Dangling Conversations
Posing the moral questions facing the next American president.
Posted: Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Between "gotcha" questions and the ubiquitous gaffe-watch, there hasn't been much serious moral debate in the endgame of this presidential campaign. In the hope that it's not too late to raise the level of a public discussion too often conducted in sound bites, here are some urgent moral questions to be pressed on those who would lead us.  [Full Story]

CAMPAIGN 2008: Marriage, Civility, Persecution

Posted: Wednesday, October 1, 2008
The "gay liberation" movement's extraordinary success in getting many Americans to think of homosexuality as akin to race for purposes of civil rights law is one of the most impressive, if wrong-headed, political accomplishments of the past generation. The movement was, and is, determined to use coercive state power to enforce its expansive ideas of equality, indeed its convictions about the plasticity of human nature and institutions, on the entire society.  [Full Story]

CAMPAIGN 2008: America and the World

Posted: Thursday, September 25, 2008
According to the mid-summer polls, Americans are primarily concerned about the U.S. economy as the country enters the last lap of the 2008 election cycle. No visitor to the gas pumps, and no investor, can doubt why. Yet we also live in a globalized world in which the tectonic plates that shape international politics are shifting, often dangerously.  [Full Story]

CAMPAIGN 2008: The Life Issues

Posted: Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Thirty-five years after Roe v. Wade struck down the abortion law of all 50 states, the life issues remain the most sharply contested in American public life. They are also signature issues of Catholic concern, not for any "sectarian" reason but because the life issues engage first principles of justice, principles that form the moral foundations of the free and virtuous society.  [Full Story]

TRANSCRIPT: A Blessing to One Another
John Paul II and the Jewish People
Posted: Monday, September 15, 2008
On March 26, 2000, an eighty year old Polish priest, dressed in the traditional white cassock of the Bishop of Rome and leaning heavily on a cane, walking eighty-six slow and difficult steps to the Western Wall of Herod's Temple. There, after a moment of silent reflection, he did something ghat millions of believers in the God of Abraham had done before him: he left a prayer.  [Full Story]

How "alt." Lost the Kingdom -- and Why It Matters

Posted: Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Back in the day, before the parish repertoire was expanded to accommodate the hymn sandwich (the "opening hymn" and "closing hymn"), the "offertory hymn," and the almost-never-sung-by-parishioners "communion hymn," Catholics in the U.S. didn't know a lot of hymns. Everyone knew "Holy God, We Praise Thy Name:" disfigured by those baroque trills that aren't in the score, but the American Catholic fight song, nonetheless.   [Full Story]

CAMPAIGN 2008: Would President Obama Be Good For Black America?

Posted: Thursday, August 28, 2008
When I was a teenager, my formative, if largely vicarious, political experience was the civil rights movement. It was a time of great issues bravely contested, a moment replete with heroes and villains. Anyone who sang "We Shall Overcome" in those electric years will welcome a new fact of our public life: America -- a country whose original sin was slavery --  has become a place in which an African-American can be a major party's candidate for president.   [Full Story]

CAMPAIGN 2008: Jaw, Jaw, War, War

Posted: Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Winston Churchill, master of eloquent bellicosity, is also remembered for saying that "'Jaw, jaw' is better than 'war, war.'" As a general matter, who could disagree? If conflicts can be settled by the arts of politics and diplomacy, they should be. But are there situations when "jaw, jaw" makes things more dangerous than the plausible threat of "war, war"?  [Full Story]

The Democrats and the Abortion Wars
Are Obama and Pelosi dodging the life-and-death question?
Posted: Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Throughout this lengthy campaign, the Democratic Party has worked hard to present itself as the party of intellect, competence and moral seriousness. Yet it's off to a very rocky start in addressing the substance of the abortion issue--which remains, 35 years after Roe v. Wade, one of the most volatile in our public life.  [Full Story]

Serious Catholicism For a Serious Election

Posted: Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Archbishop Chaput is a pastor, first and foremost; his new book, Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living Our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life, is a pastor's book. It's informed by scholarship, and by the archbishop's extensive experience in wrestling with issues at the intersection of morality and public policy. At the same time it's a book for ordinary Catholics who want to be faithful to the Church and faithful to the first principles of justice in their civic lives.  [Full Story]