Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog

The Cardinal and the Taoiseach

The Cardinal and the Taoiseach | Michael Coren | CWR

Cardinal O’Malley’s boycott of Boston College’s graduation is both welcome and momentous.

By the grace of God, the recent decision by Cardinal SeÁn Patrick O'Malley could be a turning point in Catholic history, a collective epiphany on the road to Boston College. He has made it entirely clear that he will not be attending the university’s annual commencement, at which Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny will be speaking. Boston College’s decision to invite the Taoiseach was provocative and was supposed to be so. Frankly, it’s a childish and petty thing to have done but entirely in character with the modern approach of liberal or even post-Catholic institutions of higher education. Give a metaphorical finger to those horrible old grassroots Catholics who still believe in the faith, and to the Magisterium and episcopacy who insist on making it difficult for teachers from Boston College or Notre Dame or Georgetown to be invited onto talk shows and to fashionable dinner parties.

Ireland is in the midst of a culture war. It is the country that in spite of—perhaps even because of—occupation, oppression, starvation, and dispersion, remained true to the Church. It was the epicenter for English-speaking Catholics and Catholicism, and Irish Catholics fuelled English and Scottish Catholicism and became the beating heart of the Church in the United States.

Today the kulturkampf concerns a triumphant secular and modernist government declaring virtual war on Church prestige and standing, and challenging Catholic teaching on life, sexuality, and morality. Kenny wants to change Ireland’s abortion laws. He claims it is a minor reform, but he knows that is not the case; the legislation is not only in itself a major departure, but will open a door to a room full of frightful eugenics. If you don’t believe me, read the editorials and columns from his supporters in the Irish media.

None of us were sure what Cardinal O’Malley would do. He is an orthodox man, of course, and a fine and good Catholic priest and bishop, but he had assisted at the funeral mass of Sen. Ted Kennedy, an individual with a worrying personal record, and an execrable public one. Kennedy had opposed the Church on most of its moral teaching around life issues, often leading campaigns to introduce and extend abortion, same-sex marriage, and other related subjects. O’Malley led a prayer at the Mass, explaining, “as archbishop of Boston, I considered it appropriate to represent the Church at this liturgy out of respect for the Senator, his family, those who attended the Mass and all those who were praying for the Senator and his family at this difficult time.”

This time, however, the reaction was fundamentally different.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

"Morning after" pills and the loss of moral bearings

by Russell Shaw | Catholic World Report

"Is Traditional Marriage Toast?" That question recently caught my attention as the heading of an article in the neo-conservative Weekly Standard. The answer was either "very possibly" (a subhead attached to the piece) or "probably not" (an objective reading would suggest that). Take your pick.

Be not afraid. Marriage and family life won't vanish, given that they correspond to fundamental human interests and needs. But marriage and family are indeed in serious trouble in America. And many--most?--public policy solutions to this crisis are wrongheaded, to say the least.

Repeatedly operative here is an unarticulated value system that concerned Americans have a right to insist be brought to light and debated. Take the current dispute over whether to give very young teenagers unrestricted access to morning-after pills. Partisans on both sides of this argument evidently take for granted (and some perhaps even welcome) a degree of social breakdown that their preferred policy approaches would not just confirm but make worse.

After all, wouldn't sensible policy-makers go after the root of the problem--teenage sexual activity, that is? Foolish ones water the roots. Which, to change the metaphor, is like trying to fix a cracked teacup by banging on it with a hammer.

In April, a federal district judge held that the government should allow children of any age to buy so-called emergency contraceptives without a prescription. The Obama administration has ordered the Justice Department to appeal this ruling on the grounds that the judge exceeded his competence. Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration has reacted by setting 15 as the earliest age for over-the-counter purchases.

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

What is Social Justice? (Part Two)

What is Social Justice? (Part Two) | J. J. Ziegler | Catholic World Report

The teachings of Vatican II, Paul VI, John Paul II, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church

“Social justice,” a term coined by the Italian Jesuit Father Luigi Taparelli D’Azeglio (1793-1862), appeared in an 1894 curial document and a 1904 encyclical. Later, Pope Pius XI (1922-39) made it part and parcel of Catholic social doctrine.

In perhaps the most succinct description of the virtue, Pope Pius wrote in 1937 that “it is [the essence] of social justice to demand from individuals everything that is necessary for the common good.” Venerable Pius XII (1939-58) and Blessed John XXIII (1958-63) made Pope Pius XI’s teaching their own as they urged Catholics to cultivate the virtue of social justice. The former wrote in 1952 that society “ought to be renewed according to principles of charity and social justice,” while the latter prayed in 1960 that Christians might “offer to fellow citizens examples of all virtues, in the first place social justice and charity.”

