CNA—St. John Paul II’s encyclical Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason) will mark its 21st anniversary this year, on Sept. 14. Last year, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia reflected on this encyclical in his essay “Believe that you may Understand” that appeared in the March 2018 issue of First Things. It is worth revisiting this…
Little has been written about President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s faith journey. Those who wrote about Ike’s faith generally characterized it as something that was politically expedient. He was accused of using his religious faith only as a means to stir up patriotic fervor during the Cold War. In The Soul of an American President: The…
Have you ever been to a country that was under control of the Nazis and then Communism? Do you know what those people experienced and how they did not have any of the basic freedoms that Americans take for granted? My wife, Pat, and I had that experience this summer. We started in Poland, the…
The Rev. James V. Schall’s “Docilitas: On Teaching and Being Taught” is an antidote to what has evolved on today’s college campuses with the suppression of dialogue among students, faculty and administrators. In this book, the late Fr. Schall, a Professor Emeritus from Georgetown University, reminds us about the ‘sacred’ search for Truth, the importance…
The other day, I went into my office with two colleagues, gave each of them a section of The Wall Street Journal, and we spent the next 45 minutes reading whatever captured our interest. When we were finished, we discussed the various articles we found, from finance to marketing to strategy to international business. Much…
Exactly 20 years ago, in U.S. Senate testimony just weeks after the Columbine High School massacre, I offered these thoughts: The real problem [of Columbine-like violence in our culture] is in here, in us . . . In the last four decades we’ve created a culture that markets violence in dozens of different ways, seven…
On July 25th, the Church celebrated the Feast of St. James the Apostle, whose journey from fisherman to evangelist should inspire and encourage us all. Imagine that you are at work sitting at your desk, giving a presentation, or doing some manual labor and a man that you’ve admired and heard about approaches you and…
Toddlers try to get their way by throwing tantrums, but they are not the only ones. In “An Open Letter on Translating,” an heresiarch in 1530 justified altering the Letter of Saint James: “Dr. Martin Luther will have it so . . . Sic volo, sic jubeo.” (I want it; I command.) This solipsism was updated…
If there is no objective truth, there are no heresies. For the lazy thinker, the mellow refrain suffices: “It’s all good.” The etymology of “heresy” is complicated, but it has come to mean a wrong choice. Yet, if the mere act of choosing justifies itself (as when people declare themselves “Pro-Choice”), then no choice is…
Speaking at the University of Notre Dame in October 2016, just a few weeks before a national election that seemed sure to put a second Clinton in the White House, I noted that [Q]uite a few of us American Catholics have worked our way into a leadership class that the rest of the country both…
Among rare neurological disorders, the “pseudobulbar affect” is manifested by uncontrolled laughter or crying. It can be treated effectively in many cases with a combination of the drugs dextromethorphan and quinidine. But there is another malady for which the Food and Drug Administration has no cure, and that is the habit of affecting emotions insincerely…
Sæva indignatio. Few writers in the history of English letters could express “savage indignation” at human folly as did Jonathan Swift who wrote those words for his own epitaph. Our times give ample opportunity to empathize with him, and that is never more so than when clerics get together in large numbers. Bishops have many…
Jacques Pantaléon was an unlikely candidate for the papacy, being neither a cardinal nor Italian, since he was the son of a French cobbler. Nonetheless he became Pope Urban IV after having acquitted himself well as Patriarch of Jerusalem. His attentions also involved him in concerns from Constantinople to Germany and Denmark. Two months before…
On January 18, 2019, a video of Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann went viral. He was at the Lincoln Memorial standing face to face with a Native American man during the March to Life in Washington, D.C. On the basis of that picture, a frenzy of condemnations from reporters, commentators and politicians were…
While experience cautions theologians against the quicksand of politics, politicians not infrequently rush in to theological matters where angels fear to tread. So it was on May 29 when our junior senator from New York, Kirsten Gillibrand, announced on National Public Radio that the Church is wrong about abortion, homosexuality, and the male priesthood. This…
An epitaph on the tomb of Bishop Miler Magrath of Cashel in Ireland (d. 1622) reads: “Here where I am placed I am not. I am not where I am not. Nor am I in both places, but I am in each.” His problem was that he had called himself a Catholic bishop as well…
To have known Father Stanley Jaki for more than twenty years was a privilege and a challenge. The privilege was to count as friend and mentor this Benedictine cited by many as one of the five priests whose science has most shaped our understanding of the world. The others are Copernicus in astronomy, Mendel in…
For author Patrick McCaskey, Worthwhile Struggle is the fourth book of his “Sports and Faith Series” and his best effort yet. As with past books, McCaskey draws heavily from his experience with the Chicago Bears as the grandson of George Halas*, his passion for his Catholic Faith, his commitment to family, and his formative years…
Prayer should not be seen simply as a good deed done by us to God, our own action. It is, above all, a gift, the fruit of the living presence, the life-giving presence of the Father and of Jesus Christ in us. And we know how true it is when the Apostle [Paul] says: “we…
A chronic temptation of the historian is to play the “Monday morning quarterback” who assumes that he would have made a correct decision in a past crisis. But the players at the time could only postulate consequences. The appeasers who signed the Munich Agreement in 1938 do not enjoy a happy legacy, but then the…
