The Benedictine Option
Rod Dreher has suggested something he calls “The Benedict Option” as a response to the decline in religious faith and practice — and in the face of the increasing hostility toward them — in contemporary […]
Month: March 2016
General
The UK ordinariate, five years on
The Sunday School is now too large and the children just can’t fit comfortably into the Parish Room in the Rectory. So a Children’s Choir has been formed from among the older children, those who […]
Essay
Hardships and Sonships
Readings: Jos 5:9a, 10-12 Ps 34:2-3, 4-5, 6-7 2 Cor 5:17-21 Lk 15:1-3, 11-32 “How could a loving God send people to hell?” It’s a question I’ve heard many times from people who balk at […]
Analysis
The Church and sex abuse: The past 15 years
The movie Spotlight’s Best Picture win at the Academy Awards has brought renewed attention to the Catholic sex abuse scandals that broke in 2002. But while the Church’s failures are well-known, it is also true […]
Analysis
Immigration, Reason, and Responsibility
Donald Trump recently raised the specter of an ISIS attack on the Vatican. Mr. Trump likes to claim that he is always the first to know what the future portends, but in this case others […]
Rational Animals
Euthanasia Nation: The Perilous Situation in Canada
Just over a year ago, the Supreme Court of Canada opened wide the door to euthanasia by ruling that Canadians have the right to physician-assisted death. Like other legal expansions of rights in recent years, […]
Analysis
The Post-Scalia Court and the Culture War
To no one’s particular surprise, the process of filling the Supreme Court vacancy created by Antonin Scalia’s death has morphed into a huge Washington-style power struggle. What may not be so obvious is that the […]
Analysis
Ukraine’s Greek Catholic heroes
Ever since then Maidan revolution of dignity erupted in Kyiv in November 2013, Russian propaganda has been pumped into the world in a steady stream of bilge reminiscent of what spewed out of Germany in […]
Ecclesia et Civitas
Natural Law, Reality, and Ideological Fantasies
Last month I noted that Catholics, along with presenting the Faith, should try vigorously to make natural law more visible in public discussion. But how? The very idea of natural law provokes incomprehension today. It […]
Essay
Blasting Holes Through the Buffered Self
Last week, during the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress, I had the enormous privilege of sharing a breakfast with Fr. Robert Spitzer, the inter-galactically smart Jesuit, who once served as president of Gonzaga University and who […]