Free Republic

The importance of Christianity in the formation of Western civilization can hardly be denied. That importance is not simply a matter of the past. In the process of secularization Western culture did emancipate itself from its religious roots, but that emancipation was by no means complete. A complete break from Christianity was not intended in the seventeenth century by those who wanted to put the public culture on an anthropological rather than religious foundation. The issue at that time was not a revolt against the Christian religion, nor even against its influence on the culture. Rather, there was an urgently...

For some time, an argument has been made that the liberal left, in refusing to examine the problems of Islam, has betrayed its Enlightenment roots. That is, while secular, feminist, and protective of free speech in dealing with its Western peers, the liberal left has been accused of abandoning its heritage in its quest for political correctness regarding Muslims. In truth, however, the left has a distinguished background of courting Islam as a weapon against Western capitalism. Its most representative figures from the past did so frankly, as the following rehearsal of their statements demonstrates. Karl Marx supported the Ottoman...

The “Francis effect” appears to be driving Mark Shea over the edge as he doggedly stays the neo-Catholic course of defending the indefensible no matter how indefensible it becomes. Given a Pope who has just cooperated with the Abortion President to sell out the oppressed Catholics of Cuba, with thanks from both Obama and Cuba’s communist dictator, and who approved a synodal document calling for appreciation of the “positive elements” in concubinage and “valuing” the “orientation” and the “gifts and qualities” of “homosexual persons,” Shea is now faced with a growing army of messengers that have to be shot, including...

So here we are waiting for Pope Francis to hand down his encyclical on our moral responsibility to care for the natural environment. Already there is lots of huffing and puffing, and ideological battle lines are being drawn. It seems that virtually nobody in the public media is interested in being taught by the Pope in his magisterial capacity. Instead, all the talk is about how the encyclical can or can’t be used to advance political agendas. Catholics who fear that the Pope is a secret (or perhaps not-so-secret) radical left-winger, are preemptively questioning the Pope’s authority as pope to address...

Bespectacled, balding, and thin, the Australian scholar Peter Singer has the looks of a stereotypical college professor. You would never be able to tell simply by his unassuming persona that his mind holds some of the most controversial ideas in American academia.  Singer has spent a lifetime justifying the unjustifiable. He is the founding father of the animal liberation movement and advocates ending “the present speciesist bias against taking seriously the interests of nonhuman animals.” He is also a defender of killing the aged (if they have dementia), newborns (for almost any reason until they are two years old),...

Yale’s Agony Over Social Justice The unsettling pro-life witness by Matthew Gerken 4 . 17 . 14 Last night Yale’s campus pro-life group—after a year in which they participated in meetings and even helped raise money for the organization—became the first group in living memory to be denied membership in the Social Justice Network of Dwight Hall. Billing itself as an “independent” and “non-sectarian” center for public service and social justice, Dwight Hall at Yale is a group that seeks “to foster civic-minded student leaders and to promote service and activism in New Haven and around the world.” Though legally...

On Wednesday of this week, January 8, 2014, we will mark the fifth anniversary of the death of Fr. Richard John Neuhaus. At the time of his death, many observed that he was irreplaceable. Certainly no one has replaced him. He was the great Christian public intellectual of the second half of the Twentieth Century. In a published tribute to him shortly after his death, I noted that he had begun his career as a liberal and was lionized by the liberal movement. But then something happened: Abortion. It became something it had never been before, namely, a contentious issue...

Generally speaking, the American public is well accustomed to the concept of tissue and organ transplantation, as stories of life-saving heart and kidney transplants, or American Red Cross blood drives collecting blood and platelets for transfusions have become commonplace. Since these procedures typically require a transfer of tissue from one patient to another, physicians must be careful to choose well-matched donors to avoid rejection by the recipient’s immune system. But what about other specialized tissues that can be affected by disease, such as those of the eye? A recent study published in the journal Stem Cells by Winston Kao and...

The Hebrew Bible is not for the squeamish. And its harshest maledictions are called down upon those who practiced the abomination of child-sacrifice. Thus the Psalmist: “They sacrificed their sons and daughters to the demons/they poured out innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan; and the land was polluted with blood./Thus they became unclean by their acts, and played the harlot in their doings./Then the anger of the LORD was kindled against his people, and he abhorred his heritage./… they were rebellious in their purposes, and were brought low because...

I want to start by sharing a story. Once upon a time, a student at one of the world’s oldest universities took a break from her studies to visit the Catholic chapel on campus. As she sat there in silence—praying for a sick relative or trying to settle her nerves before a test—the chapel suddenly filled with noise. A mob of about seventy fellow students charged in chanting anti-Christian slogans. They shouted obscenities against the Church and insults about the Pope. Two females in the mob climbed on top of the altar. Then, according to the student who was trying...

