In going to Lund to participate with Lutherans in a joint commemoration of the Reformation, Pope Francis is following in the footsteps of his two papal predecessors, both of whom were deeply committed to the ecumenical pathway set forth in the documents of Vatican II. Continue Reading »
Were Disraeli reincarnated as a Republican politician, our establishment would very likely find him as distressing as they currently find Trump. Continue Reading »
One of the core points overlooked by unbelievers is that human understanding is not exhausted by mapping the world of nature. We don’t just investigate the world at a scientific level: We also seek to give meaning to our lives, and to connect our own small narratives with the larger narratives of the world around us. Continue Reading »
I yield to no one in my recoil from Donald Trump. But for anyone who shares the perspectives of the Republican Party, far more is involved here than aversion to an implausible candidate. A conservative should have an interest in repealing and replacing Obamacare, a program that tends inexorably to the political control of medicine. Continue Reading »
Thousands of medical ethicists and bioethicists, as they are called, professionally guide the unthinkable on its passage through the debatable on its way to becoming the justifiable until it is finally established as the unexceptionable. Continue Reading »
Cohen declares, “No outcome in Syria could be worse than the current one.” He seems to have a high degree of confidence that if the United States had bombed the Assad regime, it would have produced a more peaceful Syria. Maybe it would have. Or maybe bombing—or perhaps better to say, merely bombing—the Assad forces would have produced only a different kind of hell. Continue Reading »
The contradictions between these two ways of looking at the world, promethean and determinist, are obvious. Either we are autonomous individuals who transcend the accidents of birth or we are members of whatever identity groups we happened to be born into. Depending on the circumstances, the Left will either deny or affirm the primacy of nature. Continue Reading »
Goldwater by 1964 was the unquestioned leader of the emerging conservative movement. Trump, by contrast, has channeled a populist impulse that has yet to become a movement. It’s true that his candidacy has resonated deeply with a segment of the population and has similarities with other right-wing, anti-immigrant movements in Europe. But at this point he heads a personal, candidate-centric campaign. Continue Reading »
A lesson for Catholics in the U. S. from a classic history of the struggle for control of the American continent. Continue Reading »
Pope vs. Hitler opens by asking whether Pius XII really was “Hitler’s Pope,” as John Cornwell notoriously alleged, or rather, as Riebling’s book maintains, Hitler’s implacable enemy. Cassel includes critics, and not just supporters, of Pius XII. But his film makes clear where the hard evidence lies. Continue Reading »
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