Church and State
According to the shared wisdom of the punditocracy and the blogosphere, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney badly needed a “JFK moment” when he flew into College Station, Texas, to deliver
Civility, Charity and Truth-Telling
Thoughtful Americans across the spectrum of political opinion are rightly concerned about the degree to which our national politics has degenerated into the manipulation of consumer desires and passions, often
Please Pass the Ontology
A philosophically-minded young friend recently sent me a fine rant, after having watched a presidential candidates’ cattle call on CNN. The discussion had focused on religion. Several candidates, who identified
What We Can’t Not Know, Six Years After 9/11
Six years after 9/11, there are certain things we can’t not know. We may wish these things weren’t true. We can try to ignore them. But safe passage through a
Spin and Professionalism
The press was even more an unruly beast in 1787 than it is today; yet the Framers of the Constitution gave the fourth estate extraordinary latitude, convinced that the robust
Clinical Notes
The day after the Supreme Court upheld the federal partial birth abortion ban by a 5-4 vote, the pseudonymous “Diogenes” offered a rather chilling commentary on the Catholic World News
Tragedy? Or Wickedness?
At Mass on the morning of April 17, hours after a shooting spree at Virginia Tech had left dozens dead (including the shooter), the homilist spoke of the “tragedy” that
The New Yorker Spins the Pope
The New Yorker was once famous for the ferocity of its fact-checking and editing. No more. Any magazine whose editors give a pass to falsehoods (e.g., Catholics believe that “heaven,
Presidential Spring Training
In late December 1959, Senator John F. Kennedy was annoyed by a news report that he was committed to running for president. Which, of course, he was — as everyone
Nancy and Me
Nancy Pelosi and I grew up in the same Baltimore, in the days of May Processions and Forty Hours’ devotions, of Baltimore Catechisms and nuns in starched wimples, of Catholic
Wanted from Congress: Serious Debate, Not Sound Bites
BY AUGUST 1950, Secretary of State Dean Acheson had taken all he could stand from those congressional critics whom he privately dismissed as “the primitives.” So when Nebraska Sen. Kenneth
Misreporting the Pope
Despite its op-ed page — which often sounds like a transcript from an asylum for victims of Bush Derangement Syndrome — the New York Times remains the nation’s newspaper-of-record. If
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