Fed up with the direction his life choices have taken him, George comes to the conclusion that every instinct he’s ever had has been wrong. How else could he, a man in his late 30s, end up single, unemployed and living at home with his parents?

In an effort to turn his life around, George informs Jerry that he’s going to “do the opposite” of everything his instincts tell him.

Instead of lying to a woman about what he does for a living, George walks right up to her and informs her about how he is currently unemployed. Then, instead of bragging about his previous work experiences during a job interview with the New York Yankees, George tells the truth about how he got fired from his past jobs. Eventually, he meets Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, whom George berates for his poor managerial decisions.

Shockingly, the woman is drawn to George’s mystique. They start a relationship and he is soon hired as the Yankees’ new Assistant to the Traveling Secretary.

While informing Jerry about his recent good fortune, George confides in him that “this opposite thing” is his new religion. It is a religion where “up is down, black is white, good is bad and day is night.”

Jerry, not convinced that this is going to turn out well, says “so your Messiah must be the Anti-Christ.”

“The Opposite” is just 1 of the 180 Seinfeld episodes that ran during its nine year reign. While most Americans don’t have a clue about George’s strange new religion, his decision to ignore his instincts and embrace “this opposite thing” is pertinent to today’s political discourse.

A study released by the Pew Research Center Monday found that instead of being an objective observer when it comes to reporting on gay marriage, the press has taken on an activist role in promoting it’s legalization. In other words, the press is doing “the opposite” of what it should be doing.

After looking at roughly 500 news stories over a two-month period that began just prior to the Supreme Court’s hearings on gay marriage this past spring, Pew found that by overwhelming margins, the majority of news outlets ran stories in support of gay marriage.

You’ll have to read the whole report for more specifics, but here’s a snapshot of how CNN, Fox News and MSNBC covered gay marriage during that time:

You can check out the study in its entirety by clicking here, though I doubt you’ll find anything you didn’t already know. Catholics are acutely aware of the fact that the media has been biased in its reporting on social issues for a while. As Jerry once said during an episode in season 8, welcome to the “bizarro world.”

On Wednesday, June 12th, the Chicago Blackhawks and the Boston Bruins faced off in game 1 of the National Hockey League’s Stanley Cup Finals.

Predictably, Blackhawks and Bruins fans have been glued to their television sets ever since. Both want to their team to hoist Lord Stanley’s Cup – the trophy awarded to the NHL’s champion.

I’m not much of a hockey guy, but it’s safe to assume most Americans have a favorite sports team of some kind. When our team wins the championship, we typically throw them a parade. Some of us might even call in sick to work so we can attend the celebration in hopes of catching a glimpse of the championship trophy.

Unfortunately, too many Americans are elevating the Cup of Lord Stanley above the Cup of Jesus Christ. In the past five years alone, the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans has risen from 15% of the adult population to 20%. And according to a recent Gallup poll, “over three-quarters of Americans (77%) say religion is losing its influence on American life.”

One of the reasons this is happening is because we are supplanting God with man-made idols. Idols like sports.

Sports, however, aren’t the only idols we’ve turned to. According to Patheos.com blogger Elizabeth Scalia, we’ve fashioned ourselves dozens of idols. Idols such as material prosperity, technology, being cool, tolerance, sex and politics, among countless others.

In her latest book Strange Gods: Unmasking the Idols in Everyday Life, Scalia, known in the blogosphere as “The Anchoress,” argues that we succumb to idol worship when “we attach ourselves to” things that cause God’s presence to be “blocked, unseen, and disconnected from our awareness.”

In today’s enlightened world, Scalia believes most people don’t “stop to think of what it means to have put something before God.” Therefore, she decided to write a book that seeks to “help you discover your idols by revealing” some of her own, which she undeniably accomplishes in less than 200 pages.

In some ways, Scalia’s eminently readable book reminds me of Thomas à Kempis’s timeless The Imitation of Christ. It might not be as profound, but the message of Strange Gods is essentially the same: Beware of the temptation the world has to offer. Guard against that which seeks to establish itself between you and God.

In my estimation, Strange Gods is required reading for any serious Catholic. Make it a priority to pick it up ASAP.

You begin the book by revisiting the 2008 presidential election. You write about how millions of Americans deified not only Barack Obama but Sarah Palin as well. How did this observation lead you to write an entire book on idolatry? Also, is it really idolatrous to have strong political views?

It’s actually a question I first asked during the presidency of George W. Bush, when I wondered whether ideologies could become idols. The more I observed, and the more I pondered a line from Gregory of Nyssa (“ideas create idols but only wonder leads to knowing”) it seemed the answer was “yes.” The theme of idols, ideas and ideals kept cropping up in my writing, for First Things and elsewhere, and finally one night, while struggling to get to sleep, the whole book popped into my head, fully realized. I’ve learned the hard way not to ignore the Holy Spirit when things like that happen, so I got up, wrote the outline and submitted it — an exercise so seemingly-organic that I really feel like it has almost nothing to do with me.

Of course it is not idolatrous to have strong political views; the Holy Father just spoke the other day about the need for political engagement among the faithful. But there is a difference between being engaged – which involves discourse and a measure of openness to dialogue, because you cannot reach hearts and minds if you’re not speaking to anyone who thinks differently than you  do – and being enthralled. Enthrallment is where we can easily lose track of God and slip into idolatry by putting the person or idea that so-perfectly represents us in between God and ourselves.

I can give you an example: In the book I talk about how Barack Obama enjoyed an almost messianic narrative – he understood that he was an idol, and exploited it. On the right, Sarah Palin enjoyed a similar, if less obvious, exaltation, particularly after the press began to savage her. People who identified with her really went over the top with it, until – as with Obama – even the mildest of constructive criticisms of Palin were deemed hateful and un-American. It’s not an exaggeration to say that some in my comboxes seemed to think her as Mother America. I said that recently and someone in social media wasn’t having any of it. Calling me “corrosive”, he tried to gather other Palin fans and make war on her behalf. It seemed to me he was proving my point. When I checked his bio I read “I live for this country and the founder’s vision” and I thought, “really? Not for God? Or your family?”

