Rebecca Teti at FaithandFamilyLIVE.com (which is our sister site, by the way) shares her high emotion after Nov. 4 as a white woman who grew up in a black neighborhood in D.C. Her heart is elated and pierced by the Obama win, both at once.

“Is it a great thing, a cathartic thing, a potentially healing thing for the country and for all of our people that we just elected our first African-American President?” she writes. “It is.”

“People in downtown D.C. last night were singing the Star Spangled Banner spontaneously, in an overflow of affection for this nation and its many blessings, and for the promise fulfilled. I heard a black Iraq war vet interviewed saying, ‘Today, I really believe all...READ MORE

In the rush of election coverage, other important Register coverage hasn’t gotten the play it should have.

The Cardinal Newman Society’s Center for Higher Education produced a study with QEV Analytics that surveyed current students and recent alums of Catholic higher education. This news broke on the Register’s website ... on Tuesday, Nov. 4.

Read the story (linked from the home page or by clicking here) but the findings include:
60% say abortion should be legal.
60% say premarital sex is not a sin.
57% say same-sex “marriage” should be legal.
39% saw officials or staff encouraging contraceptive use.
31% saw officials or staff encouraging acceptance of homosexual activity.

How could...READ MORE

Here’s Gandalf with an alternate take on the election results, as regards the right-to-life battle.

Now, hear me out. Obama’s our leader. He’s not Sauron. He’s not even the steward Denethor, exactly. But what Pope John Paul II called the culture of death is on the rise. And we who promote the culture of life may look out on the bleak landscape and say “All is lost.”

Assisted suicide won in Washington and the right to life lost in South Dakota, California and Michigan. Even the marble towers of Minas Tirith, D.C., are in the grip of the culture of death.

But Christ has a way of making these “all is lost” scenarios turn around ... if his people stand their ground. Pray for Frodo and Sam,...READ MORE

P.S. (added at a reader’s request on Dec. 1): Please do explore the rest of this site, especially the Hot Topics links at the bottom of the home page. We are 100% pro-life and pro-marriage, and we spent the months before the election educating readers about Obama’s pro-abortion positions. My only point in this post, nearly a month ago, was that many pro-life voters voted for Obama and are excited by him. Those are our voters, and we should win them back. We can’t win them back if we are polarized by rage. Our job now is to watch the Obama administration and relentlessly oppose what we must, and in the meanwhile shore up the pro-life and pro-family majorities in America.

Roger Ebert has been providing thoughtful “looking back” reviews at the Chicago Sun Times. His latest focuses on 1988’s The Last Temptation of Christ” and acknowledges a debt to Register film critic Steven D. Greydanus.

Ebert’s 20-year-old review was too concerned with theology, writes Ebert: “It must have driven Martin Scorsese crazy to read reviews of ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’ in which critics appointed themselves arbiters of the manhood or godliness of Jesus Christ, and scarcely mentioned the direction, the writing, the acting, the images or Peter Gabriel’s harsh, mournful music.”

“Or perhaps,” he reconsiders, “Scorsese understood.” A theological point,...READ MORE

Coming in December to a theater not necessarily near you (it has a limited release) is Doubt, a movie version of the John Patrick Shanley play. The movie stars Meryl Streep as an angry nun and Phillip Seymour Hoffman as a sunny (and possibly abusive) priest. It’s from Miramax, and that can’t be good for the Church.

But the excellent Ross Douthat saw the play, and had this to say: “Doubt won the Pulitzer Prize for drama this year, and after seeing it this weekend (the last weekend with the original actress, Cherry Jones, in the lead role, unfortunately) I think it richly deserved the win.”

“The play deals with the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, and what’s...READ MORE

Russell Reno knows how bad the news is. The financial system is reeling, and the United States is stumbling overseas.

“The strange thing, however, is that when I turn away from daily news and take the dog for a walk, I end up smiling,” writes First Things’ features editor. “Underneath all my anxious hand wringing, I’m an optimist about the future of America.”

Don’t worry … be happy? Why?

“No doubt my optimism arises, at least in part, from an only semi-rational patriotism,” writes Reno, who is also a Creighton University Theology professor. “ It’s natural to see strength in the country one loves. But what I see is, I think, real. America has a collective identity,...READ MORE

“The Rosary is excruciating. There I said it.” Thus begins Brian Pessaro’s “My Struggle With the Rosary” at Godspy.

“I wouldn’t be where I am today had it not been for Mary’s intercession,” he writes. “Since the age of 11, I was addicted to pornography. It began simple enough with sneaking peaks at my best friend’s father’s Playboys in the basement of his house. But by the time I was 25, I was so hooked on Internet porn that I would itch for my wife to leave the apartment so I could secretly jump online. Several times over the years I tried to quit. Each time, not only did I fail, but the addiction got worse to the point where I gave up resisting.”

Then, while...READ MORE