The three decades following John XXIII’s death witnessed further developments in Catholic teaching on social justice. In 1992, Catholic doctrine on social justice was set forth with particular authority when Blessed John Paul II promulgated the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Vatican II

The term “social justice” appeared three times in the documents of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council (1962-65). In Nostra Aetate (1965), the Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions, the Council Fathers exhorted Christians and Muslims to “preserve as well as to promote together for the benefit of all mankind social justice and moral welfare, as well as peace and freedom” (no. 3).

Six weeks later, in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes), the Council Fathers observed that “excessive economic and social differences between the members of the one human family or population groups cause scandal and militate against social justice, equity, the dignity of the human person, as well as social and international peace” (no. 29). The Council Fathers called for the creation of an “organism of the universal Church” whose role would be “to stimulate the Catholic community to promote progress in needy regions and international social justice”—in the original Latin, “social justice among nations.” Venerable Paul VI established that organism, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, in 1967.

The three conciliar references to social justice use the term in the context of “all mankind,” the “one human family,” and “among nations.”

Continue reading on the CWR site.

In Ireland, the political fight over abortion rages on

In Ireland, the political fight over abortion rages on | Michael Kelly | Catholic World Report

Proposed legislation would legalize abortion when the mother’s life is at risk. But the measure is medically unnecessary, many Irish doctors say.

Ireland’s coalition government is pushing ahead with controversial plans to legalize abortion despite growing opposition from within the medical community.

Pro-life campaigners have also dismissed claims by Prime Minister Enda Kenny that the draft law is limited in scope, saying it will lead to widespread abortion.

Ireland and Malta are currently the only countries in Europe where abortion is still illegal.

A draft of the so-called Protection of Life in Pregnancy legislation was published after protracted negotiations between the center-right Fine Gael and leftist Labor party. It will now be debated before the parliamentary health committee.

Campaigners are furious because Fine Gael—the senior party in Government—made a promise before the 2011 general election not to legalize abortion. The Labor party, on the other hand, has had a long-standing pro-abortion stance.

The draft law provides for abortion when there is a substantial risk to the life, as opposed to the health, of the mother. This would include situations in which a woman says the continuation of the pregnancy leads to suicidal thoughts. The law would also provide for jail terms of up to 14 years for those performing abortions in circumstances other that permitted by the new law.

Prime Minister Enda Kenny has claimed that the legislation will not change Ireland’s law on abortion in other circumstances. He said that an abortion can only be legally permitted where doctors have unanimously decided that it is the only treatment that will avert a risk to the life of a mother.

However, Caroline Simons, a spokesperson for the Pro-Life Campaign (PLC) dismissed the claims. She says the Government has “been talking up the proposal as very restrictive. But, in reality, these reassuring noises are empty and misleading.”

“What matters is what’s contained in the bill and what’s in the bill is dangerous,” said Simons. “For the first time an Irish Government is proposing to introduce a law that provides for the direct intentional targeting of the life of the unborn child.”

Simons said that “talk of the legislation being ‘life-saving’ is simply dishonest. There is no evidence that abortion ever helps women’s mental health and in fact it may damage women.”

Leading psychiatrists have also dismissed claims that abortion can ever be a treatment for suicidal ideation.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

The Rise, Fall and Future of Catholicism in the U.S.

The Rise, Fall and Future of Catholicism in the U.S. | CWR Staff

An interview with Russell Shaw, author of American Church.

Author and journalist Russell Shaw has written over twenty books, including To Hunt, To Shoot, To Entertain: Clericalism and the Catholic Laity and Nothing to Hide: Secrecy, Communication, and Communion in the Catholic Church. For 18 years, Shaw directed media relations for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and the United States Catholic Conference. From 1987 to 1997 he oversaw media relations for the Knights of Columbus. Since resigning from that position, he has worked full time as a freelance writer. His most recent book, American Church: The Remarkable Rise, Meteoric Fall, and Uncertain Future of Catholicism in America (Ignatius Press, 2013), has been widely praised as an incisive examination of the recent history of the Catholic Church in the United States. “If you want to understand the Church in the United States and the challenges she now faces,” states Abp. Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., Archbishop of Philadelphia, “American Church should be on the short list of books you need to read.” Shaw recently answered some questions from CWR about his book and the past, present, and future of Catholicism in the United States.

CWR: How and why was James Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore such a key figure in the story of the Catholic Church in the U.S.?

Shaw: Cardinal Gibbons was Archbishop of Baltimore from 1877 until his death in 1921. That's 44 crucial years in American Catholic history during which he was the leader of the American hierarchy, recognized as such by Rome and by his episcopal colleagues. He also was leader of the Americanizing bishops—the members of the hierarchy who advocated rapid and total integration of immigrant Catholics into American culture.