That’s enthrallment that slips into idolatry; it can’t see anything but the idol. We love our country; we fight for our country and sometimes die for it. But we don’t live for our country, because – as history shows us – countries and governments are temporal and changeable, not pieces of the Eternal.

You do a great job of identifying the idols we worship in our everyday lives. However, you differentiate between everyday idols and “super idols.” Briefly explain the difference between the two.

Well, everyday idolatry is what I described above: enthrallment; the placing of an idea or a person before God, and I don’t mean only that the idol is “first” in your thinking – although it is – but that we literally, in our minds, place something before God, as in, “between” God and us, so that we cannot see God clearly. If you can get an image in your mind of, say, a fireplace mantel with a mirror behind it, and God sitting upon it, we shove all of our idols in front of God. An everyday idol might be anything, but it’s always about ourselves and what we demand. It might be our iPhone; it might be our devotion to the zeitgeist and the need to be in on whatever is trending. It might be an enthrallment with liturgical rubrics that keeps us so busy criticizing how a Mass is said that we do not actually participate in the sacrifice, at all.

A Super-Idol is different in that it moves beyond the everyday idols, beyond God himself. Picture that mantel again but imagine us going past God and through the mirror; now our backs are to him and we’re guiding ourselves – running by our own lights, so to speak – so enthralled with ourselves and our ideas that we don’t even realize how incompatible they’ve become with what we think we believe. The Super-Idols not only keep us from seeing God, they distort humanity as well, until some humans seem less human than others, and some hatred begins to feel like love. An example of that might be a Catholic or Christian who claims God as great, but not so great that his creation, or his will, needs to be honored if it means getting in the way of a goal. Such a person might be a politician who is extreme on abortion rights or a businessman who engages in illegal chemical dumping — or you, or me, and our single-minded obsessions.

Over the past 50 years, the number of attacks on the traditional family unit has increased. In Strange Gods, you spend a lot of time writing about family, especially your own. Specifically, you write about how our relationship with our family effects which idols we end up worshipping later on in life. Talk about how our families shape us, how your family shaped you, and what you think the future will bring given the continued assaults on the traditional family unit.

Oh, boy, that’s like five questions all-in-one!  In her book, How the West Really Lost God, Mary Eberstadt writes, “The Christian story itself is a story told through the prism of the family. Take away the prism, and the story makes less sense.”

That’s a great insight and it helps explain, why – in order for a secularist culture to thrive — the family must be distracted, distorted, diminished and denied as much as possible. She lays out how family members model God for each other in their examples of familial love and sacrifice. The last thing our culture is about is sacrifice, or perhaps we have a very strange notion of it. I recently read an article by a woman who is very serious about her religion – she is, in fact, a scholar in her faith tradition – who nevertheless had an abortion, with the support of her husband, when a surprise pregnancy threatened to extend her degree process. So, in essence, she made a sacrifice in her life, but it was the sacrifice of the child to the accomplishment. She had a million intellectual justifications for her decision, too, but she couldn’t answer one simple question: if God is All, (and you are not), then how can you decide that he does not know what is best for you?

That upside-down sacrifice is how the family ceases to model God for us, and models something very different.

Not all families are healthy. In my book I quote a Rabbi who says, essentially, that the commandment to honor our parents is a way of honoring God (and one’s own life) since God did have some purpose in choosing that man and that woman to create you. I could write a whole book on that mystery, so I’ll put a stop to it here and go back to Eberstad, who notes that if a family cannot model God for us, then we have a difficult time understanding the Holy Family, and the way in which they permitted God to work for and through them – that whole concept of moving forward on faith is lost. If the Fatherhood of God is underemphasized for reasons of “correctness” or “sensitivity” where do people with bad, harmful fathers turn for that consolation? Must they simply be bereft?

I am not sure I can presume to speak for the future of the traditional family – I’m no prophet – but the family is currently being shoved to the side, and it’s being replaced with an amorphous idea – that family can be anything we say it is. Remember, ideas create idols; as this new idea advances, things will only grow more confused and chaotic as the definition of what a family is, how it lives and what behaviors it may engage in becomes more elastic. Chaos does not reside in God, but in his nemesis.

Legendary NBA coach Phil Jackson recently wrote a book entitled Eleven Rings. While discussing the book and his religious beliefs with Time magazine, Jackson remarked that we should strive to live “in harmony with the moment.” In chapter six of Strange Gods, “The Idols of Coolness and Sex,” you seem to condemn this outlook. Why is living in the moment such a bad thing and how do we convince those who prefer to live “in harmony with the moment” to live “in harmony with God”?

Thanks for the link, so I could hear him in context. Obviously I do not “condemn” being “in harmony with the moment” in the context of the Holy Spirit, which (I think?) was what Jackson was talking about in his syncretismic way; I described to you in the very first question my response to a “moment” when I obeyed what I took to be the nudge of the Holy Spirit.

In chapter six, I’m talking about becoming a hostage to the zeitgeist and making an idol out of being right in the middle of whatever “the latest thing” is – what Flip Wilson used to call “The Church of What’s Happening Now!” which keeps us living in a kind of adolescent suspension – always looking for the next trend, so we can jump on and ride and never, ever be thought out of touch or unhip. How do we connect with Eternal God when our habit of attention and the driving dynamic of our lives is that everything is fluid, of-a-moment — temporary and easily discarded (and disdained) once the moment has passed? Increasingly I think this is a particularly nefarious sort of idol, because it is one that we also train our children to bow down to from a very young age: our kids must have the latest everything, see the hottest hit movie, have a party in the trendiest place. We barely catechize our kids – most of us bring them to a 50 minute CCD class and barely broach the subject the rest of the week – but we every day educate them in the Church of What’s Cool and its great Commandment: I Deserve It And Must Have It Because Everyone Does!

