I know it is a fact, but it is nonetheless hard to picture: Had he lived, Martin Luther King, Jr. would now be seventy-three years old. Everybody of a certain age has memories, if only of television images; many were there when he spoke, others marched with him in Selma or Montgomery, and some of . . . . Continue Reading »
In his article “God’s Justice and Ours” (FT, May), Justice Antonin Scalia states correctly, I believe, that Pope John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae did not intend “authoritatively to sweep aside (if one could) two thousand years of Christian teaching.” Nevertheless he holds that the Pope’s . . . . Continue Reading »
Karl Marx—a powerful mind, a very learned man, and a good German writer—died 119 years ago. He lived in the age of steam; never in his life did he see a car, a telephone, or an electric light, to say nothing of later technological devices. His admirers and followers used to say and some . . . . Continue Reading »
An apt and cheerful conversation about marriage must be part of our dialogue today. For marriage is one of the great mediators of individuality and community, revelation and reason, tradition and modernity. Marriage is at once a harbor of the self and a harbinger of the community, a symbol of divine . . . . Continue Reading »
Ever since the World Trade Center was destroyed, the question of what to do with the site has been at the forefront of New Yorkers’ minds. The Twin Towers once stood proudly over the city; their remains—sixteen acres of ruins, a hole six stories deep looms just as large. For the past twelve . . . . Continue Reading »
Does anti-Catholicism exist? Yes it does. Can we define it? Yes we can. It’s repugnance for things Catholic, both real and imagined. It’s the sort of thing Catholics and non-Catholics alike recognize when they see it. Is anti-Catholicism, historically, as virulent as anti-Semitism, to which it . . . . Continue Reading »
The title question has been asked frequently in recent years, both within and outside the field. I think that it can be answered rather easily: sociology has fallen victim to two severe deformations. The first began in the 1950s; I would label it as methodological fetishism. The second was part of . . . . Continue Reading »
Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971), dubbed “America’s theologian” by the mid-twentieth-century media, had a host of critics during his lifetime. Many attacked him for his political realism. Others found his “neoorthodoxy” wanting. A few went much further, doubting his belief in God. In the . . . . Continue Reading »
We may not have seen anything quite like this since Europe in the eighteenth century. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, there is the by now familiar circumstance where a bishop is charged with mishandling the case of a priest charged with the sexual abuse of minors some ten years ago. The bishop is said to have . . . . Continue Reading »
Real Ethics: Rethinking the Foundations of Morality By John Rist. Cambridge University Press. 295 pp. $23 paper. John Rist’s punchy title suggests that it is possible for an ethical theory to be less than fully engaged with reality. It also hints at the author’s vigorous defense of moral . . . . Continue Reading »
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