The group included some who were more flamboyant, like Archbishop John Ireland of Saint Paul, and others who were more intellectual, like Bishop John Lancaster Spalding of Peoria, but the patient, prudent, diplomatic Gibbons was the most effective of them all, trusted by the Holy See and widely respected at home. By the time of his death, he was one of the most admired public figures in the country, and his policy of Americanization was the policy of the Church in the United States. I have no hesitation saying his impact on American Catholicism was greater than that of any bishop before or since..

CWR: You describe Orestes Brownson as "the most distinguished (and very nearly only) American Catholic public intellectual of his day." How did Brownson's view of the relationship between Catholicism and the American experiment change or develop? How accurate were his mostly negative assessment of that relationship?

Continue reading on the CWR site.

A Schall Report on Things Current and Otherwise

A Schall Report on Things Current and Otherwise | Fr. James V. Schall, SJ | Catholic World Report

Thoughts on moving across the country, teaching, universities, and popes.

Basically, I packed up my worldly goods at the Jesuit Community in Georgetown, gave many things away, and shipped other books here to Los Gatos. I flew via San Jose here on the first day of spring. It is a beautiful place. About seventy retired or infirm Jesuits live here, many old friends and classmates whom I have but rarely seen over the years.

What have I been doing? Once I was set up with the normal household things, the staff and my nephews set me up with a computer. I can still use my Georgetown e-mail. So the world is suddenly as close or as far away as it was in Washington.

So far, I checked the galleys of two books which are hopefully to be out in the fall. One is entitled, Rational Pleasures, to be published by Ignatius Press. I wrote this book while recovering from my jaw cancer operation during the Spring Semester 2010 when I was not teaching. The second is called, Political Philosophy and Revelation: A Catholic Reading, to be published in the fall by the Catholic University of America Press. In many ways, this book is the summation of my thinking about the nature, extent, and purpose of political philosophy, where it fits into the “order of things”.

Also, I put together for Jameson Books a manuscript entitled Schall at Georgetown: On Being Liberally Educated. This collection contains essays that I wrote in The Hoya, Utraque Unum, and other Georgetown journals over the years. It includes the “Last Lecture,” that was delivered last December 7 in Gaston Hall. The book is a reflective summation of what I was doing, or at least thought I was doing, during my many years at Georgetown. It reflects the memorable influence that students, colleagues, and friends have had on my thinking about what makes sense in the world.

Someone asked if I would return for Georgetown graduation in May. My answer was: “Alas, I shan’t be able to return for graduation. Missing it will break my heart, but not half as much as being there.”

Having left a place for a time, what does one miss?

Continue reading on the CWR site.

The Innocence of Common Sense and the Deconstruction of Marriage

The Innocence of Common Sense and the Deconstruction of Marriage | John S. Hamlon | Catholic World Report

The world needs to hear the deep, life-giving, theological resonance of God’s plan for marriage and family

Recently, Archbishop Cordileone of San Francisco, chairman of the U.S. bishops' Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage, gave an address at the March for Marriage in Washington, D.C. He focused on the common sense argument that all children deserve mothers and fathers. First, though, he effused peace and well-being: “We love you (the opposition)… and want you to be happy… we don’t hate you… we want to be your friends… try to understand our position, as we will try to do the same for you.” Those disarming, unfeigned words reminded me of Herman Melville’s classic tale of innocence, Billy Budd. Melville describes British-frigate sailor Budd as “Adam presumably might have been ere the urbane Serpent wriggled himself in his company.” In other words, Adam before the fall.

Billy Budd sees everything through a perfectly smooth lens, neither convex nor concave. For him, reality has no laminated layers, therefore, no distortions. He wishes everyone well. He cannot recognize evil, even at nose-length. To his shipmates, he is, at once, astonishing and endearing. Such uprightness and transparency, as we know, attracts subterfuge and darkness. Therein lies the story.

Archbishop Cordileone has a depth and charism that the character Budd does not have. And the archbishop understands, far better than most, the Catholic vision of marriage and family. In his talk, I craned to hear something of that depth, something beyond the natural premises (as important as they are) that connect marriage to children, and children to marriage. I wanted to hear a couple of lines designed for those who believe in God, lines that had a memorable ring and some theological content. For instance: “Man becomes an image of God not so much in the moment of solitude as in the moment of communion [marriage]” (TOB, 9.3). But the talk was woven, beginning to end, with a natural warp and woof.