  Home | Previous Page | Source URL: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/jan/07012501.html LifeSiteNews.com Thursday January 25, 2007 First Things' Fr. Neuhaus Criticizes Archbishop Wuerl on Pro-Abortion Politicians Fiasco By John-Henry Westen WASHINGTON, DC, January 25, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The fallout from the decision of new Washington Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl to remain silent in the face of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's flagrant abuse of the Catholic Church continues.  On January 22, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette picked up on the LifeSiteNews.com story about statements by Human Life International Leader Fr. Tom Euteneuer and American Life League President Judie Brown criticizing Archbishop Wuerl for...

"There are two types of evangelicals in America: those who naively embrace whatever trendy items happen to be hot sellers at “Christian” bookstores—WWJD? bracelets, Testamints, prayer of Jabez scented candles—and those who shun such kitsch. I am solidly of the second type. Like a good Pharisee, I thank God every day that I’m not like those people." ~ Joe Carter. read more...

When it comes to politics, abortion remains at the intersection of religion and American public life You head down the road of public life in America, and you run up against religion. From the conversations in the barber shops and the coffee klatches, through the aldermen’s offices and the town halls, the school boards and the zoning commissions, the campaigns and the columnists, and eventually to the state houses and even, perhaps, to that white-domed Capitol building, far off in Washington—somewhere along the line you come to the crossroads where religion cuts across your path. You travel the long road...

It is time to take stock: What has the intelligent design movement achieved? As science, nothing. The goal of science is to increase our understanding of the natural world, and there is not a single phenomenon that we understand better today or are likely to understand better in the future through the efforts of ID theorists. If we are to look for ID achievements, then, it must be in the realm of natural theology. And there, I think, the movement must be judged not only a failure, but a debacle. Very few religious skeptics have been made more open to...

The relations among nature, reason, and revelation are mysterious for both Protestants and Catholics. Consider John Paul II's remark that “the primary and definitive source for studying the intimate nature of the human being is the Most Holy Trinity.” Read carelessly, this might seem to imply the utter futility of philosophizing about the constitution of the human person; nothing would be left but ­theology. Not so, for revelation shines at least five different kinds of light on nature. First is the light of precept: God commands or forbids something that the mind itself can recognize as right or wrong. Certain...

Early in April, with the publication of the May issue of First Things, I stepped out from behind the pseudonym Spengler to begin arguing my more considered ideas under my own name. The experience has been an interesting one: constricting in some ways and yet freeing in others. My Spengler columns actually began as a joke. In 1997 the Asia Times asked me to write a humor column, and the name Spengler seemed a funny touch: the author of The Decline of the West as a comic writer for an Asian daily. The print edition of the newspaper soon went...

On January 8, 2009, Richard John Neuhaus, 72, the intellectual force behind an influential coalition between Catholics and Protestants passed away after a long battle with cancer. A Lutheran pastor who converted to Catholicism in 1990 a priest in 1991, Neuhaus served as the president of The Institute on Religion and Public Life, the conservative think tank that publishes First Things magazine. Neuhaus was active in liberal politics until Roe v. Wade was handed down. His view on the importance of upholding religious orthodoxy is sumarized by “Neuhaus’s Law”, which states that “Where orthodoxy is optional, orthodoxy will sooner or...

Fr. Richard John Neuhaus slipped away today, January 8, shortly before 10 o’clock, at the age of seventy-two. He never recovered from the weakness that sent him to the hospital the day after Christmas, caused by a series of side effects from the cancer he was suffering. He lost consciousness Tuesday evening after a collapse in his heart rate, and the next day, in the company of friends, he died.

Fr. Richard John Neuhaus slipped away today, January 8, shortly before 10 o’clock, at the age of seventy-two. He never recovered from the weakness that sent him to the hospital the day after Christmas, caused by a series of side effects from the cancer he was suffering. He lost consciousness Tuesday evening after a collapse in his heart rate, and the next day, in the company of friends, he died.My tears are not for him—for he knew, all his life, that his Redeemer lives, and he has now been gathered by the Lord in whom he trusted.I weep, rather for...

Richard John Neuhaus, prominent Catholic priest and founder of the religion magazine First Things, died today after a short battle with cancer. He was 72. According to a note sent out by Joseph Bottum, editor of First Things, Father Neuhaus died shortly before 10 a.m. at Manhattan's Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. In a post on the First Things blog after Christmas, Bottum reported that Father Neuhaus was diagnosed with serious cancer over Thanksgiving. At the time he said the long-term prognosis was not good, but that the priest would be undergoing outpatient chemotherapy treatment. The day after Christmas, however, Father Neuhaus...