As a blogger who covers politics and spends the majority of your day on the internet in front of a computer, how do you balance the idol of technology and what advice do you have for others who do work similar to your own, especially those working within the Church?

Yes, that’s the question everyone asks and it’s a fair one. In the final chapter of my book, I come clean about the dreadful idolatry in my own life, and part of that has been work, the need to know everything the moment it happens – and yes, these are idols that have definitely been placed between me and God and made outreach and connection difficult. Identifying the truth of it was certainly helpful, and noting the irony more than a little humbling. I can only say that making sure you have included prayer into your day – several times a day – is the great balancer of all of this.

It’s so easy to get caught up in online work. You feel like you’ve been at the computer for an hour, but you look up and it’s been three or four hours, and you’ve gotten all involved in some headline and in email and social media and it all feels so real – as U2 says “even better than the real thing” of life (mostly because so many people are agreeing with you). But if you plan prayer into the day it pulls you back from the illusions and brings you into what is authentic. I have prompts on my phone that ring at specific times to call me to prayer; sometimes it’s the Angelus, sometimes an Office from the Liturgy of the Hours. I use these prompts the way a monastic uses the bells — as the voice of God that must be obeyed – and whether the break involves a minute, or ten minutes, it “puts me in my place” so to speak and also restores my mental equilibrium. Returning from prayer, suddenly an article that had me all worked up is more easily seen as silliness and the tab can be closed. Suddenly the email that looks overwhelming is something to be grateful for, because life is better with people communicating with one than not.

I don’t see how anyone can work in new media — with its infinite reach, its hero-worship and its rancid hate and its time-wasting, yet irresistible kitty pictures – and survive for very long, without prayer.

Amidst all the controversies that have gone on in the sports world over the past two decades, there’s been one pro golfer whose constant play, amiable personality and ability to steer clear of kicking up too much dust has made him one of the most respected athletes in the country.

That golfer is Phil Mickelson

Known in the golf world as “Lefty,” Mickelson has won 41 PGA Tour events over his career, a number that places him 9th all time on the PGA Tour win list.

He’s also a great family man.

Eric Adelson of Yahoo Sports has more:

Phil Mickelson showed up to the U.S. Open on Thursday. He didn’t do much before the rains came at Merion Golf Club to suspend play, but he showed up for work, with 90 minutes to spare, at 5:37 a.m, and went on to fire a 3-under 67…

He cut it so close because he wanted to show up earlier this week in San Diego, for his oldest daughter’s eighth-grade graduation. Amanda Mickelson is done with junior high now, going on to high school. Yeah, it’s only an eighth-grade graduation, and Mickelson lost valuable practice time (not to mention sleep) while his competitors got familiar with a complex course. Amanda said she understood if Dad wanted to stay in Philadelphia [where the U.S. Open is being played]. But Dad said, “I want to be there.” So he flew overnight, coast-to-coast, from his home in San Diego to his place of work, which this week is Philadelphia.

He slept two hours on the plane, one before tee time and one more during the weather delay, which halted play for some three hours.

“I feel great,” he said after his round.

Adelson notes that this isn’t the first time Phil put fatherhood first and golf second:

Mickelson wanted to be there 14 years ago, when he carried a pager around at Pinehurst, vowing he would walk off the course and out of the final round of the U.S. Open if his wife, Amy, went into labor. Mickelson finished the tournament, losing in a heartbreaker to Payne Stewart, who walked right over to him on the 18th green, held Mickelson’s face in his hands, and told him there was something far more important about to happen: fatherhood.

Amanda Mickelson was born the next day.

Stewart died in a plane accident four months later. He was 42.

Amanda’s dad is now 42.

Adelson goes on to point out the importance of parenthood and, more specifically, what Father’s Day means to the world of golf:

Parents make the extra effort for their children every single day because they love their babies, but also because they never know what fate might bring. To be a parent is the ultimate celebration of life, but it also comes with the sober and unspoken preparation for the day when you’re not there anymore to care for them. We pray that day comes much later on, but we know that’s not up to us.

Father’s Day, always tied to the U.S. Open and the game of golf, can be equal parts jubilant and sad. We are elated to give our kids a hug on Father’s Day, and we are crushed when we can’t get a hug from a father who is no longer with us. How many sons remember watching the final round of the U.S. Open with our fathers, and how many of us still watch a great putt or sand save and think, Dad would have loved this?

Adelson then speaks about Mickelson’s image as a golfer and his ability to relate to fans, especially dads:

Mickelson appeals to a lot of dads, with his blend of daring and goofy, cool and seemingly approachable. He has his serious moments and his lighter ones, often within the same few minutes on the same hole. He’s been touched by triumph and tragedy, famously leaping two inches off the ground when he won the Masters for the first time, and then sharing a long and emotional embrace with Amy after winning at Augusta in 2010, a year after she was diagnosed with cancer.

He’s been brave and vulnerable, the way a lot of good dads are. He’s worked hard, succeeding and failing at work, putting extra time in when he’d rather be home. Yes, it must be nice for a guy with a plane to jet from one coast to the other to play for millions in front of millions. This isn’t like driving through snow to drop your daughter off at swim practice at 4 a.m. before going to a construction site. Phil Mickelson is not everyman. But dads can relate. Even though Phil is a celebrity who’s as unknowable as Tiger Woods or Rory McIlroy, with him we always seem to relate.

Mickelson looked tired Thursday morning as he walked through the early part of his round. It’s the look so many dads know: the weariness of getting up early, or staying up late, making sure the kids get to school or making sure they get home. It may have cost Mickelson a stroke or two, which can be all the difference in this tournament. No matter. Payne Stewart was right: showing up to see your child is the greatest thing a man can ever feel.