Marriage has an inner truth with two parts: first, in terms of self-gift, marriage reflects the internal life of the Trinity; second, married love is procreative precisely because it images creative love.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

Impregnable America is just a memory now

by Russell Shaw | Catholic World Report

On the evening of the Boston Marathon bombing I was doing a radio interview about a book I'd written. Before getting to me, the host asked listeners to pray for victims of the atrocity in Boston and for the nation. When my turn came, I said, "My prayer is 'deliver us from evil.'" The host agreed that was the right prayer.

Remember America the Impregnable? It's just a memory now. The United States used to be literally beyond the reach of foes, protected by two mighty oceans and peaceful neighbors. But the cold war, with its ever-present nuclear threat, put an end to that. And with 9/11, impregnability was a vanished dream.

Now, of course, Americans find themselves menaced not just by foreign threats--al-Qaeda, North Korea, whatever--but also by a seemingly bottomless reservoir of home-grown monsters acting out fantasies of homicidal violence in settings like schools and movie theaters. "Terrorism is a fact of modern life," an Op Ed commentator pronounces. So, deliver us from facts of modern life!

The nation is responding to the reality of pervasive, universal vulnerability in a variety of ways. Abroad, President Obama sharply escalates drone attacks on terrorists--a controversial policy whose strongest talking point may be that it helps keep us from blundering into another Iraq. Back in the U.S. a homeland security regime is taking shape, with a burgeoning network of intrusive new procedures to match. More subtly, pit-of-the-stomach anxiety is likely swelling the market for escapist entertainment while encouraging some Americans to seek distraction in outlets like alcohol, drugs, and pornography.

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

The Death of China’s Most Famous & Powerful Bishop

The Death of China’s Most Famous & Powerful Bishop | Anthony E. Clark, Ph.D. | Catholic World Report

The enigmatic Bishop Aloysius Jin Luxian, SJ of Shanghai described himself as “both a serpent and a dove.”

China’s most famous—and most powerful—Catholic bishop has died. When I last saw him in 2011, I knew then that age was finally catching up with Shanghai’s remarkable and indefatigable prelate. As we sat together, I handed him a pile of rare photographs of him and his fellow Jesuits, images that dated before his arrest in 1955. Pausing for some time as he looked over the first photograph, he said in a low voice, “Old beloved friends.” He had not seen those faces in more than six long and eventful decades. He asked me to bring more photographs of “Catholic Shanghai before the Communists”; I do have more images to give him, but now he is perhaps seeing the real faces of his “beloved friends,” and I will file them away for posterity. Bishop Aloysius Jin Luxian, SJ (1916-2013), was one of the most gentle and charming people I have met, and he was also among the most enigmatic, and as I thumb through his dossier I vacillate between admiration, disagreement, speculation, and sometimes disappointment. As I said in my 2010 interview with Bishop Jin for Ignatius Insight, with Jin there are “no easy answers.” I would like to offer a few remarks here about why Bishop Jin’s recent death, at the age of 97, is probably one of the most noteworthy events in the history of Catholicism in China.

Jin Luxian lived through China’s most dramatic changes and growing pains as it transitioned from empire to the largest and most paradoxical Communist country in the history of our world. He witnessed China’s war with Japan (1930s); the fierce and tragic war between his own countrymen, the Nationalists and Communists (1920s-1949); the rise of Mao Zedong and Maoism in 1949; the turbulent 100 Flowers Movement (1956) and the following Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957-1958); the Great Leap Forward and the millions of deaths it caused (1958-1961); the cruel violence of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976); the post-Mao economic boom inaugurated by Deng Xiaoping (1989-present). This long list of China’s landmark events does not include equally dramatic events in Catholic history, such as the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). Because he was a Jesuit priest who had earned his doctorate in theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, Jin was labeled a “dangerous counterrevolutionary” in alliance with an “imperialist power,” the Vatican. Jin Luxian’s life provides historians extraordinary access to some of the world’s most exceptional moments of transformation, and if you ask China’s Catholics who has been the most influential figure in their Church’s remarkable survival and seemingly-impossible growth through their country’s painful birth as a Communist superpower, they will, to the person, reply, “Bishop Jin.”

Continue reading on the CWR site.

Of Bishops and Bombers

Of Bishops and Bombers | William Kilpatrick | Catholic World Report

It is time for Catholic leaders to update their thinking on Islam.

In his Sunday homily the week after the Boston Marathon bombing, Cardinal Sean O’Malley said that the action of the bombers was a “perversion of their religion.” We have grown accustomed to hearing such statements from prelates, as well as from presidents and prime ministers. Terrorist have “perverted” their religion or “distorted” it or “misinterpreted” it. But how accurate are such assessments?

