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Tradition, the Church, and the World

September 1, 2021 James Kalb 64

The dispute over the continuing value of the Traditional Latin Mass has drawn attention to the question of tradition and its role in the Church. That’s a complicated matter. Tradition is important, but not the […]

Columns

The Church in the new America

August 4, 2021 James Kalb 32

The Church has always been patriotic here. America offered a better life to millions of Catholics fleeing poverty and oppression, and allowed the Church freedom to worship, evangelize, do charity, and run her own affairs. […]

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The pluribus and the unum

June 6, 2021 James Kalb 5

Government is difficult. How can anyone run other people’s lives when he likely has trouble running his own? A basic difficulty is the old problem of the one and the many. In philosophy that problem […]

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What to do? Views from the past

May 2, 2021 James Kalb 23

Catholics today are in a difficult position. They have come to believe that active involvement in social and political life is a basic part of living the Faith. But the general conditions leading to that […]

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What kind of tyranny?

February 3, 2021 James Kalb 8

Reciprocity, the idea that relationships go both ways, is a bedrock social principle. Reciprocity doesn’t require equality—I’m not equal to John Roberts or the cop who tickets me for double parking—but it does require mutual […]

Columns

Identity and Catholicism

January 1, 2021 James Kalb 15

Identity pervades Catholic thought. Things are what they are, and that doesn’t change when our way of thinking changes. A human being is either male or female, and whichever it is stays that way. Similarly, […]

Columns

Wokeness and Catholicism

December 2, 2020 James Kalb 40

Many people have noted that “woke” ideology, which views inequality as an intolerable evil caused by pervasive racism, sexism, homophobia, and the like, has a religious quality: it defines good and evil, explains life and […]