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  • An Inadvertent Critique of Scapegoating?

    by Renée D. Roden

    SPOILER ALERT: SPOILERS AHEAD! In the beginning of his speech, the just man is his own accuser. —St. Bernard Vice, Adam McKay’s spoof of Dick Cheney, is a feature-length ritual of scapegoating, America’s entertainment du jour. Let me be clear: I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. First, because I enjoy feeling moral outrage, provided it is not directed at myself. Second, during the early years...

    February 20, 2019
    Arts, Culture, Essays, Featured
  • Confronting a Sinful Church

    by Brandon R. Peterson

    “For our good and the good of all his holy Church.”[1] Even seven years after the new translation of the Roman Missal, I will occasionally stumble over this response if I am not concentrating. However, over the past months as the disturbing reports about now-laicized Cardinal McCarrick and the horrific details from the Pennsylvania grand jury report have come to light, the word “holy”...

    February 18, 2019
    Articles, Church Formation, Featured
  • The Devastating Fallout from Prenatal Testing

    by Mary O’Callaghan

    As we get older, we often tend to situate our lives in and around historical events, which serve as place markers and give us some frame of reference, especially when the events are personally salient. Because of my field and my personal experience, I see my life as demarcated in part by events in the history of disability in this country. For example, my...

    February 15, 2019
    Articles, Featured, Pro-Life
  • Unfulfilled Promise: The Synod on Young People

    by Leonard J. DeLorenzo

    Almost right from the start, there were many people determined to impugn whatever came from the recent Synod on Young People, Faith, and Vocational Discernment. I am not one of these people. I wrote a book for the occasion, wrote numerous articles, and worked with my colleagues to host a major preparatory conference. I was in. For this reason, I was disappointed with the...

    February 14, 2019
    Articles, Church Formation, Featured
  • BlacKkKlansman Scopes the Archives of the American Soul

    by Christopher Gruslin

    SPOILER ALERT: SPOILERS AHEAD! Spike Lee’s newest joint BlacKkKlansman (2018) opens with an iconic scene from Gone With the Wind (1939). Scarlett O’Hara walks through a maze of wounded soldiers after the Battle of Atlanta. The film’s score transitions to Taps and the camera pans over a tattered Confederate flag. It is a grand spectacle of loss. Lee jumps to Alec Baldwin portraying Dr....

    February 13, 2019
    Articles, Featured
  • Justice and Rights in Europe Today

    by John Milbank

    In all the ways that I have indicated earlier in this six-part series, one can readily argue that liberalism, even Kantian liberalism, is not, after all, metaphysically agnostic. To the contrary, the other aspect to its ethical minimalism is clearly a materializing and reductive ontology. This observation therefore challenges the assumption that liberal societies are really neutral as to belief or to metaphysical assertion....

    February 12, 2019
    Articles, Featured, Theology
  • The Addictions of the Catholic Samizdat

    by Timothy P. O’Malley

    Imagine a film so entertaining, so captivating that it is impossible to tear one’s eyes away from the movie. The viewer is paralyzed by the act of watching, losing all control of the will. The rest of life fades away as the viewer escapes from the workaday world into the phantasms that appear on the television screen. The creation of this seductive entertainment is...

    February 11, 2019
    Articles, Church Formation, Featured
  • The Wayward Daughters

    by Haley Stewart

    “All my days I have longed equally to travel the right road and to take my own errant path,” confesses Kristin Lavransdatter, a wealthy Norwegian noblewoman and titular character of Nobel Prize-winner Sigrid Undset’s three-part novel.[1] Set in the fourteenth century, the saga follows the life of Kristin, one of the most complex female characters of 20th century literature, from womb to tomb. She...

    February 7, 2019
    Articles, Arts, Featured
  • Death and Bunnies All the Way Down?

    by Renée D. Roden

    SPOILER ALERT: SPOILERS AHEAD! Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb . . . T he doctrine of the Theotokos’s perpetual virginity is, paradoxically, a celebration of Mary’s utter fecundity. Surrendering utterly to the will of God, Mary bears fruit completely and comprehensively, in one elegant gesture of incarnation, in the Word himself. All of our human effort,...

    February 6, 2019
    Articles, Arts
  • The Vast Re-Education Program of the Superbowl Ads

    by Brett Robinson

    The zeitgeist of any new year can often be distilled by observing the snapshots of commodity culture that Super Bowl ads provide. A cursory survey of this year’s Super Bowl ad lineup includes the usual suspects. We like movies. We like cars. We like movies about cars. We like feeling safe. We like movies about not feeling safe. We like beer. Minus the corn...

