Articles by Russell Shaw

My wife and I don’t watch television. That’s neither an apology nor a boast but only a statement of fact. We have no quarrel with people who do watch television. We just prefer doing other […]

Why do leakers do it? Probably many Americans have asked that question lately, moved by the cases of Edward Snowden, the security contractor who spilled the beans about government surveillance of phone calls and electronic […]

Claims that something is inevitable are generally of two kinds. Sometimes the claim is simply a statement of fact (“Inevitably, the sun will rise tomorrow”). Other times it expresses a wish or perhaps a fear […]

In the question period after a talk I’d given on my new book, American Church: The Remarkable Rise, Meteoric Fall, and Uncertain Future of Catholicism in America, a woman raised an important point: “If the […]

Is Pope Francis our first anticlerical pope? Technically speaking, he isn’t–his two predecessors also were more or less critical of clericalism–but he is well on his way to being the most outspoken one. Consider a […]

In one of his typically simple, direct, and forceful homilies, Pope Francis warned recently against idols and idolatry. “We have to empty ourselves of the many small or great idols that we have and in […]

Joseph Epstein, writer of delightful essays, quotes the French novelist Stendahl: “To write a book is to risk being shot at in public.” Quite so. Here’s a report from one of the walking wounded. First, […]

“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 […]

As all the world surely knows by now, “equality” is the ideological key to President Obama’s domestic policies. That all people are created equal, the president says, is the “most evident of truths.” Whether that’s […]