December 1, 2018 (55 words)
Toward the end of his life my father developed a pithy, two-word answer to the question that continues to vex us. How did the culture go…

November 26, 2018 (48 words)
Where once I dreamt of women, now I dream of words. Without wanting to offend half the population, my current pre-occupation is proving to be a much more productive…

November 23, 2018 (47 words)
We are all a tribute to our parents. Who in turn are, of course, a tribute to their parents. Who then are a tribute to – oh, well, you get the picture…

November 21, 2018 (1,912 words)
Here in the well-off suburbs where I reside, the worshippers I tend to rub elbows with on the weekend exude a quiet pride in their circumstances. They are proud of where they…

November 17, 2018 (355 words)
In the beginning, the overbearing and hyper-critical way you relate to your small staff is justified by the fear of failure. The sense of dread that comes from …

November 10, 2018 (200 words)
The hardcore nuclear family, raising-of-children thing is only a temporary gig. Depending on how many kids you have, and how you decide to space them, you’re looking at a twenty…

November 6, 2018 (34 words)
The only group of politicians more frustrating than the Republicans are those Democrats. How did it ever come…

November 1, 2018 (1,699 words)
Christendom College is a small Catholic institution of higher learning located on the outskirts of a sleepy little Shenandoah Valley town by the name of Front Royal, Virginia. It prides…

October 29, 2018 (92 words)
The caravan of men, women, and children currently walking from Guatemala to Texas hoping to find a better life at the end of their long march, prompts the following…

October 22, 2018 (779 words)
This is the question now being asked of Catholics, as the accusations and indictments in the ongoing clerical sex abuse scandal seem to pile up, one after the…

October 15, 2018 (1,157 words)
Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Philadelphia has recently reasserted his long-standing opposition to any revision of the statute of limitations in Pennsylvania on the reporting of sexual abuse of minors…

October 14, 2018 (1,120 words)
There are probably not too many practicing Catholics walking around today who both revere the practical wisdom contained in the Magisterium, and value the practical advice on economic policy offered by Senator Bernie Sanders…

October 11, 2018 (201 words)
I seem to recall being on the receiving end of some less-than-friendly banter during my late teens and early twenties, over what was interpreted at the time to be a certain reticence on my part toward the opposite…

October 10, 2018 (391 words)
We know that a successful democracy requires an informed citizenry, and in order to be informed that citizenry relies on a free press. But it turns out these two well-known and widely acknowledged premises…

October 9, 2018 (227 words)
There is a breed of libertarian economist who, along with a corresponding breed of progressive social scientist, never tires of trumpeting the dramatic increase in material well-being our society has experienced…

October 5, 2018 (1,829 words)
Today is the one-year anniversary of the Harvey Weinstein revelations, which kicked off and gave voice to the #MeToo movement. As this past year has unfolded, I have found myself waiting for the other shoe to drop.

September 30, 2018 (1,728 words)
They say compromise, the settling of disputes by each side making concessions, is a lost art. Maybe that’s because we have become a schizophrenic people, addicted to an adversarial, split-screen…

September 6, 2018 (3,484 words)
No sooner had we begun to digest the alarming implications of the wide-ranging Pennsylvania attorney general’s report, first released on August 12, than the sordid McCarrick affair …

September 3, 2018 (996 words)
Daniel Pipes reminds us that Venezuela’s economy, now an unmitigated disaster, was once a thriving example of economic efficiency, due in large measure to the discovery of vast oil reserves…

September 1, 2018 (1,198 words)
From my perch outside the enchanted circle, it seems nabbing a spot as a regular commentator in the prestige print media requires a serendipitous combination of talent and connections. When the…

August 29, 2018 (187 words)
My mother had two enduring passions to the very end of her life: Olives, and the music of Ella Fitzgerald. So every birthday my father came through like clock-work with a can of black olives, a can of green…

August 27, 2018 (1,951 words)
The Catholic Church’s dark night of the soul continues. Earlier this month Pennsylvania’s attorney general issued a scathing report on a handful of dioceses across the state, going back some 70 years, which…

August 23, 2018 (290 words)
Many of us admire Ken Langone for his shrewd business acumen and his generous philanthropic efforts. And we agree that his recent $100 million contribution…

August 12, 2018 (2,776 words)
We all start out thinking we’ll live to a ripe old age, and die peacefully in our sleep. But eventually we come to realize that aging gracefully and dying gently is a rare circumstance, experienced only by the…

July 30, 2018 (486 words)
The story is told of Jesus feeding a hungry multitude from what at first appeared to be a meager pantry. In a surprise turn of events, not only was everyone in attendance able to eat their fill that day, free of charge…

July 26, 2018 (637 words)
As a charter remember of the “never been sick a day in his life” club, the last few years have been a humbling experience for me. The decline started innocently enough, as it usually does, with fading eyesight…

July 16, 2018 (1,303 words)
The inability of conservatives to properly delineate the historical fault lines of our cultural problems is why we find ourselves in such disarray. They continue to misdiagnose its origins, and mash together categories…

July 13, 2018 (1,658 words)
Given the contentious nature of our adversarial political system, the custom has always been for the opposition party, the one not currently in power, to go out of its way to find fault with the ruling…

July 10, 2018 (1,037 words)
For the last forty-five years religious conservatives distraught over the legalization of abortion have employed a three-step approach to national politics. Elect a pro-life Republican as…

July 6, 2018 (778 words)
Ever since Budd Schulberg’s lacerating 1958 screenplay for A Face In The Crowd, and the 1968 Joe McGinniss bestseller, The Selling Of The President, and the 1972 vehicle for Robert Redford…

July 2, 2018 (962 words)
Summertime and the living is easy, according to the lyricist Ira Gershwin. This is especially true for those lucky, early-retirement people, for whom life has unfolded in a most agreeable fashion…

June 16, 2018 (1,787 words)
I was reminded of this burning question by our youngest son, who had a lot of trouble with his just-completed junior year of high school biology. The job of finding a tutor to help with his summer-school…

June 13, 2018 (437 words)
On the day of the latest British royal wedding, the one between Prince Harry and the American actress Meghan Markle…

June 10, 2018 (2,244 words)
This pithy formula is favored by economists of a libertarian bent, erstwhile academics specializing in theoretical constructions based on elaborate data. Data, as we know, has firmly established itself…

June 8, 2018 (333 words)
The Wanderer, a venerable Catholic newsweekly that’s been going to press since October 1867, has now had two of its regular contributors review the new Ross Douthat book on this troubling papacy…

May 28, 2018 (108 words)
One minute, your house is full of cute little kids whose mission in life is to bounce around and spread joy. The next minute these same sweet children have become surly young…

May 26, 2018 (1,528 words)
Yesterday voters in Ireland overwhelming decided to roll back the Eighth Amendment to their constitution, originally passed in 1983, and remove the restriction it had placed on abortion. In dramatic…

May 23, 2018 | (2,304 words)
I am now well into my seventh decade of continuous residency on the western fringe of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, though I did enjoy a twenty year sabbatical from belief and practice in the middle trimester, to pursue some bad…

May 16, 2018 | (1,124 words)
I’ve noticed that people my age are starting to check out and die, which is a most disconcerting development. My long-ago best friend and one-time business partner, Jim Gillis, passed away recently…

May 9, 2018 | (299 words)
Life is more like a book, than a movie. Consider the way our faith tells us that sexual activity outside of marriage is contrary to the natural law that is written on our…