On one occasion, Muhammad ordered the beheading of more than 700 Jews who had surrendered to him. On another occasion, when a severed head was tossed at his feet by one of his men, he exclaimed that it was “more acceptable to me than the choicest camel in Arabia.” On still another occasion he exulted, “I have been made victorious through terror.” Indeed, the Qur’an is full of admonitions to terrorize. Was Muhammad perverting the religion he founded? Was he a “misunderstander” of Islam?

Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev felt obliged by their religion to wage jihad. A song on their YouTube playlist is titled “I will dedicate my life to jihad.” Had they misunderstood or perverted the meaning of jihad? Many of Islam’s official representatives in America would like us to think so. They tell us that jihad is simply an interior spiritual struggle or a quest for self-betterment. For example, the Council on American Islamic Relations in Chicago sponsors a bus ad campaign that presents a benign interpretation of jihad.  Sample:  a picture of a young Muslim woman wearing a gym outfit and a hijab accompanied by the caption, “My jihad is to keep fit despite my busy schedule.  What’s yours?”

That’s one possible way to interpret jihad, but it’s not the main way that jihad has been understood in Islamic tradition throughout the centuries. 

Continue reading on the CWR site.

Rethinking Religious Liberty

Rethinking Religious Liberty | Benjamin Wiker | Catholic World Report

Why religious liberty cannot mean the right to believe whatever we want.

In a previous article, “The Puzzle of Religious Liberty,” I brought before readers a rather vexing quandary. Somehow our hearty affirmation of religious liberty—which would seem to be a good thing—ends up producing a secular state that uses its powers to enforce a secular agenda that contradicts our religious liberty.

How does it happen? In order to limit governmental interference in our religion, we declare that we each have a right to define our own particular view about God and how we should—or if we should—worship Him. Or Her. Or It.

But the practical result of our each individually exercising this right is, as would be expected, to multiply religious diversity. Catholics make up about a quarter of the US population, and Protestants about double that, but Protestantism itself is divided into myriad significantly distinct denominations. If you doubt that, go to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, and start clicking through the divisions and subdivisions of Evangelical Protestant Churches or Mainline Protestant Churches.

The greater the diversity, the greater the need for particular religious believers or groups of like-minded believers to be protected from the imposition of others’ beliefs upon them. Add to the Christian mix Jews, Orthodox, Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus, and the substantial differences in core beliefs become even greater.

In legal terms, the greater the religious diversity, the greater the desire to keep any one religious view from becoming established, i.e., from using the powers of the state to impose its particular doctrines. Hence, the greater power given to the government to ensure that no one’s religious beliefs are represented by the government. In America, the result has been the use of government power to subtract particular religious beliefs from public, political view.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

The Menace of the Herd

by Thomas M. Doran | Catholic World Report

“Alice came to a fork in the road. 'Which road do I take?' she asked.

‘Where do you want to go?' responded the Cheshire Cat.


'I don't know,' Alice answered.

'Then,' said the Cat, 'it doesn't matter’.”
— Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

A long time ago, my dad told all of us in the car to beware of the menace of the herd. My dad happened to be a blue-collar philosopher, if not a prophet, though I didn’t realize it at the time.

The common wisdom, what the smart set is apt to tell us, is that religious believers don’t think, don’t question, don’t challenge. Believers are the herd in the worst sense, a herd of stupid, blind sheep. But how often is rigorous reason applied to this assertion, an assertion that is now conventional wisdom, an assertion that troubles and intimidates many believers?

A black hole is defined by physicists as a region of space-time from which gravity prevents anything, including light, from escaping, a speck of space containing unimaginable mass. The smart set and their disciples are certain (one might say, they have faith) that black holes exist, but try to find a smart setter who understands and can delineate the quantum physics that underlies this concept.

Evolution is defined as the change in the inherited characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. The smart set and their disciples are certain (one might say, they have faith) that evolution is occurring, but try to find a smart setter who understands the genetics and biochemistry that underlie evolutionary processes.

And then there’s string theory. Particles that are waves and waves that are particles. Dimensions exceeding those we can measure. Fundamental particles. The smart set accepts all of it because science proclaims it, but is clueless as to the theoretical physics and mathematics that predict these phenomena.

That’s not to say that black holes, as understood by modern science, don’t exist, or that an evolutionary process isn’t contributing to change in species, or that string theory is a wayward explanation of reality, but only to point out that many put faith in scientific concepts they cannot themselves comprehend. In this sense, they are no different than the “herd of religious believers” they so often ridicule.

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

When President Obama Honored Father Kapaun

When President Obama Honored Father Kapaun | Roy Wenzl | Catholic World Report

A moment of grace in a town marked by division and backbiting

The Miracle of Father Kapaun, my second book, was off the presses and in our hands on March 26, only 15 days before President Barack Obama handed the Medal of Honor to U.S. Army Chaplain Emil Kapaun’s family at the White House.

