March 12, 2021 (1,734 words)
A recent feature story in a mainstream publication shouts the following question from its title block: “Can Catholic Social Teaching Unite a Divided America?” What a completely unexpected…

March 1, 2021 (1,734 words)
Not that anybody is paying attention to this sort of thing, but the corruption of the Catholic mind over the course of the last sixty years has had a distinctly economic…

February 20, 2021 (807 words)
Those who scoff at the term “social justice” cannot all be dismissed as callous and crusty. The disdain is not always a sign of hard-heartedness. Deep down…

February 14, 2021 (37 words)
After being together almost forty years a thought just occurred to me. My commitment…

February 8, 2021 (1,274 words)
Any home-grown small business person knows how to stay in the game over the long haul. It starts with a hardy constitution impervious to minor ailments. It usually involves a…

January 20, 2021 (784 words)
For some reason every critic of capitalism seems like a sourpuss. As if they are never able to get a good night’s sleep, or their sciatica is always acting…

January 12, 2021 (1,742 words)
Many of our prominent civic institutions rely on generous donations of private wealth for a vital part of their funding stream. While the term “philanthropy” can apply to the hundred bucks you throw at…

December 27, 2020 (2,022 words)
Try to imagine a scenario in which a big, successful, publically-traded company – say a tech giant such as Amazon, for example – might decide on its own to pay its low-wage workers…

December 13, 2020 (7,751 words)
I.
We just elected a Catholic as President for only the second time in our history, yet during the campaign hardly a mention was made of the candidate’s once-taboo religious affiliation. Some will say that’s…

December 4, 2020 (774 words)
The printing press made the Protestant Reformation possible, once the Catholic Church could no longer control information. This may not be a new theory, but lately it seems to be popping up in places I frequent for information…

November 27, 2020 (811 words)
Politics, as we know, is not about identifying the right thing to do, which is a basic concept parents impart to their young children. Instead it’s about recognizing what you can actually get done. This pragmatic approach…

November 25, 2020 (309 words)
After a four-year roller coaster ride with Donald Trump at the wheel, a notable portion of the American electorate – some 80 million strong – has decided Sleepy Joe Biden as President may…

November 23, 2020 (30 words)
It’s all very well to have your heart in the right place. As long as your head is along for the ride, and is willing to work out the…

November 18, 2020 (877 words)
The problem with trashing Democrats as thoroughly as social conservatives do is it leaves us with only one viable political alternative: Republicans…

November 8, 2020 (135 words)
And now a word of praise for those veteran actors and actresses – like Kevin Costner, Diane Lane, and Lesley Manville – lucky enough to find good material they can really grab hold off, even this late…

November 7, 2020 (796 words)
This morning the presidential election was officially called for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. The incumbent had an early lead in many crucial states once the polls closed on November 3. But that lead was…

October 31, 2020 (888 words)
Manipulating the emotions of the general public is how our nation’s business is conducted on a daily basis. Then comes election season, when the fear-mongering ratchets up to a fever…

October 23 2020 (316 words)
Okay, so now it’s come to this: As one exits the northbound New Jersey Turnpike, where the Lincoln Tunnel leads into midtown Manhattan, there is a massive billboard dramatically lit against the…

October 15, 2020 (532 words)
Amy Coney-Barrett was said to have “sparred” with Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, during the two days they spent questioning her nomination to fill the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat…

October 8, 2020 (613 words)
Going to bed early is my stock-in-trade, so i only caught the opening salvos in last night’s Vice-Presidential debate between Republican Mike Pence and Democrat Kamala Harris. That was enough for me to regret…

October 4, 2020 (983 words)
Walking into the back of church this morning I was greeted by an imposing stack of “Catholic Voter Guides” almost two feet high, sitting on a small table in the vestibule. What a colossal waste of ink, I couldn’t…

October 3, 2020 (414 words)
What was your immediate reaction when you first heard President Trump tested positive for COVID-19 the other day? Not many of us want to go on…

September 28, 2020 (1,000 words)
Legendary Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg died on Friday, September 18, at the age of 87. On Saturday, September 26, President Trump announced his choice to fill the vacancy her passing leaves…

September 25, 2020 (49 words)
So the way it worked in our house growing up was, my mother loved us kids, and my father loved my mother. Despite…

September 23, 2020 (992 words)
While I believe Catholics who identify as “conservative” in the practice of their faith should untether themselves from the Republican Party, I don’t think the…

September 13, 2020 (1,134 words)
The toughest part of being a name-brand commentator who gets published in the prestige press on a regular, weekly basis is that it can be hard to come up with worthwhile subject matter…

September 12, 2020 (1,048 words)
Did you know abortion has a smell? This provocative question is posed by one Abby Johnson, who spent eight years working for Planned Parenthood in Bryan, Texas. She started in 2001 by escorting women into the…

September 7, 2020 (728 words)
What am i missing? Here we are, smack dab in the middle of a “transformative social justice moment,” with every organization from acting troupes to tech firms loudly proclaiming its support for diversity…

September 6, 2020 (1,359 words)
So the other day I’m watching a short little video from Cross Catholic Outreach that landed in my in-box. It features a man identified in a caption as Cardinal Alvaro Ramazzini of Guatemala, a guy who…

September 5, 2020 (710 words)
There’s been a lot going on lately, so you may have missed the big, August 11 signing of the Philadelphia Statement. Named in recognition of the pivotal role that city played in the founding of the…

September 4, 2020 (754 words)
Here we go again. With another presidential election looming partisans of all stripes are once more treating us to raw, visceral appeals designed to by-pass logic and…

September 3, 2020 (534 words)
There is certainly a lot that both the average white citizen and the white power structure has to answer for when it comes to the thorny state of race relations in this country. The playbook for the change…

August 31, 2020 (643 words)
Another irony is that the financial institutions whose CEOs are now taking a kneel in solidarity with Black Lives Matter, and pledging $500 million over four years to combat these issues in the communities…

August 27, 2020 (542 words)
It seems every organization in America, from acting troupes to tech firms, has felt compelled to issue a statement in recent weeks condemning racism and supporting diversity…

August 23, 2020 (523 words)
Of course not every black man of limited means is violent, or traffics in criminal activity. But there is a generation of law-abiding African-American…

August 18, 2020 (301 words)
This summer’s “day of reckoning” kicked off with the May 25 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, MN, while in police custody. It was the latest such incident in recent years – flagrant examples…

August 15, 2020 (475 words)
A lack of cognitive ability, or possession of a lesser degree of cognitive ability, can be an obstacle to securing viable employment. But this condition – like the blessing of inherent…

August 12, 2020 (321 words)
There is a broad consensus that improving educational opportunities is the answer to the current unemployment problem, among blacks and whites alike. We have to start training young…

August 8, 2020 (390 words)
How to ameliorate the present suffering? Activists will continue to debate the best way of deploying housing subsidies and distributing welfare payments. And whether to continue and even expand existing…

August 3, 2020 (341 words)
The big noisy discussion we are currently having about systemic racism needs to happen. Since it’s a major reason so many blacks are stuck on the outside looking in, even after all these years, and…