In a recent essay titled Our Urgent Need to Examine Ideas I noted that in this age of constant, rapid, and unsolicited information, many ideas slip into our minds unexamined. Yet we tend to defend those uninvited ideas as conscientiously as we do...
Several decades ago the word “guilt” fell out of use, as did its companions “remorse” and “repentance.” All three words, and others like them, were no longer considered meaningful. The change was not sudden but gradual, the result of a different...
When I was in high school, every sophomore had to read Caesar’s Gallic Wars. The first line has stayed with me ever since. Omnes Gallia tres partes, which translates to All Gaul is divided into three parts, namely Gallia Celtica, Belgica and...
Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen (1895-1971) is best remembered for his incisive and witty television presentations, but he was also a brilliant scholar whose 1925 doctoral dissertation—God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy—was called by Commonweal...
If members of my generation were asked the following questions when they were in their 20s, here is how I believe most of them would have answered: Do you believe in God...
As I explained in my last essay, several generations of individuals have grown up believing that they are never responsible for what they say and do. According to this belief, their parents mistreated them, their teachers failed them, their fellow...
An anonymous commentary made the rounds of the Internet before it vanished. It pointed out a number of absurdities in America today, the following ones among them: “Russians influencing our elections is bad, but illegal Mexicans voting in...
G. K. Chesterton once remarked that many commentators in his day suffered from “the art of missing the point.” That affliction not only survives today—it is epidemic among social and political commentators. And it is often accompanied by bigotry...
