Today’s electronic communications have fragmented our world into myriad images and soundbites that can be reassembled to make anything seem real. That has made it a paradise for con-men, propagandists, and insane people. If you’re […]
Last month I complained about formal expertise. Although often very useful, I said, it can be blind to obvious realities. The problem is that it wants its authority to seem indisputably objective and reliable. For […]
We live in the Age of the Expert. There are reasons for that. We mostly work for big organizations now, and all aspects of our lives depend on them. Big organizations have their own way […]
The Supreme Court’s vision of a society in which each defines his own “concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life” has been realized all too thoroughly. What […]
Military historians talk about the “fog of war,” the impossibility of knowing what’s going on during the confusion of battle. The idea can be extended to the struggles of daily life—that’s why we talk about […]
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. […]
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