thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb As counterpoint to the “queering the schools” agenda, here’s a footnote-laden Family Research Council report on Abstinence until Marriage: The Best Message for Teens. We’ve touched before on the widespread technocratic prejudice against “abstinence-only” sex-ed programs. Nonetheless, it should be obvious that it’s the abstinence curricula that are based on reason and common sense … More ...
Since the New York Times plays such an important role in defining American public life, accounts of life backstage are of some interest: ‘Republic of Fear’. It seems that things have gotten really nasty under the rule of new editor Howell Raines. We have pointed out that “diversity” makes terror and utter inefficiency the … More ...
A tale of two causes: “queering the schools”—mainstreaming homosexual and polymorphously perverse themes throughout education—goes forward, and the only people who complain are said to be homophobic cranks. Meanwhile, it’s a huge scandal if the Secretary of Education praises Christian schools very moderately (“all things being equal, I’d prefer to have a child in … More ...
Why does September 11 mean we should care about this? Old warlord proves thorn in the side of Afghan government. Afghanistan has never been fully under the control of any government. On the whole, that has not been so bad for those on the scene. So why should our soldiers stay there and try … More ...
In London, Ontario, a judge declined to recognize three people as the legal parents of a single child (the mother, the father, and the mother’s lesbian partner). And in an older London, the Lords rejected a request to interpret English law as permitting transsexual marriage.
The victory for the traditional definition of the family was … More ...
Christian conservatives sometimes talk about “engaging the culture,” meaning participating in mainstream public life with a view to influencing the habits and standards it presumes. That doesn’t make a lot of sense. “The culture,” as authoritatively represented by all respectable public institutions, holds that values are simply personal preferences to be aggregated and reconciled with … More ...
The question of personal “identity”—who or what I really am—is unanswerable apart from a personal God whose creative word decides the issue. That is why Eastern religions that lack such a God have no use for such questions and consider them illusions to be dissolved. The same applies to notions like a “true friend,” “true … More ...
Why has the Church taken such a turn toward engagement with the world on the world’s own terms? The idea of opening the windows of the Church to the world is an odd one. You open your windows to life and reality. Which has life and reality, the Church or the world? When I compare … More ...
The worst thing about Archbishop Martino’s comments on the current impossibility of just war is the secular utopianism they suggest. They imply that the most fundamental issues of social life are now securely under man’s control. To the contrary, though, the reason we need God is that basic things are not under our control.
Secular … More ...
The Pope’s recent World Day of Peace message suggests that Archbishop Martino, while perhaps one-sided in his statements, wasn’t speaking altogether in a vacuum. In his message, the Pope reviewed with approval the thought of his predecessor John XXIII in Pacem in Terris. He can’t help but present the encyclical as somewhat of a … More ...