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What follows is an unpleasant analysis that has no happy ending. I hate to write so pessimistic a piece, but what can I do? The Alcoholics Anonymous people say you [...]

Every January we go through a ritual commemoration of the life and career of Martin Luther King, Jr., but we rarely listen to what he had to say. We almost [...]

In my younger days I did not hesitate for a moment to describe myself as a liberal, which in those far-off times meant two things: (a) substantively, it meant you [...]

It is difficult to know what to make of the recent upsurge in anti-Semitism. On the national level Pat Buchanan's message contains liberal doses of what might be called genteel [...]

One of the most entertaining characters on the current American Catholic scene is William A. Donohue, who heads the semiparanoid organization named The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Liberties. [...]

Given the attention the press is paying to the issue, I suppose it is inevitable that we'll have a campaign finance reform law before the next round of congressional elections. [...]

Who is in charge here? Me, me, me... If there is any grand belief that you would think safe, it is the ancient belief that everything is connected with everything [...]

The younger of my two sons has just begun law school. What a great country. For years I have been an underpaid columnist, yet within a short time my son [...]

The trouble with Bob Dole is that he's too much of a Marxist. I don't mean that his heart bleeds for the condition of the toiling masses, whether foreign or [...]

Throughout the long course of human history, systems of social inequality have run into trouble because of self-defeating prejudices. Talented members of the lower classes have been refused admission to [...]

In early March, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in the case of Compassion in Dying v. State of Washington, announced the discovery of a new 'fundamental right' in the [...]

In the world of political journalism, one of the strangest items of conventional wisdom floating around for the past few months is that President Bill Clinton is likely to be [...]

The conventional judgment about Pat Buchanan's speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention goes something like this: It was angry, negative, divisive and full of hate-mongering; it gave the GOP [...]

There is much talk nowadays about the need for public schools to teach moral values. In a society which, for thirty years, has been drifting downriver toward the Niagara of [...]

As everyone knows, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's office) has declared that the ban on women's ordination is something the Catholic church teaches infallibly; [...]

I admit to having no very decided convictions on the burning question of whether the Catholic church should create a class of married priests--either by permitting priests to marry or [...]

In the November 18, 1994, issue of Commonweal the editorial was titled 'Liberals & Catholics,' and its opening words asked this pertinent question: 'Can Catholics be liberals?' (The question was [...]

Every semester I teach a course in introductory sociology, and late in the semester we come to the chapter on religion. I tell my students that religion has played such [...]

About ten years ago there was a lot of talk in liberal Catholic circles about the dangers of a 'single issue' mentality on abortion. I used to share this concern. [...]

Politics in America today is more paradoxical than any politics ought to be. On the one hand, the two major parties are as feeble as they have ever been. Party [...]

In the November 18, 1994, issue of Commonweal, the editorial ('Liberals & Catholics') opened with the intriguing and highly pertinent question, 'Can Catholics be liberals?' While granting that liberalism has [...]

One of my favorite passages in literature is the following from Cicero: 'There is in fact a true law - namely, right reason - which is in accordance with nature, [...]

The irony of Bill Clinton's situation is that if he succeeds in doing the job he got elected to do, there is a real likelihood he will be thrown out [...]

The time has come for President Bill Clinton to announce that he will not run for reelection in 1996. Taking his cue from Lyndon Johnson's 1968 announcement, he should tell [...]

The mask is off. The 'prochoice' movement (with the blessing and backing of the Clinton administration) is fighting to have national health care include coverage for abortion. In other words, [...]

In late February of this year Pope John Paul II issued a statement in which he condemned the idea of same-sex marriages. Within a short time American spokespersons for the [...]

Like many others, I have been puzzled by the theory and practice of date rape. When I first heard mention of date rape a few years back, I was a [...]

A few years back, Lynn Cheney, who was then head of the National Endowment for the Humanities (she's also the wife of former Defense Secretary Richard Cheney), wrote an interesting [...]

I am still a number of years away from being an old man, but as I advance in age I give more and more thought to how I can be [...]

One evening early in August of this year, having survived another difficult summer day (it's not the heat, it's the humidity), I turned the TV on at about midnight and [...]

In the course of her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the newest justice of the United States Supreme Court, said that the right to abortion [...]

I hereby announce that Mia Farrow has won the first annual Richard Nixon Moral Philosopher of the Year Award. (It is named for Nixon because of his immortal words, 'But [...]

Among the folks who call themselves multiculturalists, there are three varieties, the playful, the grave, and an intermediate type, the pseudo-grave. The playful multiculturalists (PMs) are those who like to [...]

As far as I can tell from news reports, the national debate about gays in the military has to do mainly with showers. If we can only solve the Great [...]

About a century ago William James delivered a lecture titled, 'On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings.' Nowadays somebody ought to give a lecture called, 'On a Certain Blindness in [...]

Like the history of (non-Hispanic) Catholicism generally in the United States, the history of American Catholic higher education can be divided, very roughly, into two periods: (1) the era of [...]

I don't know if you can bear reading yet one more commentary on the O. J. Simpson verdict's public reception and the Million Man March. I know I can hardly [...]