thoughts in and out of season
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 ...
Archbishop Martino’s comments on “just war,” to the effect that Catholic teaching on the subject may be going the way of the teaching on the death penalty—something that may be acceptable in principle but never today in fact because “modern society has enough means [of resolving conflicts] so that we need not have recourse … More ...
Illinois Democrats boost election results by registering sex offenders.
Thomas Sowell makes some useful points regarding the feminist claim that women’s changing economic position is explained by male repression. He had earlier made similar points in connection with blacks. The line of thought certainly seems plausible—while the free market isn’t perfect, it’s not adapted for arbitrary repression in any normal sense.
A series of stories from England displays the features of the emerging transnational order: