Hat Tip: Radio Free Babylon Read more
Hat Tip: Radio Free Babylon Read more
As we go to meet our Lord in the Eucharist this weekend – and hopefully also on election day – let us take the opportunity to be reminded and reoriented toward our foremost allegiance, our universal faith, our true hope for the world that unites us as one Body. At the end of a bitterly divisive election season in which we have too often failed to love one another as we ought, we will plead to Christ our hope, “Lord,... Read more
Last January, I predicted that Mitt Romney would win the Republican nomination for president and go on to beat Barack Obama for the White House. I’m sticking to that prediction, although I also thought that Romney would be running with Governor Susanna Martinez, and that Hilary Clinton and Joe Biden would flip roles. The lesson there is that I’m a lousy oracle, so readers would be advised to take any prediction of mine with a large grain of salt. For... Read more
a guest post by Aaron Matthew Weldon Election season seems to provide impetus for Christians to come to terms with the declining influence of the Church on the broader culture. The conscientious Christian is aware of her political homelessness, but she can use that awareness to reflect on how the disestablished Church can serve the world. For decades, theologians have been grappling with this issue and what it may mean for the future Church in the West. A collection of... Read more
…shows the folly of the assertion that you have to vote for Romney because abortion. Read more
America Magazine submitted some additional questions to Joe Biden and Paul Ryan after their vice-presidential debate. Their answers (and non-answers) are interesting and revealing. The lead question, however, really caught my attention for the difference in their answers: America: In what circumstances is war morally justifiable? Vice President Biden: War is morally justified when it is necessary to protect the safety of innocents from an aggressive act. The threat must be grave and certain. Every effort must be made to... Read more
Catholic Social Teaching, as I’ve said before, does not fit the current U.S. political binary. To name one foundational example, Pope Leo XIII’s groundbreaking encyclical Rerum Novarum is sharply critical of both socialism and laissez-faire capitalism while in a sense straining out the best principles of both, arguing for the State’s responsibility to provide for the common good which necessarily includes private ownership for all. By advocating limited government while allowing for some necessary regulation and intervention to protect the right... Read more
Did original sin cause Hurricane Sandy? There are, I think, two ways to answer that question. I’ll leave out of consideration the possibility that the world before the Fall was serene and not “red in tooth and claw” on the natural and cosmological level. So that leaves two possibilities to consider. First, yes, original sin “causes” Hurricane Sandy, but only if the doctrine of original sin is expanded far beyond its current anthropocentric contours and given cosmological dimensions. Pierre Teilhard... Read more
I recently stumbled across this gem over at Stratford Caldecott’s Second Spring website, a place that many Catholics who do not feel at home in an American political context will find refreshing. Archbishop Javier Martinzer of Granada deconstructs “secular reason” and the unwitting Christian capitulation to it. You can read the whole piece here. Here are a few representative quotes: [T]he culture of the Enlightment is just one more tradition, born from particular circumstances in the history of European Christianity.... Read more
First, watch the Obama campaign ad that has everyone so worked up. Then keep reading. Apparently, a bunch of white men got upset over nothing. At least that’s what The Atlantic Wire claims: The outrage is ridiculous. The ad is aimed at people who are between 18 and 22 years old, people who are young enough to have not voted in the last election but who are eligible now. People who probably know who Lena Dunham is, because she’s basically the... Read more
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