Women find men puzzling, and men say they don’t understand women. So the relation between the sexes is evidently a part of human life in which clear understanding is hard to come by. Academic expertise […]
“Traditionalism” mostly has a bad name among commentators. Critics often quote a comment by historian Jaroslav Pelikan: Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Tradition lives […]
We talk about freedom as if we knew what it is, but it’s a tricky business. Issues relating to health are a constant source of dispute, so they dramatize some of the problems. Medical freedom […]
The dispute over the continuing value of the Traditional Latin Mass has drawn attention to the question of tradition and its role in the Church. That’s a complicated matter. Tradition is important, but not the […]
The Church has always been patriotic here. America offered a better life to millions of Catholics fleeing poverty and oppression, and allowed the Church freedom to worship, evangelize, do charity, and run her own affairs. […]
As a thinker Pope Francis puzzles. He raises issues, often ambiguously and in ways that unsettle things, but does not resolve them. He calls for encounter and dialogue, but refuses to answer questions. And he […]
Government is difficult. How can anyone run other people’s lives when he likely has trouble running his own? A basic difficulty is the old problem of the one and the many. In philosophy that problem […]
Catholics today are in a difficult position. They have come to believe that active involvement in social and political life is a basic part of living the Faith. But the general conditions leading to that […]
What life are we leading today? And what is it for? Lent has been a time to reflect on such things, and Easter and Spring are seasons of rebirth. But sometimes reflection brings little comfort, […]
In 2006 Pope Benedict spoke of a peculiar Western self-hatred that is nothing short of pathological. It is commendable that the West is trying to be more open, to be more understanding of the values […]
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