Great column, Mr. Adelson. And great job of setting an example, Phil. We’ll be rooting for you this weekend.

Harvard, in their choice of faculty and through the scholarship those faculty produce, has indicated that it has next to no interest in advancing principles similar to those taught by the Catholic Church.

That being the case, I was astonished to read an op-ed on the pages of USA Today last month wherein a Harvard student forcefully argued against the views her classmates, and ostensibly her professors, have towards casual sex.

In her essay, Harvard sophomore Lisa J. Mogilanski explains why she’s “uncomfortable with the hookup culture” that dominates college life.

“Hookup culture seems like a perversion of what human relationships ought to be,” Mogilanski argues. “[It] seems, at best, preposterous and, at worst, in very poor taste…It’s even lauded as liberating for women.”

“But I’ve asked myself…whether enthusiastic sex positivity doesn’t come with its own host of negative pressures. For one, it isn’t the boys who need to be encouraged to have sex. It seems likely that hookup culture makes some girls do things they’d otherwise prefer not to.”

“I don’t mean to suggest that we had romance ‘right’ in the days of chastity belts and arranged marriages,” Mogilanksi continues. “But I feel as though we all sort of know how romance ought to play out. Hookup culture is an unnavigable mush of vague intentions and desires.”

Responses to Ms. Mogilanski’s accurate portrayal of the hookup culture have been vitriolic and, as expected, non-substantive. Nobody, it seems, wants to tolerate a dissenting opinion when it comes to childless-free sex.

Cursory research suggests Ms. Mogilanski is no arch-conservative either. Her columns for the Harvard Crimson scarcely mention politics and when I tried to find out more about her I had a tough time discovering anything else she has written. It seems as though she’s just a regular student who sees the danger associated with a culture that can’t resist the temptation of the flesh.

What Mogilanski says in her essay echoes what Catholic author Colleen Carroll Campbell told me in an interview several months ago. “The decline of courtship and rise of the hook-up culture certainly hasn’t benefited women,” Campbell remarked. “I don’t think it’s done favors for either sex, but women have particularly borne the brunt of the low expectations and fear of commitment it encourages.”

As spot-on as Ms. Mogilanski may be, just because one student at Harvard publically expresses her discomfort with her generation’s attitudes toward sex, doesn’t mean we’re on the cusp of a sea change in views towards marriage and respect for the unborn. Recall that Plan B “emergency contraception” was just approved for over-the-counter use and that over the past several years more and more school boards have been dolling out birth control pills to their teenage and elementary school students.

Ms. Mogilanski’s opinion is welcome news, and it may open some people’s eyes to the spiritual decay taking place among young adults, but the battle to instill a culture that respects women, not only on college campuses but in society writ large, is far from over.

Realizing that they have a pretty low batting average when it comes to redefining marriage at the ballot box, anti-marriage activists are forcing career-conscience state legislators to grant them their wishes.

Although gay marriage is often said to be inevitable, marriage redefiners were handed an embarrassing defeat last week. On Friday, the Illinois General Assembly cancelled a vote on a bill that would have allowed couples anatomically incapable of bearing children to participate in the institution of marriage.

Even though Democrats control the Governor’s office and possess supermajorities in the Illinois state legislature, history seemed to be working against them as they unsuccessfully convinced their fellow Democrats to support the notion of genderless marriage.

Nevertheless, Illinois State Representative Greg Harris – the bill’s lead sponsor – tearfully but confidently assured the public that when the Assembly reconvenes later this year, “equal marriage will…be a reality in Illinois.”

Efforts to redefine marriage along gender neutral lines are also taking root in the state of Michigan. Just last week, Senate Democrats introduced legislation that, according to Democratic State Representative Brandon Dillon – a Catholic – would usher in an era of “marriage equality.”

Although Democrats are in the minority in Michigan’s House and Senate, and won’t be in control of those legislative bodies for the foreseeable future, it’s clear that liberals think Michiganders can be tricked into supporting an institution that necessarily denies children the opportunity of being raised by their mom and dad.

Given the growing animosity towards the traditional understanding of marriage and given the full frontal attacks its opponents are about to unleash on it, I think quoting On Freemasonry and Naturalism, an encyclical written in 1884 by Pope Leo XIII, is most appropriate:

The race of man, after its miserable fall from God…separated into two diverse and opposite parts, of which the one steadfastly contends for truth and virtue, the other for those things which are contrary to virtue and to truth.

The one is the kingdom of God on earth…The other is the kingdom of Satan.

At every period of time each has been in conflict with the other.

At this period, however… [the Church’s enemies] are now boldly rising up against God Himself. They are planning the destruction of holy Church publicly and openly, and this with the set purpose of utterly despoiling the nations of Christendom.

It is Our office to point out the danger, to mark who are the adversaries and to the best of Our power to make head against their plans and devices.

Their ultimate purpose [is] the utter overthrow of that religious and political order of the world which the Christian teaching has produced.

They deny that anything has been taught by God…[they believe] that the multitude should be satiated with boundless license.

[They believe] that marriage belongs to the genus of commercial contracts, which can be rightly revoked by the will of those who made them.

Thus, the time is quickly coming when marriages will be turned into another kind of contract – that is, into changeable and uncertain unions which fancy may join together, and which the same when changed may disunite.

As Pope Leo mentions, we have to continue calling out the adversaries of the Catholic Church. We have to prepare ourselves for their sly and cunning words. We have to be ready when they target Illinois and Michigan later this year. Surely this voting debacle in Illinois is a setback for them, but they won’t give up that easy. And neither can we.

Like all lists, it is subjective and open to debate. In fact, there was “no fast and hard formula” OSV relied upon while making their choices. They simply asked lay Catholics on social media what the cities should be.

As un-academic as that sounds, they did seek out the expertise of Dr. Kathleen Cummings , the director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame, to help with their efforts. They also followed these four criteria:

1) The city must have a rich Catholic history

2) The city must have a strong Catholic culture, including notable Catholics who are affiliated with the place

3) The city must have a noteworthy Catholic landscape, including Catholic churches, institutions or other landmarks

4) The city must offer opportunities for spiritual renewal.

