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The Failure of Speculative Capitalism
BY Angelo Matera
January 11-17, 2009 Issue
Since the global financial crisis began in
September, stock markets around the world have careened hundreds of points up
and down almost every day, sometimes within just a few hours.
Investors
are nervous, uncertain about the future, wondering whether tomorrow will mark
the start of a recovery... READ MORE
Prayer, Part I
BY Mark Shea
January 11-17, 2009 Issue
I once knew four women with a gift for musical
harmony who made a recording. When they played the tape back, they could hear a
beautiful fifth voice joining them when their voices blended just so.
They knew, of course, that there was
nothing supernatural here — the phenomenon is known as... READ MORE
What FOCA Really Does
BY Karen M. Berkon
January 11-17, 2009 Issue
The
Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) is an oppressive law mandating participation and
cooperation from every American citizen in unlimited abortion. Currently, FOCA
is out of committee but still awaits passage through Congress, and with the
sweeping Democratic victories in the House and Senate in this... READ MORE
Alaskan Populism
BY Thomas Mezzetti, M.D. A Model for Our Nation
January 4-10, 2009 Issue
I clearly remember the day I met Sarah Palin. It
was on a cold, dark midwinter’s eve in Eagle River, Alaska, in a friend’s
living room. There were about a dozen people there, including two large
families, one of which was mine. The event was an intimate “meet and greet,”
launching... READ MORE
‘You Pull. I’ll Push.’
BY Tom Hoopes
January 4-10, 2009 Issue
"You pull. I'll push."
That was all he could manage in the
circumstances, perhaps, but even in those few words, you can see a way of life.
It was, in my opinion, the most
inspiring story the Register published in 2008. Thomas Vander Woude, 66, said
those words on his Virginia farm from deep inside... READ MORE
Overcoming Secularism
BY Father Alfonso Aguilar, LC Fourth and Last Installment of the Series
January 4-10, 2009 Issue
In 1991,
James D. Hunter published Culture Wars: The Struggle to
Define America. In his book, Hunter claimed that abortion, women’s
rights, gay rights, court packing and other moral controversies were not
isolated from one another, but were, in fact, part of a fabric of conflict over
the meaning... READ MORE
Treebeard in Rome
BY Mark Shea
December 21, 2008-January 3, 2009 Issue
Back in the
1970s, somebody once asked Zhou Enlai what he thought of the French Revolution.
He replied, “It’s too early to say.”
That’s what you call taking the long
view of things. And given how the French Revolution helped give rise to the
radical nuttery of communism and various other... READ MORE
The Importance of Mary at Christmas
BY Donald DeMarco
December 21, 2008-January 3, 2009 Issue
Christmas
centers on the Nativity, the birth of Christ who came into the world to save us
from our sins. There would be no birth, of course, if there was no mother. As
the poet Coventry Pattmore remarked, Mary is “Our only Saviour from an abstract
Christ.” St. Augustine gives substance to this... READ MORE
The Ox and Donkey’s Christmas
BY Pope Benedict XVI Benedict on Francis on Christmas
December 21, 2008-January 3, 2009 Issue
This
reflection on St. Francis and the origins of the Christmas celebration by
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was published the year he became Pope Benedict XVI,
in the book Immagini di Speranza (Images of Hope):
In his first biography of St.
Francis of Assisi (1181–1226), Tomasso da Celano... READ MORE
Bob Jones University — Racist and Anti-Catholic?
BY Father Dwight Longenecker
December 14-20, 2008 Issue
Last week,
Bob Jones University issued a public apology for its racist past. When I
attended the Protestant fundamentalist college in the mid-1970s, the
institution was still struggling to overcome the blatant racism for which it
had become famous. While I was a student, the first black man was... READ MORE
Orthodoxy Turns 100
BY Gerald J. Russello
December 14-20, 2008 Issue
This year
marks the 100th anniversary of Orthodoxy by G.K.
Chesterton. It remains one of the great books of the English Catholic revival
in the last part of the 19th and early 20th centuries, even though it was
written before Chesterton’s conversion to Catholicism in 1922 and is a
counterpart... READ MORE
Secularization, Good and Bad
BY Father Alfonso Aguilar, LC What’s Right and What’s Wrong With Secularization?
December 14-20, 2008 Issue
Consider
Pope Benedict’s reply to an Italian journalist’s question during his flight to
the United States about the plausibility of the American political model:
“What I find fascinating in the
United States is that they began with a positive concept of secularity,” the
Holy Father said on... READ MORE
Reasons for a Religion-Free Society
BY Father Alfonso Aguilar, LC
December 7-13, 2008 Issue
And how come in a democratic and Christian United
States, Nativity scenes and public prayers are banned? How come seventh grader
Amber Mangum was forbidden to read a Bible in the school cafeteria during her
lunch period at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Middle School in Prince George’s County,
Md.? How... READ MORE
‘When Does Human Life Begin?’
BY Susan E. Wills Even Earlier Than Many Suppose
December 7-13, 2008 Issue
Almost anyone
with a high school education can correctly answer the question “When does human
life begin?” by responding “at conception” or at “fertilization” of a human egg
by a sperm cell. While we may not understand, or only vaguely recall, the
precise process by which an egg and... READ MORE
‘Hamlet,’ Threepio and Us
BY Mark Shea
December 7-13, 2008 Issue
In
“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” two hapless characters who occupy a
few minutes of stage time in “Hamlet” wander around, trying to figure out why
they are there and what the story they are in is all about. They engage in
comic banter and wordplay and, periodically, react to the... READ MORE
Hot Water Over Communion and Obama
BY Father Dwight Longenecker
November 30-December 6, 2008 Issue
Last week at
the parish of St. Mary’s in Greenville, S.C., we found ourselves in hot water.
The Sunday after the election, Father Jay Scott Newman published his usual
parish bulletin.
In that bulletin, he commented on
the election of Barack Obama and told his parishioners: “Voting for... READ MORE
4 Last Things: Heaven
BY Mark Shea
November 30-December 6, 2008 Issue
For most of
us, heaven is, as C.S. Lewis remarked, an acquired appetite. Much of the work
of the Holy Spirit in this world appears to consist of getting us to the point
that we will be happy in the next one. That’s because blessedness is, in the
Christian tradition, not so much a matter of our... READ MORE
The Coming Secularist Storm
BY Father Alfonso Aguilar, LC
November 30-December 6, 2008 Issue
In the last
few years, the birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ has been celebrated as “winter
holidays” with “holiday trees” and “season’s greetings.” December has become
the month of the “Christmas wars”: In some schools and public squares, Nativity
scenes and Christmas carols are... READ MORE
Am I Missing Something?
BY FATHER RAYMOND J. DE SOUZA
November 23-29, 2008 Issue
Perhaps I
have gone mad. It’s a possibility that must be considered. If everyone is
acting in a way that I cannot fathom, perhaps they are not crazy, but rather I
am. Such is the case in regard to President-elect Barack Obama.
I have been writing on civil rights
issues since I was in high... READ MORE
4 Last Things: Hell
BY Mark Shea
November 23-29, 2008 Issue
Hell is
clearly the biggest loser in the Four Last Things Popularity Poll. If there
were anything in the Tradition we could get rid of, it would obviously be the
thought of everlasting damnation.
The ancient Catholic truth about
hell should terrify us. But it should terrify us into
our wits, not... READ MORE
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