Category Archives: Social Critique

Polygamy and Feminism ~ Why Gender Matters

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This feast of St. Matthew reminds us of that direct yet simple invitation made by our Lord to one miserable tax collector, “Follow Me.” In fact our entire Christian vocation can be summed up in those two words. It also occurred to me that every wife who leaves her family and home to follow her new husband is responding to that same loving invitation. “Follow me,” is not meant to be a command, even less so a demand, but an open invitation on the part of every good husband to joyfully and willingly join their lives in a communion of love.

Just so, our own nuptial relationship with God is likewise a willing response to his ever open invitation to, “Follow Me.” So, in a sense, the union of a man and a woman in marriage is a concrete reflection of mankind’s intended union with our God. Keep that imagery in mind as we consider the present situation in our world. Continue reading →

Taney’s Tainted Legacy

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I am truly amused by the crusade of those “progressive” elements in Frederick, Maryland to persuade the Board of Alderman of that fair city to remove a bust of former Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney from its display in front of the city hall. This seems to me but the latest attempt by liberals to “cleanse” American history of any controversial symbol or figure. Taney takes his place as an historical persona non grata for his part in the infamous Dred Scott decision in 1857 which extended slavery, at least legally, into the territories and theoretically into the Northern free states as well. Practically, however, the ensuing Civil War nullified Dred Scott and extinguished the deplorable institution of chattel slavery. Continue reading →

The Book Thieves

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In the early 1990s my city erected a stunning new addition to our central downtown library, an architectural gem that more than doubled its shelf capacity. This expansion was made necessary not only by increased patronage but also by the explosion of publications brought about by the information age. What the city and the architect may not have fully anticipated then was the extent to which the newly evolving internet would revolutionize books. No sooner had this state of the art library been inaugurated than ominous changes began to occur.

I grimaced when the old, highly flexible manual card catalogue disappeared, replaced by sterile Continue reading →

Obergefell ~ Dred Scott Revisited?

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Admittedly I am not a Constitutional scholar nor can I claim a smidgen of formal legal training, and yet it hardly takes a great legal mind to detect the odor of “outcome based” reasoning in the recent Obergefell v. Hodges. That decision by our Supreme Court summarily threw out an enduring concept of marriage that has nurtured human society for thousands of years. One need not have attended Harvard Law School to realize that this decision has very little to do with the Constitution and everything to do with five lawyers flagrantly imposing their own rigid progressive-liberal orthodoxy Continue reading →

Thoughts for a Sizzling Friday in July

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I thought a change of pace might be in order even as I try to wrap my brain around the recent bizarre events transpiring in our country and the world in general. Humor never killed a man (except for the “funny” guy who killed himself by shooting fireworks from the top of his head. At least there was no brain damage ~ since there was nothing there to damage). So I begin and end this post with some jocularity. In between, however, I expect you to THINK  (Horrors!) but I feel that if you actually found this site you are up to it.

I begin with a favorite quip from my favorite Jesuit, Fr. Tom Kelly, long deceased. “America is a country where everyone is allowed to say what they think ~ even when they CAN’T think.”

Speaking of Jesuits, Do you know the difference between a Dominican and a Jesuit? Simple, the Dominican’s job is to explain the faith; the Jesuit’s job is to explain it away!

I see the recent drive to bury the Confederate battle flag as really an attempt to bury history. But here is the real irony. The party trying to bury it the deepest is the very same party whose history it reflects ~ the Democratic Party. Continue reading →

Hijacked by Higher Education

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 I have great sympathy today for those young millenials who aspire to succeed on the “real life” monopoly game-board which seems to be increasingly stacked against them. Limited job opportunities compounded by lackluster growth in real wages is certainly discouraging, but the thing that may ultimately doom untold millions of twenty-somethings to a very bleak future is not current market trends but mountains of compounded educational debt. In fact, an entire generation is being subjected to a vast “bait and switch” scheme by those very institutions charged with helping them to successfully integrate into the larger society. And the primary perpetrators of this cruel hoax appear to be the very establishments of higher education whose stated purpose it is to prepare our youth for a future productive life. Instead, many American colleges and universities seem too busy fleecing their youthful charges to devote much concern to their long term prospects. Continue reading →