garden, something we never dreamed of doing during the 10+ years we lived in New York City. But the nice weather caught us unprepared. The man at the hardware store told my wife that the unseasonably high temperatures meant that all recommended planting schedules should be advanced by one month. We thought we had a little more time to get our acts together. Such is life… . Continue Reading »
I was recently asked to identify the biggest cultural challenge facing American Evangelicals. In my judgment, the biggest cultural challenge is not “out there” in “the culture” but internal“I almost said, “inherent”“to Evangelicalism: the persistent marginalization of the Eucharist in Evangelical church life, piety, and political engagement. Evangelicals will be incapable of responding to the specific challenges of our time with any steadiness or effect until the Eucharist becomes the criterion of all Christian cultural thinking and the source from which all genuinely Christian cultural engagement springs… . Continue Reading »
Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, in an editorial in the March 2000 issue of First Things, discussed the issue of Mormon claims to be Christian in considerable detail. He explained that as an ecumenically oriented magazine, First Things was primarily interested in topics related to the relations between Christians and Jews, but his intention in this column was to extend the outreach a little further… . Continue Reading »
The irrepressibly effervescent personality of Cardinal Timothy Dolan may tempt some to think of the archbishop of New York and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops as the latest in a line of glad-handing Irish-American prelates, long on blarney and short on depth. Succumbing to that temptation would be a very serious mistake… . Continue Reading »
It is now nearly unwatchable in its partisan hackery, but there was a time when I rarely missed Hardball with Chris Matthews. From the late 1990?s to the early-aughts, the program regularly brought together a diverse and energetic panel of pundits who, while rarely in full agreement, could be counted on to offer thoughtful analysis with wit and a surprising amount of civility and good humor… . Continue Reading »
If you have paid any attention at all to the current and ever-livelier dialogue between the LGBT movement and the Christian community, you have no doubt heard the question being asked of Christians everywhere: Do you realize how bigoted your views are? This is of course a trick question, and Christians are not doing themselves any favors by trying so hard to answer it… . Continue Reading »
Should Catholics sing hymns at Mass? Given the state of Catholic liturgical music, it’s a fair question. In the last century, Catholics exchanged their musical solid food for milk”usually skim and on the edge of going sour. Hymns at Mass are a recent addition to the liturgy… . Continue Reading »
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