2016

Conscience in Politics

Papers presented at a 1992 conference sponsored by the Wethersfield Institute were published as a book: When Conscience and Politics Meet: A Catholic View. It is a scant 103 pages. Its brevity makes it all the friendlier to busy people concerned over the issue of conscience-in-politics but with little time to get beyond the daily barrage of  events. We look at the news networks, read the pundits, listen to the talk, and wonder how we arrived at where we find ourselves now. Continue Reading
The Michael Voris Affair

The Catholic blogosphere has been in a whirl since Michael Voris outed himself on Church Militant a few days back. Voris claimed to have gotten wind of a noxious plot by the New York Archdiocese to leak stories of his sinful homosexual past in a move to discredit him:
We have on very good authority from various sources that the New York archdiocese is collecting and preparing to quietly filter out details of my past life with the aim of publicly discrediting me, this apostolate and the work here.
Continue Reading
Pogo, Redux

On the morning after the New York primary all that comes to mind is the distance between ourselves and Franklin’s promise of a Republic—if we could keep it. I woke up this morning to the stench of decline and fall. It is in the air, foul and nation-smothering. It is the stink of a banana republic, one that mimics that founding promise while it surrenders the ground of it to corrosive candidates for high office.   The phrase Walt Kelly put into the mouth of Pogo inverted the words of the great naval commander Oliver Hazard Perry: “We have met the enemy and they are ours.” Continue Reading
Trump: Beau Ideal of Consumer Culture

Earlier in the primary circus, Roger Kimball observed that Donald Trump’s vulgarity was the only authentic thing about him. It was a good line. And the perfect prologue to last week’s gleeful report that the Donald’s stockpile of historic paintings is as genuine as the color of his hair: “Trump’s Vast Art Collection Isn’t What It Seems.” Richard Johnson, writing in Page Six, snickers:
The French Impressionist paintings that decorate his homes are likely—don’t call them fakes—reproductions.
So! His paintings are worth no more than their glittery gilt frames! Continue Reading
Friday Picture Show

Hi! I’m Maureen. And I’m a registered Democrat.
It is true. I really am. What else could I have been when I first registered to vote? At eighteen, I was still in the same working class Irish, Italian, and Jewish neighborhood I had been born into. None of us had ever seen a Republican. What did one look like? How did they dress? Did they have ducks on their ties? My neighbors played mah jongg, not golf. I played stoop ball and I-Declare-War-On. Continue Reading