by Joseph De Feo (Catalyst 3/2003) Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote, “A phrase begins life as a literary expression; its felicity leads to its lazy repetition; and repetition soon establishes it as a legal formula, undiscriminatingly used to express different and sometimes contradictory ideas.” The foregoing lines represent an apt condensation of Professor Daniel L. Dreisbach’s thesis [...]
by Joseph De Feo (Catalyst 3/2003) Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote, “A phrase begins life as a literary expression; its felicity leads to its lazy repetition; and repetition soon establishes it as a legal formula, undiscriminatingly used to express different and sometimes contradictory ideas.” The foregoing lines represent an apt condensation of Professor Daniel L. Dreisbach’s thesis [...]
by Ronald Rychlak (Catalyst 3/2005) John Cornwell's new book, Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII, turns out to be a deeply flawed attack on Pope John Paul II. That's right, the final chapter is actually an attack on the current plaintiff. Cornwell is disturbed by John Paul's "conservative" positions on celibate clergy, women priests, artificial [...]
by Bronwen McShea (review of Daniel Goldhagen's A Moral Reckoning, Catalyst 1/2003) Daniel J. Goldhagen’s latest book, A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair, purports to be a much-needed “moral philosophical” contribution to a troubled field of scholarship. Standing on the shoulders of other critics of [...]
by Bronwen McShea (Catalyst 1/2003) Daniel J. Goldhagen’s latest book, A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair, purports to be a much-needed “moral philosophical” contribution to a troubled field of scholarship. Standing on the shoulders of other critics of Pope Pius XII’s wartime Church—James Carroll, [...]
by David L. Gregory (Catalyst 12/2005) The Right to be Wrong: Ending the Culture War Over Religion in America is the latest, and perhaps the most engaging and lucid, entry in the burgeoning "culture war" literature. But, unlike all of the others, this book proposes an interesting way to end hostilities. The author of the book, [...]
by Joseph De Feo (Catalyst 12/2002) In defending school choice or God in the Pledge of Allegiance, it is too easy to find oneself on the wrong side of the “wall of separation” between church and state. But as Professor Philip Hamburger reveals in his timely and well-researched tome, Separation of Church and State, few know [...]
by Bronwen McShea (Catalyst 10/2002) Garry Wills is devoted to the so-called “spirit of Vatican II,” which he claims was hijacked by a backward-looking papacy. He wrote Why I Am A Catholic (Houghton Mifflin, 2002) to flesh out his differences with Rome, and to offer hope to “conscientious” Catholics that “reformation” is in the wings, that [...]
By William A. Donohue “I spent twenty years looking for a government that I could overthrow without being thrown in jail. I finally found one in the Catholic church.” That is how Frances Kissling, the president of Catholics for a Free Choice (CFFC), explained her mission to a reporter from the magazine, Mother Jones. As the [...]
by Joseph A. Varacalli (Catalyst 9/2002) Today, institutions of higher education are major generators of socially dominant ideas, images, and fashions. As sociologists might say, they are major "agents of socialization." Empirically speaking, public higher education is almost exclusively—at least in the humanities and social sciences—an agent for the promotion of politically left-wing secular thought. It [...]
