At least two or three times a month, I see back in time. Sometimes I’m even able to overhear entire conversations. I know it sounds hard to believe, but it’s true. I’ve been able to see New York City in 1911 as people and cars dart about… and Paris in the 1890s when horse-drawn carriages […]
The same national security elites who pushed the United States into war in Iraq and Afghanistan are now trying to do the same with Russia and the Ukraine. In the process, they are urging the sort of insane escalations – no fly zones, providing fighter jets to Ukraine — that, in August 1914, turned a minor act of terrorism in […]
It’s a cold, sunny day in mid-January, and I’m sitting on a frosty barstool outside, sipping the hot mulled wine the Czechs call Svarák. I can see the colorful Astronomical Clock about thirty feet away, built by Master Mikuláš Kadan in the early 1400s, with the Church of Our Lady of Týn looming above Old Town […]
At the bespoke fly fishing shop in the northern California town of Redding, the clerks all wear masks against Covid-19, pulled down under their chins so you can hear their advice on where the fish are biting. I am here in one of the premier fresh water locales in the world, near the Oregon border, […]
Last year I took a year-long course in German through an online program at a community college. I travel to Germany on business quite a lot, and after five years of visits wanted a thorough understanding of German grammar and basic vocabulary. It was an astonishingly good course, difficult and thorough. My teacher prepared weekly videos that went over […]
One hundred and fifty-five years ago, the bloodiest conflict in America’s history was finally coming to an end. It was mid-April 1865. The Civil War was almost over, after more than 600,000 deaths. Just five days earlier, on April 9, Confederate General Robert E. Lee had surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Union General […]
This April marks the 155th anniversary of the killing of President Abraham Lincoln by the actor John Wilkes Booth. Around 10:20 p.m. on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, Booth snuck up behind Lincoln at Ford’s Theater in Washington, DC. The actor fired a.44 caliber derringer into the back of Lincoln’s head, then jumped onto […]
On a recent business trip to Berlin, I stopped by the Berlin Wall Memorial on the corner of Bernauerstrasse and Ackerstrasse.[1] It’s the longest stretch of the wall (1.4 kilometers) in its actual historical setting, a chilling reminder of what life was like in the socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR). With an Orwellian flourish, the […]
My children were exasperated. About once a minute, I hit the pause button on the TV remote, just long enough so I could catch the French word scrolling across the bottom of the screen in the subtitles. I was watching Zone Blanche, a new French TV thriller on “Netflix.” My family watches a lot of […]
A war of words has broken out in recent weeks among groups of conservatives in the United States over the issue of legal, as opposed to illegal, immigration. It’s put to bed the popular 2016 dictum to “not punch right,” or, as Ronald Reagan used to phrase it, never to speak ill of a fellow […]
judge’s ruling on November 6 may pave the way for some American states to force doctors and nurses to commit various forms of medical killing against their will. In a sweeping 147-page ruling, US District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer of the Southern District of New York struck down a 2017 Trump Administration rule that would […]
At the Obama Foundation Summit meeting on October 29, 2019, in Chicago, former president Barack Obama again strongly criticized the “woke” identity culture that puts a premium on moral outrage over race without actually doing anything concrete. “I do get a sense sometimes now among certain young people, and this is accelerated by social media, […]
In leftist professor Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman’s classic analysis of the mass media, Manufacturing Consent, the main thesis is that “the ‘societal purpose’ of the media is to inculcate and defend the economic, social and political agenda of privileged groups that dominate the domestic society and the state.” The ways the media inculcate […]
The legal dispute between a formerly married Texas couple over whether their 7-year-old son should be given hormone-blocking treatments and “transition” to being a girl may turn out to be the straw that finally breaks the transgender movement’s back – at least in terms of public opinion. The case, widely reported in the United States, […]
I know plenty of Democrats. Both of my parents were Democrats. Some of my siblings. Almost all of my cousins. Heeding President John F. Kennedy’s call to ask not what your country can do for you, but to ask what you can do for your country, they believe government should protect working families against the […]
The hot-button issue of slavery reparations got a major boost April 13 when students at Georgetown University voted in favor of a special fee that would benefit the descendants of 272 African slaves once owned by the Catholic university, located in Washington, DC. The vote fanned the flames of an escalating political debate over whether […]
What Jesus meant by “the kingdom of God” has been a source of debate among scholars across the academic and religious spectrum. For the past century or so, many scholars and historians have claimed that Jesus of Nazareth never intended to launch a movement or found a community at all, that he was an “apocalyptic […]
