Topics

The Native American Martyrs of Syracuse

A WITNESS THAT SHOULD NOT BE LOST

Ann O’Connor† & Richard Upsher Smith Jr.

Jesuit missionaries left reports on the martyrdoms of many Native American converts to Catholicism. Not one has been canonized.

From Shiprock to the Rock

SLOW ROAD TO ROME

Charlotte Schaengold

A move to New Mexico would eventually lead us into the Catholic Church, thanks to very devout Christian Navajos and to the relentless leading of the Holy Spirit.

An Apologia for Fr. Pierre-Jean De Smet

THE BLACK-ROBED DEFENDER OF NATIVE AMERICANS

Clement Anthony Mulloy

Though the Indians held the Black Robes in high regard, one -- above all others -- gained the respect and trust of the Native tribes.

Overcoming Our Culture of Indifference

REVERT'S ROSTRUM

Casey Chalk

We are called to care for the sojourner and to be sympathetic and responsive to the needs of those fleeing poverty, political oppression, or religious persecution.

Should Christians Pay Reparations for Racial Injustices?

REVERT'S ROSTRUM

Casey Chalk

The Church can engage in the work of racial reparations, but only while placing the project within a broader moral framework.

Why the Modern Democratic State Needs Abortable Children

THE FETUS AS HOMO SACER — PART II

Jason M. Morgan

Liberalism is, in its essence, universal sovereignty premised on the expendability of life inside the individual’s sovereign domain.

Lives That Don’t Matter

GUEST COLUMN

Ewa Thompson

A popular children’s book remains on the 'Teachers’ Top 100 Books' list although its ostensible aim appears to be to denigrate Polish Americans.

Ernest Gaines & the Triumph of the Human Spirit

GUEST COLUMN

Terry Scambray

Artists are prophetic because they see and experience what those at a distance take longer to see.

The Catholic Church in the Crosshairs

REVERT'S ROSTRUM

Casey Chalk

It is a cruel irony that, in less than a century, Catholics have gone from being victimized as unwelcome immigrants to being widely perceived as racist victimizers.

Churchmen in Antebellum Dixie

Jerry D. Salyer

Scrutinizing bishops for not siding with abolitionists involves a failure to realize that abolitionism was associated with violence and lawlessness.

Fragmented Lives of Incomplete Reckoning

VITAL WORKS RECONSIDERED, #49

Edmund B. Miller

Man’s efforts are lost if they are not embedded in and do not proceed from the eternal perspective, without which they remain fragmented impulses.

The Final Journey of the Jesuit Martyrs of North America & the Birthplace of St. Catherine Tekakwitha

PRELUDES & POINTS — PART II

Richard Upsher Smith Jr.

The missionaries' love enabled them to long for martyrdom for the salvation of souls.

On the Trail of the Jesuit Martyrs of North America & St. Catherine Tekakwitha

PRELUDES & POINTS — PART I

Richard Upsher Smith Jr.

Historians have to “get inside” their subjects if they are to understand and represent them well. 2,845 miles' worth of investigations are reported here.

I Am Not White

WHAT CONSTITUTES CULTURE?

Thomas Storck

Public discourse remains limited to material concerns, but what really differentiates human beings is culture, which is founded on religion.

The Weight of Anchises

WHAT DOES PIETAS REQUIRE?

Jake Neu

A descendant of the South asks: How do we properly reckon with our own families’ participation in historical racial injustice?

Who Really Won the Civil War?

A HOUSE DEEPLY DIVIDED

Stanley T. Grip Jr.

The Civil War remains a benchmark of contemporary issues and controversies; it raises questions of right and wrong, good and evil.

Twilight of the Idols

Confederate monuments are coming down, as they ought. But once begun, where will it end? Where race in America is concerned, reason and real history have been superseded by sentimentalism and reaction — on all sides.

The Most Segregated Hour

DOES ECCLESIAL CONSUMERISM LEAD TO RACIAL DIVISION ?

Bryan Cross

Could the continued separation of Christians into like-minded, like-colored pockets, or "bubbles," be a factor in racial inequality, racial tension, and overall injustice?

Untrammeled & Heartless Profiteering

Anne Barbeau Gardiner

'The Other Slavery' is painful reading. We learn that settlers not only took Native American lands virtually without compensation but often their labor and lives as well.

Charles Curran Makes a Confession

Fr. Charles Curran says he now recognizes "the omnipresent reality of white privilege and how it has affected our understanding of and approach to theology."

The Unbearable Whiteness of Being

Pushers of political correctness now desire, if not demand, something called "deep diversity" — that is, eliminating all signs of "whiteness" from campuses across the country.

The Civil War as a Proving Ground for the Church

Christopher Gawley

One might say that the heights the U.S. Church would reach in the first half of the 20th century would not have been possible but for the Civil War.

Taking Sides with the South

Christopher Gawley

Even though I agree with Lincoln on the question of free soil (at least as of 1860), I cannot help but fault him and the North for savaging the South in a total war.

Eugenics in the USA: Black Life, White Justice

Justice Ginsburg, a powerful abortion advocate, has been working for 20 years to reduce those populations she doesn't "want to have too many of."

The Orientalism of Barack Obama

GUEST COLUMN

Terry Scambray

Modern-day American "anti-colonialism" is composed mostly of neo-Marxism mixed with a smidgen of post-Victorian disillusionment.

