On June 28, the Supreme Court released the decisions that finished the business of the year. Notable among them was the judgment handed down in McDonald v. Chicago on the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms. Just two years earlier a slim majority of the Court affirmed for the first time that the plain words of the Amendment meant, in fact, what layers of long articles in the law reviews could not quite explain away… . Continue Reading »
When he died from a spear wound in June 363 AD, while on campaign in Persia, the Emperor Julian was only thirty-two years old. His reign as Augustus had lasted just nineteen months. His great project to restore the ancient faith of the “Hellenes” and to turn back the inexorable advance of the “Galilean” religion perished with him … Continue Reading »
“You know, there’s a porn store for Android … . You can download nothing but porn… . Your kids can download porn. That’s a place we don’t want to go, so we’re not going to go there.” Those are the now famous words of Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple … Continue Reading »
Recently, Kenneth Howell, an adjunct professor who worked for Newman Center at the University of Illinois in Champaign/Urbana, was told by his department chair that he could no longer teach there. His offense: explaining and clarifying the Catholic moral teaching on homosexuality while teaching a class on Catholicism. A couple of students complained to the department chair with the usual charge: his moral reasoning is hate speech that creates a hostile environment for gays and lesbians… . Continue Reading »
My home is a 45-minute drive from Gettysburg National Military Park, a site I’ve visited many times, never without some emotion. The nature of that emotion crystallized for me a few years ago when I took some Australian friends on an audio tour of the battlefield with the help of Father Scott Newman, pastor of St. Mary’s Church in Greenville, S.C., who drove the other car in our small motorcade… . Continue Reading »
As I was sitting alone in the cafeteria one afternoon, far from home, overwhelmed and lonely on a campus of 20,000 students, an older student walked up, smiled, and asked if he could join me. He took a seat as I prepared to engage him in a heady discussion of politics, philosophy, science. Thrilled to have the company, I was mentally preparing for anything he threw at me… . Continue Reading »
When we consider the question of illegal immigration and border control, as we should if we are to be responsible citizens, we should remember that before all else we are disciples of Jesus who said, “Inherit the Kingdom of my Father, for when I was a stranger, you welcomed me.” … Continue Reading »
Too many lazy authors take the principle of natural selection out of biology, where it belongs, and then apply it outside its proper sphere in ways that can only be regarded as completely preposterous. No, this is not another article on evolution, still less an attack on it. Provided that that unfortunately loose term evolution means strictly “descent with modification,” it hardly seems possible to deny it without denying the findings of genetics. Of course controversy still rages about how genuinely explanatory the term natural selection is inside the undisputed reality of evolutionary biology… . Continue Reading »
Poor Anne Rice. Always a day behind the fair. Always a beat behind the crowd. Mind you, that can be a very profitable position to hold: You can catch the popular wave, when you’re not too inventive, and you can ride it to good sales. As she did with her novels. Anyway, in 1998 she announced that she was returning to Catholic Christianity, and in 2010 she announced that she was leaving Christianity… . Continue Reading »
Senior officials of the Federal Reserve now warn that the United States faces a Japan-style deflation and a prolonged period of stagnation like Japan’s “lost decade” of the 1990s. TheNew York Times’ website reports: On Thursday, James Bullard, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, warned that the Fed’s current policies were putting the American economy at risk of becoming “enmeshed in a Japanese-style deflationary outcome within the next several years.” … Continue Reading »