Politically active Catholics who take the teachings of their Church seriously often turn to the body of papal and conciliar teachings known as Catholic Social Teaching (CST). While conservatives often emphasize the principle of subsidiarity found in these teachings – the idea that the organization closest to a problem is usually best able to solve […]
I was listening to the mythicist blogger Richard Carrier on “Unbelievable,” the UK Christian radio show and podcast that brings together Christian and non-Christian thinkers to debate various issues related to faith. Carrier, who has a Ph.D. in ancient history and is a very bright fellow, is one of the few credible members of […]
An interesting article on textual variants in one of the oldest manuscripts of the Gospels, Vaticanus: Vaticanus Distigme-obelos Symbols Marking Added Text, Including 1 Corinthians 14.34–5 It covers the old issue of whether Paul’s infamous admonition that women should be “silent” in assemblies of Christians (1 Cor 14:34-35) is actually a later scribal addition. The […]
Going on the radio to promote a book is a weird experience. One problem is that writers tend to immerse themselves in their topics and so fail to appreciate that other people don’t know anything about their subject… and don’t really care. That’s even true when the subject is Christianity and Jesus of Nazareth. For […]
Some Catholic apologists are up in arms about the recent Hollywood film, “Young Messiah,” because, they say, it presents an “heretical” portrayal of the child Jesus as not being fully omniscient at age seven. I haven’t seen the film yet and so I don’t want to comment on the film itself. However, the question of […]
The entrance to the Mary of Nazareth International Center in central Nazareth doesn’t look like much. It’s just a simple doorway off narrow Casa Nova Street, a few hundred yards from the Basilica of the Annunciation. Yet inside this recently built Catholic evangelism center lies an amazing discovery that has sent shockwaves through the world […]
In the midst of the annual battles over how a pluralistic society should properly recognize an important Christian holiday celebrated by 70 percent of the population, there is one question rarely asked at this time of year: Just who was Jesus of Nazareth, anyway? Some claim that Jesus didn’t exist at all, and that Christianity […]
I’m one of those disaffected conservative voters who are delighted by Donald Trump’s politically incorrect jabs at the media — and by his plain speech. Like many old white males who own their own businesses, pay their taxes and just want to be left alone in peace, I’m mad as hell and don’t want to […]
When listening to politicians, you always have to remember Rahm “The Godfather” Emanuel’s adage: never let a serious crisis go to waste. What Emanuel meant by that, of course, is that politicians should take advantage of a crisis situation to advance their political agendas. That is precisely what happened with the mass murder in San […]
In the 1980 film The Competition, starring Richard Dreyfus and Amy Irving, there is a scene that has always been a metaphor, for me, for how Christians come to know Jesus Christ. Sounds strange, I know, but bear with me a moment. In the film, Richard Dreyfus plays a talented but not quite top pier […]
Shortly after my book The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Bible came out, I was asked to fly to Ireland to participate in a debate on the existence of God at University College Cork. I had been doing radio interviews for my book and was very comfortable discussing some of the sillier arguments atheists use […]
What’s a peaceful, freedom-loving, family-oriented, hard-working Catholic guy to do with the current state of U.S. politics? For decades, now, it’s been obvious that even a moderately faithful Catholic cannot feel at home in any of the major, or even the minor, U.S. political parties. We are given the choice between an increasingly militaristic, even […]
Ready or not, Obamacare is finally here. Polls show that most Americans remain highly skeptical of the law’s benefits. According to a new CNN/ORC International survey released October 1, less than one in five Americans say their families will be better off under the new health care law. Nevertheless, the controversial law’s passionate defenders insist […]
You know what they say: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. The American people have learned the hard way that US politicians in both political parties tend to passively defer to what the “experts” in the defense and intelligence sectors advise doing, often to the detriment of the country […]
The “French Spring” movement (le Printemps Français) has rattled the French political establishment – and even gay marriage advocates in faraway California. That’s because it calls into question the claim that same sex marriage is “inevitable” and opposition to it mere bigotry. In recent months, between 400,000 and a million demonstrators of all ages have […]
So if, as Albert Einstein insisted, Biblical religion was the necessary intellectual precondition for the gradual development of scientific method, how did the myth of the “scientific revolution” come about? One reason: For the past 400 years, the partisans of irreligion-from the Marquis de Sade to Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins-have deliberately misrepresented the way […]
In honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the start of the Second Vatican Council, I read John O’Malley’s magisterial history, What Happened at Vatican II. It’s a fascinating chronicle of the great theological earthquake that shook the Church to its foundations, throwing open doors to let fresh air into dusty mausoleums but also, at the […]