The Polish Catholic Experience

SHUNTED & DESPISED, BUT FAITHFUL

Raymond T. Gawronski

Other Slavic groups had their own churches with their own hierarchies; the Poles were lumped together with all other Catholics but had a different faith life.

The Darwinian Basis for Eugenics

Anne Barbeau Gardiner

Scientific materialism has become the foundation for much of American politics and culture; hence the efforts to turn February 12 into "Darwin Day" in schools.

The Person & the Court

DRED SCOT & ROE V. WADE

Timothy P. Collins

Precedent is a major component, but the law can become confused and contradictory when an underlying moral question is ignored.

The Liberal as Graceless Pharisee

Anne Barbeau Gardiner

Flannery O'Connor admired Henry James, Hawthorne, and Poe for understanding evil better than most Americans.

The Content of Their Character — Forty Years Later

GUEST COLUMN

David C. Stolinsky

We have dropped the word "character" from our thinking. We can no longer fully grasp what Dr. King meant, so it's no wonder we haven't taken his advice.

Affirmative Action by Another Name

Patrick Rooney

A great danger of "diversity" is its apparent sweetness, and it appeals to those who wish to avoid the hard work of judging moral and political perplexities.

Pride Precedes a Great Fall

The Washington Redskins must now also contend with PC Indian activists.

A Liberal Litmus Test

CAN YOU JOIN THE ELITE?

Wayne Lela

You know you are a liberal if: (1) You say we should not be judgmental, but you judge and condemn sexists, racists, “homophobes,” etc. (2)...

Immigrants: America's Hope? (Part II)

The benefits of living in a multi-generational "sandwich home" are manifold.

Immigrants: America's Hope?

Now the white man is — or is becoming — the burden.

The "Catholic" Politician of 2001 & The Southern "Gentleman" of 1860

IS THERE ANY DIFFERENCE?

John L. Botti

The Southern "Gentleman" of 1860: "I am not in favor of slavery; indeed, personally I am opposed to it. But I do not feel it is my place to impose my convictions upon anyone else!"

The Intense Light of the Desert & The Stark Truth About Life

JUDEA IS MORE LIKE NEW MEXICO THAN MARYLAND

Leon J. Podles

Desert dwellers see things in their essentials, because a handful of water is precious and little stands between man and the forces of nature.

The Invisible Man

HARVARD DIARY

Robert Coles

John LaFarge & Interracial Justice

George H. Dunne

Review of John LaFarge and the Limits of Catholic Interracialism, 1911-1963

The Bluest Eye

HARVARD DIARY

Robert Coles

Why Hispanics Are Not 'Politically Correct'

THE DEBATE ABOUT WESTERN CULTURE

Thomas Storck

Political Correctness Is Doomed

A SECULAR RELIGION WITHOUT HOPE

Philip E. Devine

Drowning in Ideology

J.L.A. Garcia

Review of Race Matters

Ralph Ellison's Angle of Vision

HARVARD DIARY

Robert Coles

Gang Members: Their Street Education

HARVARD DIARY

Robert Coles

Not the Whole Story

Michelle Bobier

Review of Race by Studs Terkel

The Painful Birth of a New South Africa

REFLECTIONS OF AN ANTI-APARTHEID CHURCH ACTIVIST

Rebecca Ann Ginsburg

Moral Anarchy, Moral Necessity

HARVARD DIARY

Robert Coles

An Apostle of Black Fatherhood

Christ and Neighbor

John C. Cort

The Underclass, Part VI: What Is to Be Done?

HARVARD DIARY

Robert Coles

The Underclass, Part V: Children & Violence

HARVARD DIARY

Robert Coles

We see kids on the street with guns and stacks of $100 bills. There’s no rule of law, no belief in anyone’s laws -- not man’s, not God’s.

The Underclass, Part IV: Schools & Mentors

HARVARD DIARY

Robert Coles

One youth says, “I look at those teachers and their books, and I say: man, you’re out in space, and I’m where I am, and there’s nothing between us.”

The Underclass, Part III: Drugs

HARVARD DIARY

Robert Coles

How else to think of drug use — by anyone, living anywhere — as but the most obvious evidence of nihilism, of despair?

The Underclass, Part II: Widespread Teenage Pregnancy

HARVARD DIARY

Robert Coles

Girls in the ghetto are hungry for love, and desperately afraid of not going along with the social, cultural, and sexual pressures of the street.

The So-Called Underclass, Part I

HARVARD DIARY

Robert Coles

Why don’t the “underclass” want to leave it? Is there, perhaps, some failure not of psychology or school experience but of the moral imagination?

Memories of 1964

HARVARD DIARY

Robert Coles

South African Complexities

Robert Coles

South Africa was a “first world” country for white people (and a few others) and a “third world” country for the majority of its 30 million people.

Religion & Race in the South

James J. Thompson Jr.

In 1986 the Alabama legislature voted to observe the third Monday of each year in commemoration of both General Lee and Martin Luther King Jr.

Idealism

HARVARD DIARY

Robert Coles

How can experts sort solidly idealistic activists from those who would end up a source of trouble to themselves or to those meant to be helped?

The Black Christ

ICONOGRAPHY

Robert Lentz

With the collapse of “Christendom” and the rise of the Third World, the Church in our day is beginning to see the Gos­pel apart from a European matrix.