The U.S. Constitution isn’t perfect, which is why those who drafted and ratified it also included provision for amending it. Still, there are some who think we should radically change it, or even abandon it all together. One must concede, simply as an abstract matter, that this might well be for the best. Who can [...]
Over at the Public Discourse (as fine a source of serious thought as you’ll find anywhere on the interwebs) Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia has a thoughtful and bracing essay on St. Thomas More and what the saint’s legacy means for Catholics in America today—especially for Chaput and his fellow bishops. Here’s the heart of [...]
The Little Sisters of the Poor, first recognized as a Pontifical Institute by Pope Pius XI on July 9, 1854, is a religious congregation dedicated to the care of the elderly poor. According to their website, this mission means that the sisters “welcome them into our homes, form one family with them, accompany them from [...]
The sun was glaringly bright in a cloudless sky. As I drove the little red Nissan pickup down the barren stretch of desert highway, I noticed something up ahead. Checkpoint. A group of dark-skinned men in military fatigues manned their posts. Sandbags protected machine gun emplacements, and there was at least one Humvee parked near [...]
A few years ago when my wife and I were picking out a name (names, really) for our first daughter, a friend lent us a book called, The Baby Name Wizard. One of the really interesting things about this book (a free website version of which is available, here) is that each entry included a [...]
Here’s a depressing chart that compares American public education spending to student performance since 1970. (Via, Cato Institute.) And here’s a depressing chart that compares federal anti-poverty spending to the poverty rate since 1962. (Via, National Affairs.) One could find lots of disheartening charts like these, but these two will suffice for our purposes. Consider [...]
Every year around this time, the stories begin popping up about certain atheists battling with people of faith over religious holiday displays on public property. They say it’s a question of the Constitutional separation of Church and State. Religious folks say it’s about the free exercise of religion in a Judeo-Christian country. It’s become as [...]
Catholics United, a left-wing advocacy group, has been calling on our bishops and priests to pledge to “keep politics out of our pulpits.” Catholic rectories and chanceries are hardly teeming with advocates of “far-right political causes,” as Catholics United has suggested, but for groups like Catholics United, who desperately want to see President Obama reelected, [...]
What can one say? 1.2 million abortions per year, a federal government running roughshod over the First Amendment, millions of minority children trapped in failing schools, unemployment for African Americans is at 13.4 percent, and Joe Biden – Vice President of the United States and Grand Poobah of the Catholic Left – thinks that discrimination [...]
On Wednesday, Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan traveled to Cleveland State University to deliver what was billed in the press as a speech on poverty. But Ryan gave a speech that was about much more than anti-poverty policies or entitlement reform. The heart of Ryan’s speech was an articulation and defense of civil society, one that resonates [...]