“Some locations selected meet all of those criteria,” said OSV Newsweekly editor Gretchen R. Crowe, while “others only meet one or two.” We “wanted a somewhat diverse list, both regarding location size and geographic diversity.”

OSV hopes that the list “will prove useful and inspiring when it comes to incorporating the Faith into your travel plans this summer.”

In no particulate order, here are the cities Our Sunday Visitor Newsweekly thinks are the top 10 Catholic cities in America:

Los Angeles                Pittsburgh                               

Denver                          St. Louis

Chicago                         New Orleans

St. Augustine, FL    Emmitsburg, MD

Bethlehem, CN          San Antonio

You should visit the OSV website to see what they had to say about each of these cities and why they chose them. In the meantime, what is your reaction to their choices? Did they leave any cities off? Should some of the cities on the list not be on the list? Might it not have been better to determine how Catholic a city is based on the number of priests the city produces or how many parishioners attend mass every week? After all, the last place I think of when I think of the Catholic faith is Los Angeles – one of the most materialistic cities in the world.

Now, I don’t think it’s necessary to be overly critical of OSV. In fact, I think they did a decent job with what seems to be an innocent, thought-provoking exercise. After all, I used to live in Chicago and I’ve visited St. Augustine and St. Louis. So I’m glad they made the cut. On the other hand, I’m sure some Catholics would have liked to see Steubenville, OH; Green Bay, WI; Kansas City, MO; Ave Maria, FL; Corpus Christi, TX; and Lincoln, NE on the list too.

Of course, it’s often remarked that it is better to light one candle than to the curse the darkness, and I applaud OSV for their efforts, but if these are the top Catholic cities in the country, shouldn’t Catholics also be made aware of the cities least affiliated with and potentially most harmful to their Catholic faith?

I think so.

With that in mind, here’s what I think are some of the least Catholic cities in the U.S.

Portland, OR and Seattle, WA This may upset some people but to me these left coast cities are indistinguishable from one another. Both get a ton of rain, both are reliably blue states when it comes to the Electoral College and both are home to socially progressive populations  indifferent to organized religion. Even though Catholics make up a large portion of both states’ populations, Oregon and Washington allow assisted suicide. Moreover, Washington redefined marriage along gender neutral lines in 2012 and is currently toying with the idea of becoming the first state in the country to force insurance companies to cover abortions.

Burlington, VT You’ve probably never heard of Burlington. Then, again, who has? Burlington is the largest city in the state of Vermont. Vermont, as you are probably aware, laid the groundwork for redefining marriage by becoming the first state in America to approve civil unions back in 2000. Current United States Senator Bernie Sanders, a socialist, served as mayor of Burlington from 1981-1989 as well. Like its left coast allies Oregon and Washington, Vermont is dominated by secular progressive politicians and allows for physician assisted suicide. It is continually rated as one of the least religious states in the union.

Cambridge, MA Cambridge is a place where, according to President Obama, the police act “stupidly.” It is also a place where professors act “stupidly.” At one time, Harvard University – located in Cambridge – was the crème de la crème of American education. Today, its unabashedly left-wing faculty members march to the beat of secular progressivism, militant feminism and contemporary liberalism. The ideas emanating from this indoctrination mill run counter to everything the Catholic Church stands for. Catholics would be wise to attend school elsewhere.

Washington, D.C. Sure, there are a number of heroic Catholics that work in Washington, and we, as Catholics, are compelled to be involved in political life, but our nation’s capital is not a very Catholic place to be. Everyone is two-faced, conniving and scheming to get ahead. The laws coming out of Washington these days, especially the policies put forth by the president, make life extremely hard for Catholics across the country. Politics has always been a sleazy business, and Catholics have always found a way to be active in public life, but I don’t know how anyone can spend a lifetime making backroom deals and selling their vote to the highest bidder and not lose their moral compass.

New York A city so nice they named it twice, right? Wrong! New York City may be one of the most recognizable cities in the world, but it is slowly becoming an inhospitable place for Catholics. Anti-Catholicism was rampant throughout the city during the 19th century and it continues to this day. Indeed, the state’s allegedly Catholic governor is intent on expanding the culture of death and making it harder for Catholic non-profits to help the poor. Cardinal Dolan may live there, and it might have some beautiful churches, but New York – like all global cities – is obsessed with materialism, extravagance, and licentiousness. Stay away.

San Francisco It goes without saying just how anti-Catholic San Francisco is. It is continually rated as America’s most liberal city. Some say its lack of moral standards makes it the modern day equivalent of Sodom and Gomorrah. The Catholic population in San Francisco is slain in the “spirit of Vatican II” so much that the Roman Catholic womenpriest movement has a number of supporters living in the area. It was recently reported that Father Brian Costello, the priest at Most Holy Redeemer parish, removed a picture of Pope Benedict XVI from the church just days before the pontiff resigned after parishioners raised concerns about his views on marriage.

Las Vegas Also known as Sin City, Las Vegas is a place where morals go out the window. It is a city where gambling, prostitution and drunkenness are the norm. Its motto is “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” Catholics know that’s simply not true and that you can easily lose your soul by giving into the temptation that presents itself there. Its drive-through chapels mock the sanctity of marriage and its laxed morals encourage you to distance yourself from God. Las Vegas is the least Catholic city in America by a long shot.

At least, that’s how the Huffington Post interpreted Pope Francis’ Wednesday morning homily.

