When G.K. Chesterton died in 1936, his achievements were recognized the world over. Msgr. Ronald Knox called him “a prophet in an age of false prophets.” The New York Times described him as “the most exuberant personality in English literature.” George Bernard Shaw said he was “a man of colossal genius,” and Pope Pius XI hailed him as “a gifted defender of the Catholic Faith.” Continue Reading »
In a few moments, we will lay hands on you to mark you as a minister of the Church of Jesus Christ. This is an effective ritual that achieves what it portrays and proclaims. Right now, you don’t hold pastoral office in the Church. By the end of the afternoon, you will. Our hands won’t declare that you already are a minister. They will make you one. You will be irreversibly changed. Continue Reading »
I have an awkward confession to make. When I hear American Catholics cheerlead the New Evangelization, I’m sorry to say, I become very skeptical very quickly. As they unpack their bold vision for evangelical reform, I start feeling a lot like Mugatu, who, in an exasperated breakdown at the end of the 2001 film Zoolander, famously exclaimed, “I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!” Continue Reading »
Today at Public Discourse, my brilliant co-author and former student Sherif Girgis begins an important three part series of articles on the need for philosophical reflection and analysis in thinking and arguing about moral questions, including morally-charged questions of law and public policy. Continue Reading »
Goma airport, the gateway to one of the largest and most strategic cities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s unstable and mineral-rich east, is the city’s only connection to distant Kinshasa, the DRC’s capital and a place unreachable from Goma by road. Consequently, it’s also one of . . . . Continue Reading »
One of the most neglected recent books on sexual difference is also one of the most important. Christopher C. Roberts’ 2007 book, Creation and Covenant, is a remarkably comprehensive and detailed theological investigation of the topic. By giving us a narrative arc that stretches from the earliest Church Fathers to Pope John Paul II and beyond, Roberts considers not only the ways in which these figures disagree with one another but how they provide resources for understanding sexual difference today. Continue Reading »
Why is Calvinism so influential among American Evangelicals while Lutheranism is not? We might describe the statistically modal convert to Calvinism—that is, the most frequently observed kind of convert—as a person like this: A young adult, usually male. Raised in a broad though indistinct Evangelical (and sometimes nominally Catholic) home. Bright. A reader. Searching for better intellectual answers to questions about God, Jesus and the Bible. Is open to becoming a pastor. Why does this young man so much more often become a Calvinist instead a Lutheran? Continue Reading »
Almost fifty years ago, when the Catholic Church unveiled its new rite of Mass in the Sistine Chapel, Cardinal John Heenan, then Archbishop of Westminster, remarked that if the Church used the new liturgy in ordinary parishes it would “soon be left with a congregation mostly of women and children.” In 1967, Heenan could proudly assert that in his country “not only women and children but also fathers of families and young men” regularly attended Mass. . . . Continue Reading »
New Year’s Resolutions tend to focus on new skills and habits to acquire. This is the year you’ll finally go to the gym or start taking lessons to brush up on your French or learn computer programming. But as the year begins, it can be salutary to think about what you already spend time practicing and if there are ‘lessons’ you’d like to drop. . . . Continue Reading »
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has blocked the administration’s mandate that the Little Sisters of the Poor contract to provide contraception coverage to their employees. That the case has gone this far illustrates the sickness of the left, the complacence of our popular media culture, and the weakness (partly self-inflicted) of President Obama’s political opponents. . . . Continue Reading »
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