Thirty-two states have put same-sex marriage to the ballot since 1998, and thirty-two times voters have refused to redefine marriage. Same-sex marriage supporters hope that will change this November, when marriage is on the ballot in four states: Maine, Maryland, Washington and Minnesota.
An October 15 AP report shows same-sex marriage leading slightly at the polls in Maine, Maryland and Washington – but similar leads in other states have evaporated at the ballot box. It’s a matter, as...
Music lessons, besides training the ear, cultivating good taste and creating a base for enjoyment and expression in later life, develop the brain’s capacity for language, math, spatial relations, discipline and creativity. I could not be more sold on the value of musical training in a good education.
Yet when my husband lost his job for a time a few years back, piano lessons were one of the first budget items slashed.
It broke my heart, but there is such a thing as reality, and sometimes...
It’s a fact. Many Catholic women use contraceptives in spite of the Church’s moral prohibition.
Some of us lament that and others celebrate it, but we all tend to talk about Catholics who contracept as if they weren’t right in the room while we’re discussing them.
No one ever asks them what they think and why.
Until Mary Rice Hasson, that is. Forty-four years after the promulgation of Humanae Vitae, she seems to be the first person to think of asking women directly what they...
With the Republican convention just over and the Democratic underway, now seems the moment for at least a mild defense of our party system, which I often hear Catholics and other Christians denounce.
The reason for the denunciation is simple and I sympathize with it: we get exasperated when party leaders don’t champion the issues of particular importance to us, and we hate feeling taken for granted. I can’t remember the last time a political conversation in Catholic circles didn’t...
Imagine most of the world laboring under a set of presuppositions that have absolutely awful social and economic consequences.
Scholars from multiple disciplines have amassed vast evidence over a length of decades demonstrating how bad these ideas are for human beings.
What would you make of the people who not only ignore these facts but go out of their way to discredit the evidence, or claim the bad consequences are actually good? And how would you go about correcting the record?
Those are...
Hungarian-born politics professor Peter W. Schramm gives a heart-warming account of his family’s flight from Communist oppression in 1956.
Having endured a litany of hardships any one of which might break a man, the senior Mr. Schramm finally had enough the day a hand grenade (a dud, fortunately) landed right next to him while he was out scrounging for bread.
“But where are we going?” young Peter asked.
His dad didn’t have to think about it. “America” was the obvious answer....
“Self-Delusion & True Contrition.” That title caught my eye in our parish used book rack, so I invested fifty cents towards the enlightenment of my conscience.
The booklet is an excerpt from Fr. Alfred Wilson’s Pardon & Peace, written in the 1940s.
A line of scrutiny related to the lay vocation impressed me.
Under “Justice,” for example, came questions you’d expect about not pinching the boss’s paper clips and not looking down your nose at workmen, but I read also:...
Last May 21, 43 Catholic institutions including the Archdioceses of New York and Washington and the University of Notre Dame filed suit in federal courts in defense of their right to both profess and exercise their religious faith.
The HHS contraceptive mandate is the cause of the suit, but contraception is not the question. At issue is the Administration’s attempted redefinition of religious ministry to include only what takes place within the walls of a house of worship. As Cardinal...
Is legal recognition of same-sex marriage inevitable?
Last week’s presidential endorsement has some folks speaking as if it were.
The success of a marriage referendum in North Carolina the previous day –the 31st consecutive win for one-man, one-woman marriage when put to a referendum of the people—suggests otherwise. As I’ve argued before in this space, there is no reason for the effort to redefine marriage to succeed unless Catholics and other Christians give in to what...
Everyone loves a good lawyer joke, even lawyers.
If you were a lawyer, however, and had a friend who never missed an opportunity to run your profession down, tarring all its members as greedy ambulance-chasers, at a certain point you’d start to take it hard.
A few years back my husband happened to go in for his annual check-up shortly after the President gave a speech about health care reform which left the impression that doctors routinely jack up prices to enrich themselves unjustly...
