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Wedding Madness Meets Marriage Phobia

Spring is wedding season, and though few celebrations can top last month’s royal wedding, plenty of brides hope to give Kate Middleton a run for her tiara. The $27,800 price tag for the average American wedding may be chump change compared to the $32 million royal nuptials, but it’s enough to drive an $86-billion-a-year wedding […]

Regalism versus Real Catholic Monarchy

The Development of Regalism Regalism was a development of the late Middle Ages and early modern period that sought to centralize all power in the hands of the king. All social and economic institutions, even — or especially — the Church, were brought under royal control. This was the beginning of the modern “nation-state,” in […]

Osama Bin Laden: Chicken or Egg?

To posit the significance of Osama bin Laden’s demise, we must first decide which came first — the chicken or the egg? Quaint as it is, this question is fundamentally an inquiry into the nature of cause and effect. In our context, did Osama bin Laden “create” the idea of jihad, or did the centuries-old […]

Baseball Fouls

My husband and I went to a Milwaukee Brewers game this past Saturday. Our two oldest sons had tickets they couldn’t use, so they offered them to us. We gratefully accepted. It was a great opportunity for a little getaway, and I hadn’t yet been to the new Milwaukee County Stadium (I know, it’s been […]

Liturgy Should Say: ‘We’re not in Kansas Anymore’

Last Wednesday night I had the pleasure of addressing a “Theology on Tap” gathering of young adults on the topic of how to prepare for the new English translation of the Roman Missal. During the Q&A portion of our time together I was somewhat surprised when a number of attendees wondered aloud about how the […]

Muslim ‘Inferiority Complex’ Kills Christians

Days ago in Egypt, throngs of Muslims (henceforth, “Islamists”), estimated at 3,000, fired guns and rifles and hurled Molotov cocktails at Coptic churches, homes, and businesses in the Imbaba region near Cairo: twelve Christians were killed—some shot by snipers atop rooftops—232 injured; three churches were set aflame to cries of “Allahu Akbar,” while Coptic homes […]

Egypt – “Serious, but not hopeless”

Following the violent attacks on Christian churches in Cairo last weekend, the Coptic Catholic Patriarch of Alexandria, Cardinal Antonios Naguib has spoken of a “very serious situation,” but one not without hope. Last Sunday, May 9, the president of the Sunni Al Azhar University in Cairo issued a joint declaration, together with representatives of all […]

Strange Things are Done

The Bard of the Yukon, Robert Service, penned the immortal lines:  There are strange things done in the midnight sun,         by the men who moil for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tails,         that would make your blood run cold; So began The Cremation of Sam McGee, the poem that would make […]

Sins of the Father: Abortion, Birth Control, and the ACLU

As someone with the highly unusual task of researching old, declassified Soviet and Communist Party USA archives, I often get quizzical looks as to why certain things from the distant past still matter. Well, it’s indeed true that past is often prologue. And it’s striking to see how something in communist archives from, say, the […]

There Be Dragons Indeed

I am one of the apparently few people who have seen There Be Dragons, Roland Joffe’s film about St. Josemaria Escriva, founder of Opus Dei.  Only it isn’t really about Josemaria at all.  It’s about Spain. The photography is beautiful and the settings are wonderful (so good that they made me homesick for Spain, where […]

Comic: A Different Assignment

Religion Books in the Catholic School

[This report was prepared on behalf of a group of Catholic parents to address issues locally that may also be going on elsewhere in the country.  It is published here as a resource for parents who may find it useful.] Religion Books in the Catholic School: Parental Concerns and Suggested Remedies Our parent’s group has […]

Recapturing the Vertical Dimension of Faith

Laboring in the desert of the kingdom of man, the true believer finds himself bent by the weight of sin, stiffened by the pain of sorrow and stained by the sweat of fear.  While he knows that God created him out of pure love, redeems Him out of pure mercy and awaits his full return […]

Call for Federal Investigation of Fetal DNA/Autism Vaccine Link

Children of God for Life ( www.cogforlife.org )  and Sound Choice Pharmaceutical Institute ( www.soundchoice.org ) are calling on federal officials to investigate the cause of autism in children who have received vaccines produced using aborted fetal cell lines. Past studies have focused on the use of thimerosal in vaccines as reason for the rise in autism.  […]

World Day of Prayer for Vocations: Think God; Trust God; Thank God!

In the 1980 film Oh, God: Book II 11-year-old Tracy Richards believes that God is talking to her.  In fact, God (played by George Burns) wants Tracy to tell everybody she knows that he is real.  So she does.  She drafts a slogan and message, just two words, is conclusive and clear: THINK GOD.  She […]

Abundant Life

The atheist philosopher of the 19th century, Friedrich Nietzsche, once said: “if Christians want me to believe in their redeemer, they need to look more redeemed.” He was drawing the wrong conclusion from a perceptive observation.  To Nietzsche most Christians looked just as burdened, clueless and lost as everybody else.  When he looked into their […]

New Document on the Ever New Traditional Mass

“Introibo ad altare Dei“: Document on How to Implement Summorum Pontificum Published in Rome Today, May 13, 2011 A day of rejoicing for Catholics who love the rich, profound tradition of the old Latin liturgy. A day — May 13, 2011 — which, bracketed with July 7, 2007, when the Pope published Summorum Pontificum, will […]

Hear Ye! Hear Ye!

HEAR YE! HEAR YE! READ ALL ABOUT IT! This what one used to hear on the corners back when the newsboys wanted to tell people that something spectacular was happening in the world. In the past 30 days, we should have heard this call about two different events. One was the Standard & Poor downgrade […]

Understanding Rand

Christians have a deep ambivalence about Ayn Rand that probably draws as deeply from the facts of her biography as from her famous novels. When the refugee from the old Soviet Union met the Catholic William F. Buckley, she said, “You are too intelligent to believe in God.” Her atheism was militant. Rand’s holy symbol […]

Comic: Paranoid Cats

Gloom in China’s New Census

China’s just-released 2010 census is grim news for those who claim that suppressing population growth boosts economic development. China is graying more rapidly than previously predicted and its demographic dividend will decline sharply just two years from now, causing an economic slow-down and political and social unrest. China Brief’s Willy Lam analyzes the new census […]

Is the Antichrist Here?

Uprising after uprising in the Middle East; sexual and intellectual scandal in the Church; earthquakes in Chile and Haiti; tsunamis in Indonesia and Japan; and financial collapse in almost every market: given the startling increase in the frequency of global crises –political, religious, financial, natural — one is tempted to begin looking for the antichrist […]

Christian Charity and the Welfare State

One of the great privileges and duties of practicing Christians is to do charitable deeds. Virtually all Christians agree on this point. There is, however, a great divide in Christendom between those who believe that charitable giving should be a voluntary, private-sector ministry and those who believe that a government welfare state should oversee a […]

Heaven and Hell

Heaven and hell are in the news and on Americans’ minds a lot lately. Heaven Is for Real: A Little Boy’s Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back is currently number one on the New York Times Best Seller List for nonfiction. It details a four-year-old’s near-death experience as told to his pastor father. […]