Here’s what Pope Francis really said about atheists:

Stephen Driscoll / CNA

The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone! And this Blood makes us children of God of the first class! We are created children in the likeness of God and the Blood of Christ has redeemed us all! And we all have a duty to do good. And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace. If we, each doing our own part, do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter  that so much. We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there. [Read more here]

Apparently, HuffPo doesn’t understand the difference between redemption and salvation because here’s how they reported on the pope’s remarks:

Pope Francis rocked some religious and atheist minds today when he declared that everyone was redeemed through Jesus, including atheists…

Of course, not all Christians believe that those who don’t believe will be redeemed, and the Pope’s words may spark memories of the deep divisions from the Protestant reformation over the belief in redemption through grace versus redemption through works.

Reuters interpreted the pope’s comments in a similar way:

Atheists should be seen as good people if they do good, Pope Francis said on Wednesday in his latest urging that people of all religions – or no religion – work together…

He told the story of a Catholic who asked a priest if even atheists had been redeemed by Jesus.

“Even them, everyone,” the pope answered, according to Vatican Radio. “We all have the duty to do good,” he said.

“Just do good and we’ll find a meeting point,” the pope said in a hypothetical conversation in which someone told a priest…

Francis’ reaching out to atheists and people who belong to no religion is a marked contrast to the attitude of former Pope Benedict, who sometimes left non-Catholics feeling that he saw them as second-class believers.

No more than an hour went by and an inquisitive Presbyterian friend of mine emailed me with a link to the HuffPo story. “So doing good on its own is enough for salvation in Catholicism?” he asked. In response, I sent him two links that clarified the pope’s words.

The first link I sent him was this blog post by Fr. Dwight Longenecker. Here is what he wrote:

The Pope is simply affirming certain truths that any somewhat knowledgable Catholic will uphold.

First, that Christ died to redeem the whole world. We can distinguish his redemptive work from the acceptance of salvation. He redeemed the whole world. However, many will reject that saving work. In affirming the universality of Christ’s redemptive work we are not universalists. To say that he redeemed the whole world is not to conclude that all will be saved.

Secondly, the Pope is also affirming that all humans are created in God’s image and are therefore created good. Yes, created good, but that goodness is wounded by original sin.

Thirdly, he is affirming that all men and women are obliged to pursue what is beautiful, good and true. Natural virtue is possible–even obligatory, but natural virtue on its own is not sufficient for salvation. Grace is necessary to advance beyond natural virtue to bring the soul to salvation. The Pope does not say atheists being good on their own will be saved. He says they, like all men, are redeemed by Christ’s death and their good works are the starting place where we can meet with them–the implication being “meet with them in an encounter that leads eventually to faith in Christ.

The second link I sent him was this one from Catholicism.org’s Brian Kelly, who was actually writing in response to a Catholic Online article whose headline read: “Pope Francis says atheists can do good and go to heaven too!”

Here is what Mr. Kelly said in response:

Pope Francis did not say that an atheist who does naturally good things can be saved if he dies an atheist. Yet that is the impression given by Catholic Online’s half truth headline…

The Pope… simply reminded the faithful that there can be, and is, goodness, or natural virtue, outside the Church. And that Christ’s death on the Cross redeemed all men. He paid the price so that every man could come to God and be saved.

If Catholic Online is insinuating that Pope Francis has “reformed” the irreformable dogma, outside the Church there is no salvation, then that is shameful and disingenuous.

At the end of the day, could Pope Francis have been a little clearer about what he was trying to say? Sure. That’s the risk of delivering off the cuff sermons. The real fault, I think, lies with the theologically-illiterate press corps, whose understanding of basic Catholic doctrine is so infinitesimal that it is increasingly unable to report on the Catholic Church without completely embarrassing itself.

Although Governor Dayton told those in attendance that “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness certainly includes the right to marry the person you love,” there was no indication that he nor the thousands of ‘marriage equality’ supporters in attendance were cognizant of the fact that the law discriminates against polygamists, pedophiles and relatives who just want to “marry the person(s) they love.”

Perhaps this embarrassing oversight didn’t cross the minds of those who voted for the law, which now defines marriage as a contract between “two people.” Then again, maybe it was intentional. Maybe those who voted in favor of the law are just a bunch of bigots. Regardless, as it stands today, Minnesota is now the 12th state in the union and 1st in the Midwest to ignore science, cast aside the biological differences between men and women, and redefine marriage along gender neutral lines.

“It is the height of irony,” said San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, “that the Minnesota legislature decided, and the governor signed into law, the redefinition of marriage just after we celebrated the unique gifts of mothers and women on Mother’s Day.”

“Instead of strengthening [motherhood and fatherhood] the Minnesota legislature’s decision to redefine marriage weakens motherhood and fatherhood, and so strikes a blow to all children who deserve both a mother and father.”

The decision of gay rights activists to pressure Minnesota lawmakers into supporting a law they know will lead to the total loss of religious freedom and, as some LGBT activists contend, the eventual destruction of marriage all together, comes a mere six months after Minnesotans narrowly rejected a constitutional amendment that would have defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

Although opponents of that amendment said it wasn’t necessary because Minnesota law already supported the traditional definition of marriage, their innocent-sounding claims were nothing more than duplicitous entreaties meant to trick marriage supporters into staying home and not voting.

Noting the surreptitiousness of their arguments, Brian Brown, the president of the National Organization for Marriage, issued a press release last week. In it, Brown claimed that marriage redefiners “always intended to redefine [marriage] at the soonest possible moment.” He later argued that “legislators who voted to redefine marriage were foolish to do so. They cast a terrible vote that damages society, tells children they don’t deserve a mother and a father, and brands supporters of traditional marriage as bigots.”

Recognizing that defenders of marriage are now facing an uphill battle, Archbishop Cordileone encouraged people to work even harder. “We know that now is the time to redouble our prayers, efforts and witness. The truth of marriage is not going away.”

“We know what it takes to work toward a culture of life even in the midst of laws that work against us,” he added. “The same is true for rebuilding a culture of marriage. No matter what the horizon may bring, we will continue in charity and truth to stand for justice and for the most vulnerable among us.”