That’s crazy good luck, publishing a story just as the president elevates your story subject as a national hero. But it was no surprise to my co-author, Travis Heying, or to me. 

We started the story by seemingly sheer coincidence, shortly after the Army revived Father Kapaun’s Medal of Honor investigation after 55 years. We overcame problems with almost no effort. We talked to former prisoners of war and researched Father Kapaun off and on for five years, and every time we ran into one of those problems that kills a complex project, the problem would go away in some weird and wonderful way. This was a story that seemed to be kissed by the angels.

In 2009, as just one example, we bought tickets to fly from our homes in Wichita, Kansas, to Cumberland, Maryland, talk to North Korean prisoner of war camp survivor Bob McGreevy, who had seen some of Father’s prison heroics.  We flew even though McGreevy, at the last moment, canceled our interview, saying that talking about the Korean War gave him nightmares.

I didn’t even bother to tell Travis that McGreevy had canceled until shortly before we rolled up outside McGreevy’s house. I knew that our Kapaun Luck, as it might be called, would intervene, as it always did. Sure enough, big, blunt Bob McGreevy stepped out of his house and changed his heart. “Get in here,” he said, uttering a venial-sin swear word. “I’ll talk.”

“I knew you would,” I said.

Good things always happened around Father Kapaun, on battlefields, in the North Korean prison camp, in the worst conditions imaginable.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

It's Not a Conspiracy, It's a Culture

It's Not a Conspiracy, It's a Culture | Carl E. Olson | Editorial | Catholic World Report

The silence about Kermit Gosnell's trial demonstrates the dominance of the culture of death and moral deafness.

I don't take in much baseball or golf, but I do usually watch some of the World Series and portions of the Master's golf tournament. As sporting events, both have a certain timeless quality (I won't get carried away and use the empty word, "magical"), but also a fair share of sporting drama. Besides, they are mostly free of discussions about politics, although they tend to be increasingly politically correct. Regardless, it was interesting to watch and listen to some of the serious arguments and intense discussions that commenced once news broke that Tiger Woods had dropped a ball (after his tee shot went into the water on the 15th hole on Friday) a full two yards behind his original spot, which led to a two stroke penalty. Mayhem insued, and there were some folks insisting that the #1 golfer in the world should have disqualified himself.

Reflecting on the spectacle of adults arguing over 72 inches of turf, I tweeted the following about 24 hours after the Tiger story broke:

Google news search brings up 39,000 links for "Kermit Gosnell"+"trial" but 145,000 for "Tiger Woods"+"penalty". MSM should be disqualified.

Unless you watch only CNN or read only the New York Times, you know about the story about the non-story within the story of the murder trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell. The trial has been going on for nearly a month in Philadephia, but has received even less coverage from the mainstream media (MSM) than did the celebration of Easter. One could glibly joke that Gosnell would have garnered far more attention if he were a junior high boy pretending to shoot fellow students with a crooked twig during recess, except that story would have undoubtedly made it on the MSM radar within hours, if not minutes. Last Thursday, CWR's managing editor, Catherine Harmon, explained the particulars of the story and noted the media silence, which was itself fast becoming a story. Since then, the uproar—via e-mails, tweets, Facebook, and so forth—from outraged Americans (and others, I presume) rose to the point that the New York Times finally relented and published an editorial this past weekend on the subject of abortion doctors, abortion clinics, and the fight for goodness and truth:

Continue reading on the CWR site.

Hysterical Hatred and the Halls of History

Hysterical Hatred and the Halls of History | Michael Coren | Catholic World Report

Both are plain to see and ever with us, but only one has lessons worth learning.

I write this column while looking out onto Westminster Bridge, Britain’s Houses of Parliament, and a London still pulsating with news of the death of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Pulsating indeed, because she changed the beat, the rhythm, and the pace of this country, and fundamentally and irreversibly transformed the nature and style of the United Kingdom. As such, she is revered as well as reviled, and that polarization extends to the Catholic reaction to her passing. There are Catholics here in Britain who believe she was one of the last political leaders to properly appreciate the link between Europe, democracy, and Christianity. Others, especially in Ulster and northern England, can barely contain their anger at a woman they believe destroyed their way of life.