    February 5, 2019
    Articles, Featured, Technology

Articles

The Essence of African Traditional Religion

Published by Fr. Paulinus Odozor, C.S.Sp.

One scholar who has written extensively on African Traditional Religion is John Mbiti, a Kenyan whom many consider the dean of living African theologians. An important preoccupation of Mbiti’s...

February 21, 2019
Articles, Theology

Gestational Surrogacy Is Big Business

Published by Adeline A. Allen

The recent spate of abortion laws pushed through state legislatures across the country has been much in the news. New York now permits even full-term babies to be aborted,...

February 19, 2019
Articles, Pro-Life

Confronting a Sinful Church

Published by Brandon R. Peterson

“For our good and the good of all his holy Church.”[1] Even seven years after the new translation of the Roman Missal, I will occasionally stumble over this response...

February 18, 2019
Articles, Church Formation, Featured

The Devastating Fallout from Prenatal Testing

Published by Mary O’Callaghan

As we get older, we often tend to situate our lives in and around historical events, which serve as place markers and give us some frame of reference, especially...

February 15, 2019
Articles, Featured, Pro-Life

Unfulfilled Promise: The Synod on Young People

Published by Leonard J. DeLorenzo

Almost right from the start, there were many people determined to impugn whatever came from the recent Synod on Young People, Faith, and Vocational Discernment. I am not one...

February 14, 2019
Articles, Church Formation, Featured

BlacKkKlansman Scopes the Archives of the American Soul

Published by Christopher Gruslin

SPOILER ALERT: SPOILERS AHEAD! Spike Lee’s newest joint BlacKkKlansman (2018) opens with an iconic scene from Gone With the Wind (1939). Scarlett O’Hara walks through a maze of wounded...

February 13, 2019
Articles, Featured

Justice and Rights in Europe Today

Published by John Milbank

In all the ways that I have indicated earlier in this six-part series, one can readily argue that liberalism, even Kantian liberalism, is not, after all, metaphysically agnostic. To...

February 12, 2019
Articles, Featured, Theology

The Addictions of the Catholic Samizdat

Published by Timothy P. O’Malley

Imagine a film so entertaining, so captivating that it is impossible to tear one’s eyes away from the movie. The viewer is paralyzed by the act of watching, losing...

February 11, 2019
Articles, Church Formation, Featured

Is Truth and Reconciliation Possible?

Published by Carolyn Pirtle

Director Peter Farrelly’s Green Book seems like obvious Oscar bait: a road trip dramedy centered around two men from very different worlds who find their assumptions challenged as they...

February 8, 2019
Articles, Arts

The Wayward Daughters

Published by Haley Stewart

“All my days I have longed equally to travel the right road and to take my own errant path,” confesses Kristin Lavransdatter, a wealthy Norwegian noblewoman and titular character...

February 7, 2019
Articles, Arts, Featured

From the Blog

January 31, 2019

The Liturgy Is for (Little) Kids

In a recent blog post, Fr. Michael White (author of Rebuilt: Awakening the Faithful, Reaching the Lost, and Making...

by Timothy P. O’Malley
January 28, 2019

The Faith of Ancient Philosophy’s Fathers

Truly one of the joys of reading Dariusz Karlowicz’s Socrates and Other Saints: Early Christian Understandings of Reason and...

by John Cavadini
January 25, 2019

Marxism and Religion

According to Marx, religion has a dual role to play. Throughout the history of class society religion performs two...

by Alasdair MacIntyre
January 24, 2019

Burke’s Romantic Restoration of Natural Law

This point (see: previous installment “The History of Natural Right”) was put supremely well by Edmund Burke: The rights...

by John Milbank
January 22, 2019

Renewing Nouvelle Théologie

There was a depression over the Atlantic. It was travelling eastwards, towards an area of high pressure over Russia,...

by Cyril O’Regan
January 21, 2019

Gripping the Book of Nature’s Reality

There’s a repeating image in José Ortega y Gasset’s first book, Meditations on Quixote, of a bird flying through...

by Scott Beauchamp
January 14, 2019

The Anti-Catholicism of Heidegger’s Black Notebooks

The publication in the last few years of several volumes of the Black Notebooks (Schwarze Hefte)—consisting of Heidegger’s unedited...

by Cyril O’Regan
January 11, 2019

Confessions of a Feminist Heretic

During the advent of my first pregnancy, in 2012, I was comfortably settled into my own unique brand of...

by Abigail Favale

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