Yet, when you purchase Abercrombie clothes – just like when you buy Starbucks coffee – you’re handing your money over to a company that propagates a morally bankrupt value system. To get a feel for what kind of values the company stands for, take a look at these outlandish statements made by Abercrombie CEO Mike Jeffries over the past several years:

“In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids…we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends.”

“Are we exclusionary? Absolutely. Those companies that are in trouble are trying to target everybody: young, old, fat, skinny. But then you become totally vanilla. You don’t alienate anybody, but you don’t excite anybody, either”

“I don’t want our core customers to see people who aren’t as hot as them wearing our clothing.”

“We hire good-looking people in our stores…good-looking people attract other good-looking people, and we want to market to cool, good-looking people. We don’t market to anyone other than that.”

There are countless other remarks Jeffries has put forth over the past couple years, but I don’t want to go into them. The aforementioned comments say everything you need to know about how this man thinks.

While Jeffries’ opinions will offend most people, we should remember that we live in a society with an economic system that allows us to freely choose whether or not we want to support someone like Jeffries. As true as that may be, he does deserve criticism. If not for his refusal to make clothes for large-sized women, then for the disturbing fact that Abercrombie would rather burn its excess and damaged clothing than donate them to places like Salvation Army and Goodwill.

That deeply offensive policy set off a firestorm across the blogosphere last week. People of all political ideologies were outraged after learning Abercrombie was intentionally refusing to donate its unsold and defective clothing to second hand outlets. But one California-based filmmaker and writer was so upset that a simple blog post wasn’t going to be enough. His plan? To “make Abercrombie & Fitch the world’s number one brand of homeless apparel.”

Greg Karber, an activist living in Los Angeles, was so disturbed by Abercrombie’s policy that he released a two-and-a-half minute video on YouTube. In it, Karber is seen scouring a Los Angeles Goodwill store for Abercrombie clothes. After unsuccessfully finding any,  he begins to “worry that Abercrombie was sending representatives to thrift shops to buy up all the clothes.” Eventually, he comes across some Abercrombie shirts and pants and heads off to downtown Los Angeles to “do some charity.” Karber proceeds to hand out his Abercrombie threads to the homeless people he encounters. Upon completing his “expedition,” Karber says that what he did was “a huge success.” At the end of the video, he urges viewers to gather up their own Abercrombie clothes and give them away to the homeless. You can watch the video in its entirety by clicking here, but fair warning, some portions of it, especially the language used around the 1:10 mark, may be offensive to some.

Reaction to Karber’s “charity” work has been understandably mixed. Some say he is doing a noble thing. Others think he is treating homeless people like disposable  objects. I agree with both sides to an extent, but want to flesh out what I think is really going on here.

First, we have to admit that what Karber did is pretty innovative. In some ways, he is turning the other cheek. Abercrombie is not shy about its elitist attitudes. Karber’s decision to give away Abercrombie attire to homeless people – something the company’s CEO does not want to happen – shines light on just how upside down Abercrombie’s values really are.

However, we must also understand that even though Karber is doing the right thing by clothing the homeless, he is doing it for the wrong reason. The corporal works of mercy may not specify which brand of clothing we should clothe the naked in, but that doesn’t mean we should just dump Abercrombie clothes on them so we can make a political statement. Moreover, what Karber is doing could hardly be considered “charity.” What Karber is doing is ostentatious and goes against what is said in Matthew 6: 1-4, which says “take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that people may see them…when you give alms, do not blow your trumpet before you… to win the praise of others.”

I think the correct way to understand Karber’s protestations lies somewhere in-between these two perspectives. Abercrombie is, as Karber points out in his video, a “terrible company.” What they stand for and the lifestyle they promote runs counter to Catholic teaching. Karber is rightly concerned about their egregious policies towards those who are overweight and financially insecure. Furthermore, Karber is simply reacting to something he thinks is morally abhorrent. Granted, he might not be giving away clothes because the Bible tells him to, and his definition of “charity” is problematic, but he is exposing a policy that is an affront to human dignity. Shouldn’t he be applauded for that? Finally, even though he might not be doing the right thing for the right reason – he is, more or less, engaging in faux charity in order to spite Abercrombie’s CEO – Karber’s actions may cause people to do the right thing for the right reason later on.

Be that as it may, some people will still find his actions offensive. I can see why, and I can’t say I entirely disagree with them, but we live in a world so wrapped up in materialism and superficiality that concern for those who are less fortunate is increasingly becoming an afterthought. If anything, Karber’s video should force us to take stock of our own lives and make sure we are not only fulfilling our obligation to clothe the naked and live out the corporal works of mercy, but that we are doing the right things for the right reasons.

Half of Catholics in the United States think it is possible to be a good Catholic without attending mass every Sunday. Nearly two-thirds believe you can be in good standing with the Church and practice birth control. And when it comes to issues like divorce, abortion and same-sex marriage, more and more Catholics feel it is the laity who should have the final say, not the hierarchy.

This radical, public insubordination is a far cry from the 1950s; a decade when Catholic seminaries and convents were bursting at the seams, when Catholic elementary education was at its zenith and when nearly every Catholic attended mass more than twice a year.

So, how did we get here? How did Catholics come to think it is possible to call themselves Catholic while disagreeing so virulently with Church teaching? What can Catholics who wish to create an environment conducive to their faith do in a country increasingly hostile to that faith? And can you consider yourself fully American and remain fully Catholic? These are the questions Russell Shaw seeks to answer in his latest book American Church: The Remarkable Rise, Meteoric Fall, and Uncertain Future of Catholicism in America.

Shaw is a veteran Catholic writer whose decades of experience shines through in this powerfully argued, insightful exposition that forces Catholics living in the United States to reconsider their assumptions about the compatibility of their faith and their country. I highly recommend it.

