Matthew J. Franck

I learned this morning from a friend of the pastoral letter recently issued by the Right Reverend Lawrence C. Provenzano, the bishop of the Episcopal Church’s Long Island diocese, to be read aloud at all services on Sunday, August 7.  The letter, an effort to adapt to the new law . . . . Continue Reading »

Thank you for asking me to speak this evening in support of the Love and Fidelity Network and Grupo Solido. I so admire the young people who have poured their hearts into this work, which is so important to the future of our two countries, and to the health of truly human culture everywhere. I am, I fear, a poor spokesman for the cause to which we are devoted here. By training and experience I am a political scientist, studying laws and institutions, courts and legislatures, political theories and constitutional frameworks… . Continue Reading »

I know that Joe mentioned this piece in his Friday ” First Links ” post, but it bears noticing again: Scott Walter’s column ” Hoyas Whip the Irish ,” at The Catholic Thing.  Scott catalogues what he can, in fewer than 1,000 words, of the appallingly un-Catholic . . . . Continue Reading »

Dr. Peter Gott writes a widely syndicated newspaper column giving medical advice, competing for space with Dear Abby , crossword puzzles, and Doonesbury .  In his column published in my local paper this morning (see it in a different paper here ) he takes up the matter of stem cells, and . . . . Continue Reading »

If ain’t so now, it may be one day soon.  So argues this splendid piece by George Weigel at NRO. . . . . Continue Reading »

I really appreciated Bishop James Conley’s “On the Square” article yesterday, ” America’s Atheocracy .”  In fact, I like every bit of it, with the exception of one short paragraph: It is true: the Constitution that America’s founders would later draft . . . . Continue Reading »

At Public Discourse this week, an interesting trifecta: in Monday’s installment, Michael Novak, in ” Religious Liberty and the Development of Doctrine in Islam ,” predicts: By the year 2020, rough and painful human experience will lead the Islamic nations of the Mediterranean . . . . Continue Reading »

The other day the Chronicle of Higher Education had a lengthy article about the work of the “neurophilosopher” Patricia Churchland, with a few critics heard from but for the most part praising her, on the occasion of her new book Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality . . . . Continue Reading »

That’s the next headline I expect, after the recent spate of “lesbian bloggers” revealed to be really middle-aged straight guys . . . . . Continue Reading »

If you have ever wondered whether the conversations going on in philosophy departments have anything to say to us folks outside them, an encouraging answer came in a three-part series last week at Public Discourse by Matthew O’Brien and Robert Koons, both of the University of Texas.  . . . . Continue Reading »