The truth about Margaret Thatcher reflects a greater truth about how the world approaches history, facts, and downright hysteria and propaganda, and reflects directly to the Church and how it is treated in the popular imagination

Much, if not most, of what Mrs. Thatcher has been accused of is pure fantasy, and the reaction to that campaign of disinformation has been downright obscene: street parties celebrating her death; the singing of “Ding dong the witch is dead” (with “b” replacing “w”); the public announcement that people will urinate on her grave. Many of these malicious idiots weren’t even born when she was in office, and those who were have little to complain about, if truth be told. But it is the extent and excess that is so repugnant. There are numerous politicians whom I loathe, but not one whose death would lead me to rejoice.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

What Are Catholics To Do? (Part II)

What Are Catholics To Do? (Part II) | James Kalb | Catholic World Report

In the absence of agreement with the rest of society on human nature and the good life, Catholics must remain a sign of contradiction.

Last month I noted that Catholics need settings in which they can lead a Catholic life among Catholics. For most of us, loving God and living as Christians take schooling and support, which we aren’t going to get from the world at large. That may be one reason the Apostle Paul’s letters focus more on the practical internal life of Christian communities than on evangelism. The ultimate ideal may be the New Jerusalem, in which the distinction between the Church and the World disappears, but we’re not likely to get there any time soon.

Still, those who object to “fortress” or “ghetto” Catholicism have a point. Something of an inward focus may be necessary, because today’s world is so much at odds with the Faith, and we Catholics are not already everything we should be. It should not be exaggerated, however. Christ told his followers to go out and teach all nations, and love of neighbor means engagement with the world both individually and socially.

But how do we engage the world socially when Caesar—and the media—are ever more powerful and anti-Catholic? During the Christian centuries, when social leaders accepted Catholic Christianity as the norm, it was natural for them to recognize the authority of the Church regarding matters on which she has special competence. It was no odder for the king to accept Church authority on faith and morals than it is today for a government to accept the authority of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or defer to the National Academy of Sciences on an engineering question.

Those days are past, and it is less obvious today how the Church can play an effective social and political role. People mostly aren’t Catholic, and social leaders are less so than most. Vatican II, while reaffirming traditional doctrine on the duty of men and societies toward the Church and the true religion, recognized that reality. Ever since, Catholics have been trying to find practical ways to cooperate in building a better social order in a setting that does not accept Catholic doctrine as authoritative.

Cooperative efforts require common ground, and the more complex and comprehensive the effort the more common ground is needed. In the absence of agreement on the most fundamental issues, Catholics have tried to base their cooperation with the extremely complex and comprehensive activities of the modern state and other secular actors on natural law.

Natural law can be developed philosophically in various ways.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

What Is Social Justice?

What Is Social Justice? | J. J. Ziegler | Catholic World Report

From Taparelli to John XXIII

(Part One of a three-part series)

Few terms have become as unmoored from their Catholic origins, and have thus lent themselves to misunderstanding in contemporary discourse, as has the term “social justice.” What does the term mean when it appears in papal documents—particularly when it appeared in the formative years of Catholic social teaching?

It is an important question, because all of the Christian faithful, according to the Code of Canon Law, are “obliged to promote social justice and, mindful of the precept of the Lord, to assist the poor from their own resources” (Code of Canon Law 222 §2; Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches 25 §2). Pastors of parishes are obliged “to foster works through which the spirit of the Gospel is promoted, even in what pertains to social justice” (Code of Canon Law 528 §1). It is also “desirable that the Catholic faithful undertake any project in which they could cooperate with other Christians, not alone but together, such as works for charity and social justice” (Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches 908).

In his Church, State, and Society: An Introduction to Catholic Social Doctrine (Catholic University of America Press, 2011), J. Brian Benestad of the University of Scranton notes that “a Jesuit philosopher by the name of Luigi Taparelli D’Azeglio was the first to use the concept of social justice in his major work, Saggio teoretico di diritto.” Father Taparelli (1793-1862) served as rector of the Roman College and helped found La CiviltÀ Cattolica, the Italian Jesuit periodical.

“For Taparelli, social justice is not a metaphor, nor the extension of virtue language to anthropomorphized collectives,” Thomas C. Behr of the University of Houston said in a paper delivered in 2003 at the annual conference of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas. According to Behr, Taparelli held that social justice is distinct from both commutative justice (defined by the late Father John Hardon as “the virtue that regulates those actions which involve the rights between one individual and another individual”) and distributive justice (defined as “the virtue that regulates those actions which involve the rights that an individual may claim from society”).

Continue reading on the CWR site.

Defending Marriage, and Why It Matters

Defending Marriage, and Why It Matters | Jim Graves | Catholic World Report

An interview with Ryan T. Anderson, co-author of What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense

Ryan T. Anderson, 31, researches and writes about marriage and religious liberty as the William E. Simon Fellow in Religion and a Free Society at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC.  He is also the editor of Public Discourse, the online journal of the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, NJ.

