Matthew J. Franck

On Saturday, this site ran my “On the Square” essay, ” Anaesthetizing America’s Conscience ,” in which I faulted two university presidents, Fr. John Jenkins of Notre Dame and John Garvey of Catholic University, for a missed opportunity to speak the whole truth to power . . . . Continue Reading »

As readers may know, the Obama administration’s Department of Health and Human Services is proposing to require every health insurer in the land to pay for, and thus to be complicit in, the provision of contraceptives, including some that would be more accurately described as abortifacients. The rule offers a potential exception on religious grounds, but this “exemption,” as previously discussed by Christopher T. Haley, Ryan Anderson, and others on this website, is exceedingly narrow and inadequate. … Continue Reading »

Three years ago, my friends Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen (both senior fellows at the Witherspoon Institute and familiar to FT readers) published a short and powerful book called  Embryo: A Defense of Human Life —a wonderful combination of scientific and philosophical . . . . Continue Reading »

Sorry, folks, it’s the New York Times again that is the source of our amusement.  Today they have a story in the news pages with the following lead: “A bake sale sponsored by a Republican student group at the University of California, Berkeley, has incited anger and renewed the . . . . Continue Reading »

Joe Carter included this in his “First Links” this morning, but I wanted to call readers’ attention again to the fine essay at Public Discourse today by Helen Alvaré, Gerard V. Bradley, and O. Carter Snead, ” Conscience, Coercion, and Healthcare .”  It . . . . Continue Reading »

That’s what went through my mind when reading this op-ed by Matthew Avery Sutton, who is bylined as an associate professor of history at Washington State University, and author of Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America .  The essay is a bizarre train wreck . . . . Continue Reading »

At NRO today, my friend Bill Simon and I have an article titled ” Mayor Bloomberg and the Soul of American Politics ,” about the mayor’s refusal to make clergy a part of tomorrow’s 9/11.  Here’s a sample: It wasn’t the difficulty of choice and the possibility . . . . Continue Reading »

A couple of days ago at NRO , the estimable Michael Barone ruminated on the subject of same-sex marriage.  He casually professed himself in favor of this revolution in the institution of marriage—giving an extremely bad reason that suggests he has not thought a great deal about . . . . Continue Reading »

Readers of First Things and of this blog are no doubt familiar with Public Discourse , the online journal published by my employer, the Witherspoon Institute .  Today PD begins a two-week daily series under the title you see above.  As editor Ryan Anderson says, the series looks ahead to . . . . Continue Reading »

The boss around here, R.R. Reno, has a very smart article On the Square this morning: ” Does the Tea Party Have a Religion Problem ?”  His criticism of Professors Campbell and Putnam, authors of a recent New York Times op-ed on the Tea Party , is spot on.  Except for . . . . Continue Reading »