The Synod speaks
I comment on the Summary Report of the first session of the Synod on Synodality at the Chronicles Magazine website. It’s not good.
Society and culture
Trump and social issues
The following are my notes for a lecture I presented to the 2017 meeting of the H. L. Mencken Club on Trump and the “social issues.”
- What are the social issues?
- Why are they hard to deal with?
- What’s at stake?
- Why Trump as a social conservative?
He’s not an actual social conservative. He’s OK … More ...
Mechanical nihilism
I review Anthony Esolen’s book Life Under Compulsion at Chronicles Magazine.
What is Anti-Racism?
Racial differences and attachments are real, and they can’t be educated or administered away. Family, ancestry, and history are part of who we are, so they are part of identity. People take them to heart, and that’s not going to change.
So why do respectable people get so weird about them, and claim race doesn’t … More ...
Pro “gay marriage” and pro-life?
Another correspondent asks whether I think it’s possible to be pro-gay marriage and pro-life: whether logically, rationally, ultimately, the two positions can be reconciled. She had noticed some conservatives going that way.
It seemed to me you could give multiple answers depending on how you took the question:
- Of course they can be reconciled. You
How religious is natural law?
In the Crisis piece mentioned in the previous entry, I suggested the relationship between the two was ambiguous. A blogger who wants to maintain a strong distinction between natural law and religion called me on it, so I had to develop my thoughts a little.
My answer was that the distinction is important … More ...
The inclusion obsession
I gave this lecture at the 2013 meeting of the H. L. Mencken Club.
The “Inclusion” Obsession
by James Kalb
We hear a lot about inclusiveness, and it’s apparently very important, but the topic is never discussed analytically. The idea seems to be that it’s warm and fuzzy and just obviously a good thing. The … More ...
Windsor, inclusiveness, and the churches
Here, in an unpublished essay, I discuss the Windsor case, what it shows about our current situation, and how the Churches should respond.
Windsor, Inclusiveness, and the Churches
by James Kalb
In United States v. Windsor, the case that invalidated the Federal definition of marriage as the marriage of man and woman, the Supreme … More ...
Religion, liberalism, and worldly success
My latest column is now up at Catholic World Report. Basically it presents a standard cyclical view of one aspect of history: a society with a good religion will become successful, which makes the religion lose its hold, which means the society will stop being successful.
The radical meaning of “gay marriage”
That’s the title of my most recent piece at Crisis Magazine. It discusses recent developments in connection with the trend toward a single universal regime of contract and regulation in which no point has privileged independence.