Ryan T. Anderson

He has emerged as a leading defender of traditional marriage before audiences on college and law school campuses, as well as in the mainstream media (he recently sparred with CNN host Piers Morgan and lesbian financial advisor and motivational speaker Suze Orman, for example).

Anderson was born and raised in Baltimore, and, while he is Catholic, his parents sent him and his four brothers to a Quaker school, “for reasons we still don’t fully understand,” he chuckles.  At an early age he found his views often at odds with those of his classmates, such as on the issue of abortion.  He said, “Being in a minority status makes you examine your positions more thoroughly.”

Anderson’s articles have appeared in numerous periodicals, and he recently co-authored What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense (Encounter Books) with Robert George and Sherif Girgis. He recently spoke with CWR.

CWR: Why is marriage unique from other adult relationships?

Anderson: As we argue in our book, it is unique because it involves a union of hearts, minds, and bodies of a man and a woman, at all levels of their beings, in an act that has the potential to produce new human life.  Marital relationships are not only emotional, but are ordered towards bearing and rearing children.  

If we reject the understanding that marriage should be between one man and one woman, other questions arise. Why, for example, should we limit marriage to two people?  What about “thruples” [a three-person “couple”]?  What’s so magical about the number two?  Perhaps someone believes their marriage would be enhanced with the introduction of a third party.  If we don’t insist that marriage is a distinct, bodily union between one man and one woman, then we leave it up to the spouses to decide.

Also, why should marriage be permanent?  Emotions come and go, so some people might prefer their marriage to be temporary.

CWR: Polls say younger people are more open to same-sex marriage than the overall population. Why do you think many in your generation have this perspective?

Continue reading on the CWR site.

The Vampire School

The Vampire School | Anthony Esolen | Catholic World Report

The Vampire School drains the life out of learning, producing dull workers for the Vampire State.

“Schools, I hear it argued, would make better sense and be better value as nine-to-five operations or even nine-to-nine ones, working year-round.  We’re not a farming community anymore, I hear, that we need to give kids time off to tend the crops.  This new-world-order schooling would serve dinner, provide evening recreation, offer therapy, medical attention, and a whole range of other services, which would convert the institution into a true synthetic family for children, better than the original one for many poor kids, it is said—and this would level the playing field for the sons and daughters of weak families.

“Yet it appears to me as a schoolteacher that schools are already a major cause of weak families and weak communities.  They separate parents and children from vital interaction with each other and from true curiosity about each other’s lives.  Schools stifle family originality by appropriating the critical time needed for any sound idea of family to develop—then they blame the family for its failure to be a family.”  (John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling)

One day it struck John Taylor Gatto, Teacher of the Year for New York State in 1991 (and therefore, inevitably, disliked by his administrators), that our schools were not failing.  Rather, they were succeeding fabulously at what they were constructed to do: to produce dull and compliant workers in a technocratic economy.  School, he argued, instills in us a perpetual childish neediness.  We need to toady for grades, because we need to get into the “best” schools, because we need to have a prestigious and well-remunerated job, because we need to buy a lot of stuff to pretend to fill the emptiness of our lives.  Among that stuff will be the odd child or two, who will also need to toady for grades, to get into the “best” schools, and so on, world without end, Amen.

The Vampire State naturally requires a Vampire School.  Recall the two things everybody needs to know about vampires.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

The American Republic: The Vision and the Transformations

The American Republic: The Vision and the Transformations | Anne Hendershott | Catholic World Report

A review of The Transformation of the American Democratic Republic by Stephen M. Krason.

From the earliest years of the fledgling American Democratic Republic, there was great uncertainly about the limits of the authority of Congress.  While the federal government was considered to have limited and enumerated powers, even in these early years, there were concerns that the authority of the federal government would grow.  On September 22, 1832, John Marshall, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, confided to a colleague: “I yield slowly and reluctantly to the conviction that our constitution cannot last.”  Having written the unanimous decision in Marbury v. Madison (1803) overturning an act of Congress as “unconstitutional” for the first time in history, Chief Justice Marshall was among the first to truly understand the threats to the Constitution from our own government. 

We can only imagine what Marshall might have thought of the regulations issued by the federal government requiring religious institutions’ health insurance plans to cover contraception—including sterilization and abortifacients—under the current federal health care law.  The mandate is something that the Founders could never have imagined. To understand how this transformation of the power of the national government occurred, we can turn to The Transformation of the American Democratic Republic, a new book by Dr. Stephen M. Krason, professor of political science and legal studies at Franciscan University of Steubenville.  

Krason’s analysis builds upon two key questions:

Continue reading on the CWR site.