Matthew Schmitz

From Douglas Kmiec’s 2008 book  Can a Catholic Support Him? : So what does the ‘Born Alive’ Act do? Largely, it redefines what it means to be ‘born alive.’ From the time of ancient common law, ‘born alive’ has meant live birth at or near the end of a full . . . . Continue Reading »

The New York Times ran a column in this weekend’s Sunday Review by John G. Turner arguing that Mormons need to make a “fuller confrontation” with their church’s history of racism. It’s an important question, but one has to wonder at the usefulness of raising it in . . . . Continue Reading »

The Economist has a story assembling hard figures and best guesses on the size and state of the complex, opaque finances of the Catholic Church. Some figures from the report: 6,800 is the number of Catholic schools  in America (5% of the national total) 630 is the number of Catholic hospitals . . . . Continue Reading »

In a review of a book on the life of pro-life leader Ellen McCormack, Michael J. New explains why she decided to vie for her party’s presidential nomination: During the 1970s, many rank-and-file Democrats were pro-life. But going into the 1976 election cycle, no major Democratic presidential . . . . Continue Reading »

Daniel Silliman tackles a problem familiar to this editor: Is it “Evangelical” or “evangelical,” majuscule or miniscule, capitalized or not? The problem encompasses other terms like “deist,” “atheist,” and “charismatic.” In the chart . . . . Continue Reading »

This should be obvious. As Anna Williams points out below , the only person who holds the blame for today’s shooting, whatever its motivation, is the shooter himself. No idea or cause, however noble, is immune from excess. John Brown killed in the name of freedom. George Tiller’s . . . . Continue Reading »

Initial reports of this afternoon’s shooting at the Family Research Council say that the gunman acted after “expressing disagreement with the conservative group’s policy positions.” Most assume the disagreement came from the left, and on the issue of same-sex marriage. If . . . . Continue Reading »

This has been a bad summer for the whiz-bang TED set. First Jonah Lehrer falls, then Fareed Zakaria, and now sociologist  Philip N. Cohen takes Hanna Rosin to task for her wildly misleading TED talk. Basically, it seems that Rosin cobbled together a bunch of  bogus or exaggerated . . . . Continue Reading »

Anti-Muslim violence seems to be on the rise, with the new know-nothings committing at least seven acts of violence this month alone: In Hayward, California on Friday, August 3, four teenagers threw lemons at a local mosque, striking one congregant. In North Smithfield, Rhode Island  on . . . . Continue Reading »

Via the ever-valuable  J.L. Wall , history professor Anders Henriksson’s complete, brief history of the world , compiled verbatim from papers written by his students. A gruesome sample: The Reformnation happened when German nobles resented the idea that tithes were going to Papal . . . . Continue Reading »