The first half of “American Church” is devoted to how Catholicism evolved in America during the 19th century. You discuss the views of Isaac Hecker, James Cardinal Gibbons, Orestes Brownson and Pope Leo XIII, all of whom had strong opinions about Catholicism in America. Briefly tell me what these men believed and who you most agree with.

Father Hecker believed that the United States was ripe for conversion to Catholicism and advocated the assimilation of American Catholics into the larger American culture to facilitate its conversion. Cardinal Gibbons believed that America provided a congenial home for Catholics and held that the assimilation of Catholics into American culture was in their best interests and the best interests of the nation. Orestes Brownson originally shared Father Hecker’s views but eventually came to believe that American individualism was radically hostile to the spirit of Catholicism. Pope Leo was similarly concerned with the spirit of individualism that he saw at the heart of what he called “Americanism.” Personally, I think there are significant elements of truth in the views held by all of these men.

You write that the 1950s “were the high-water mark for the Catholic Church in the United States.” You also believe that 1976 was “the all-time low point for the Church” in America. What happened to the Church over that twenty year period and do you feel that the Church in America today is closer to the 1950s or 1976?

What happened in those twenty years in American society can be summed up very briefly as the cultural revolution/sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. It hardly needs saying that this was not friendly to Catholic beliefs and values. As for what happened in the Church: the breakdown of the American Catholic subculture via the movement of Catholic population from center cities to suburbs, upward socioeconomic mobility among Catholics, and a deliberate policy on the part of many Catholic intellectuals (with the tacit support of Church leadership) of either destroying or secularizing many Catholic institutions and organizations in order to escape from the so-called Catholic ghetto of the past and integrate into the secular mainstream. This was further reinforced by the widespread confusion and the rise of dissent among Catholics in the wake of Vatican II and Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae.

You say that Catholics need to create a new subculture, one that rejects Rawlsian liberal democracy. What should this subculture look like and what is Rawlsian liberal democracy? Is Rawlsian liberal democracy what ‘Americanizers’ like Fr. Hecker and Cardinal Gibbons sought to assimilate Catholics into? 

Briefly, the new subculture should be committed to fostering and sustaining Catholic identity and forming Catholics as agents of cultural evangelization. As for Rawlsian liberal democracy: John Rawls (a 20th century philosopher who taught at Harvard for many years) developed a theory of democracy as fairness, which at least implicitly embodies relativism as its working principle. Americanizers like Hecker and Gibbons were certainly not thinking of anything like this and would have roundly rejected the idea that Catholics should become part of it.

You lament the fact that “the Catholic Church isn’t getting her fair share of converts,” and that since the middle half of the 20th century the “number of Catholic conversions” has dropped precipitously. Does this mean that the Church should re-think its emphasis on interfaith dialogue and ecumenism and return to what Pope Pius XI wrote about in his 1928 encyclical “On Fostering True Religious Unity,” which teaches that “there is but one way in which the unity of Christians may be fostered, and that is by furthering the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it”?

I don’t recall having lamented that the Catholic Church “isn’t getting her fair share of converts.” Instead, I cited the drop-off in converts as evidence, along with much else, that something has gone badly wrong in American Catholicism — that, for reasons which I explain at length in my book, the evangelizing energy of American Catholics has apparently suffered a precipitous decline. A rather half-baked understanding of interfaith dialogue and ecumenism may indeed have something, though not everything, to do with this, as David Carlin suggests in his book (which I admire and cite at length in mine). If so, that doesn’t invalidate interfaith dialogue and ecumenism, but it does point to the need for Catholics to acquire a more intelligent and sophisticated understanding of how these things are related to evangelization and proselytizing.

I’m going to bend the rules a bit here and ask a series of questions, some of which are unrelated to the book but none of which are unrelated to Catholicism and America. You can respond in any way you’d like. Many Catholic scholars maintain that the type of liberalism adopted by the Founders is compatible with Catholicism, primarily because it adhered to the natural law tradition. This type of liberalism is different than the Rawlsian liberalism we have today as well as the anti-clerical liberalism of the French Revolution. However, Notre Dame Professor Patrick J. Deneen  thinks “natural law liberalism” is a “chimera” that “does not and cannot exist in reality.” Pope Leo XIII seems to have felt the same way. In his 1888 encyclical “On the Nature of True Liberty,” Leo says that “there are some adherents of Liberalism” who “do not subscribe” to the notion that liberty should be seen as “boundless license.” They believe that liberty should be “ruled and directed by…the natural law.” However, in holding this view, these people become “plainly inconsistent.” Why? Because “if the will of the Divine Law-giver is to be obeyed,” Leo argues – alluding to the idea that the church and state should not be separated – “it follows that no one can assign limits to His legislative authority without failing in the obedience which is due.” A couple questions: What are we to make of this apparent conflict? Is there such a thing as “natural law” liberalism? Is American liberalism incompatible with Catholicism? What sort of liberalism did Fr. Hecker and Cardinal Gibbons seek assimilation into and what did they think about Pope Leo XIII? Finally, if it is true that liberalism gradually evolves into a “dictatorship of relativism,” isn’t American liberalism and the anti-clerical liberalism of the French Revolution essentially the same? 

First and most important, I think the question and the argument it describes are disastrously missing the here-and-now point. The American secular establishment today doesn’t care two hoots about natural law of any kind and indeed regards it with contempt. I still recall how one of the things held against Clarence Thomas during his Senate confirmation hearings was that he’d actually expressed sympathy for natural law. Oh, horrors! So what a happy, happy circumstance it would be if the issue you raise — was the Founders’ version of natural law compatible or not with the authentic Catholic version?—were a truly relevant question today. Alas, it’s not. The argument you sketch smacks for me entirely too much of the graduate seminar. Orestes Brownson would have loved it, John Courtney Murray seems to have labored hard to shoot it down, but for me it’s just a distraction. And if, God willing, we ever do get the point where it’s worth discussing, tactical common sense would suggest the wisdom of backing John Courtney Murray to the hilt.