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…

August 1, 2020 (339 words)
Little kids like to learn new things. And adults in their general vicinity usually take pleasure in helping them make a new discovery. Then time passes, the kids are no longer little, and this happy dynamic…

July 24, 2020 (4,517 words)
The national examination of conscience we are engaged in this summer on the thorny subject of race relations has me thinking in a slightly different direction than the wise commentators who have weighed in…

July 9, 2020 (1,984 words)
Oh, my. State populations that thought themselves immune to the COVID-19 outbreak in March are now experiencing a surge of infections. While other states, on strict lockdown for months, are registering an…

June 26, 2020 (1,385 words)
Talk about beating around the bush… It seems the only people who speak or write seriously about the social teaching of the Catholic Church do so in such an ephemeral and theoretical manner it’s hard for the…

June 19, 2020 (1,374 words)
A few weeks ago Marc Thiessen devoted one of his Washington Post op-eds to the success of the recent SpaceX launch on May 30. It marked the first time in history NASA astronauts launched…

June 12, 2020 (641 words)
I had a couple of aunts on my mother’s side of the family that both lived well into their nineties. They never really got sick, and they never put on weight. Their life-long motto was “moderation in all things.” I didn’t pay much…

June 9, 2020 (1,693 words)
All contemporary political and social commentary misses the mark. It fails to get at the heart of the problem it sets out to address. How can that be? The fly in the ointment, it seems to me, is how we have…

June 2, 2020 (322 words)
Just so we’re clear, the Catholic Church is as corrupt as any institution around. There is no denying it. When your organizational chart is filled with flawed human beings, you can hope for the best but should prepare…

June 1, 2020 (371 words)
My slow-but-steady march through Rich People Things: Real Life Secrets of the Predator Class, a book of social criticism originally published by Chris Lehmann in 2010, and followed the next year with an…

May 29, 2020 (116 words)
You may have heard of Angry Birds, a popular entertainment which started in 2009 as a casual puzzle video game, inspired by a sketch of stylized wingless…

May 25, 2020 (3,429 words)
As if by design, after not watching the streaming service Netflix for a while I flipped it on again to find the movie Trumbo at the top of my queue. Turns out this 2015…

May 20, 2020 (996 words)
It turns out we had a copy of this November 2016 theatrical release kicking around the house, so i didn’t need to rent it on Amazon Prime Video in order to watch it again…

May 18, 2020 (1,433 words)
After two months of trying to flatten the curve, medical personnel are probably pretty stressed out. Those not employed in an “essential” industry, or not able to work from home, are no doubt feeling…

April 20, 2020 (1,384 words)
Here we are, just a few weeks into the coronavirus stay-at-home order, and already I’ve started the once every ten years, clear-out-the-attic, no holds barred, major life…

April 15, 2020 (3,352 words)
My ire has often been directed at prominent conservative Catholics, many of whom are highly-compensated commentators working for lavishly funded private foundations, who I believe avoid or willfully misinterpret…

April 12, 2020 (3,979 words)
Well, this has certainly been a Holy Week like no other. As a kid the Easter Triduum of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Vigil was not something our family participated in. Despite my attending…

April 10, 2020 (851 words)
When the NBA suspended the remainder of its season in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, professional basketball player Kevin Love of the Cleveland Cavaliers announced on March 12 he was donating $100,000 to…

April 5, 2020 (909 words)
Last month’s directive to stay home and shelter in place to help combat the spread of the coronavirus has finally forced me to check out the world of YouTube videos…

April 3, 2020 (3,956 words)
Today’s story concerns the new found fame being enjoyed by one E. Michael Jones, PhD. He was born in Philadelphia in 1948, and has been toiling in relative obscurity as an author and journalist since starting his first magazine on…

March 28, 2020 (1,753 words)
Many fine people of my acquaintance, and many worthwhile social commentators, continue to strut and fret over what they see as a dire trend in society today: a rising segment…

March 23, 2020 (1,240 words)
Early in what proved to be an anti-climactic debate between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders on Sunday, March 8, Mr. Sanders claimed the COVID-19 outbreak exposes flaws in our healthcare…

March 17, 2020 (362 words)
What a young Maureen O’Hara conveys with her eyes and facial expressions as Mary Kate Danaher in…

March 16, 2020 (1,228 words)
Last night’s big one-on-one debate between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders turned out to be a big disappointment. At least the first half-hour or so was, after which I turned…

March 6, 2020 (1,085 words)
Decorum prevents me from describing the substance restraining our gait with the colorful term of my…

February 28, 2020 (2,388 words)
There are those who say my commentary suffers from being simple-minded. It’s true, these days I do favor clean lines and straightforward explanations. But in chasing a concise thought one should avoid…

February 21, 2020 (16 words)
Every day is an opportunity to find new ways of expressing our current level of understanding.

February 18, 2020 (1,838 words)
We are all entitled to our opinions, and we tend to take great pride in them. Unfortunately the vested interest we show in our present level of understanding is what stands in the way of improving…