Decades ago I spent a month or two of a summer in Boston. I still remember the inward cringe when I first traversed the sterile brick plaza at Government Center. It features one of those busy concrete buildings with jutting, thrusting, and vaguely functional slabs that vaguely reminds you of a . . . . Continue Reading »
Rocco Palmo of Whispers in the Loggia provides an interesting sidebar this morning to last night’s election returns: Since the first Congress sat in 1789, only four American Catholics have been entrusted with the gavel as Speaker of the House. Until now, though, they’ve all been . . . . Continue Reading »
1. So I was wrong: The results for the House, combined with those for the Governors and state legislatures, are genuinely impressive. The Republican party is now the more national and more dominant one. It’s also clearly a policy-driven result—a fact the MSM is attempting to obscure . . . . Continue Reading »
Although I am not an academic theologian, I have recently been grappling with a seemingly insuperable problem which for centuries has stumped the best minds in Christendom: How could a good God be so slow to answer a prayer for patience? Proposed solutions may be left in the comments . . . . Continue Reading »
There is no tea party movement , declares Joe Carter in today’s first “On the Square” article. (The second will be George Weigel’s column.) For the past eighteen months, pundits and politicians have been trying to identify this political animal. Everyone thinks they have . . . . Continue Reading »
So they’ve done it. Andrew and Sarah Wilson, tracing Luther’s 1510 journey from Erfurt to Rome , have finally crossed the Tiber. And I mean that literally. They reached their destination. Ecumenism can be the lightheaded pursuit of the touchy-feely crowd who don’t like to think hard . . . . Continue Reading »
Years ago, my mother and father, brother and I spent our summer vacations at the Downingtown Motor Inn in Pennsylvania. To me it was Shangri-la; a place of enchantment and matrix to many happy memories. One night, the hotel held a Jeopardy-type contest for kids that I wound up winning. From the . . . . Continue Reading »
The political debacle suffered by the Democratic Party tonight—it was not a validation of Republicans—had two major causes. One, beyond our scope here, was the economy and the president’s handling thereof. The second, unquestionably, was Obamacare. The American people . . . . Continue Reading »
(More excerpts here from Manent’s new book of interviews, Le Regard Politique – i.e., Seeing Things Politically ) When I met Aron I was carried away with admiration for him . . . Aron desired less than any man to exercise influence over people or to dominate a young man [such as I . . . . Continue Reading »
In ecumenical news: A proposed agreement between the American Catholic bishops and four Reformed “ecclesial communities”, including the mainline Presbyterian Church USA, appears to ignore the Vatican’s concerns about the mode of baptism, according to CatholicCulture.org. . . . . Continue Reading »
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