Know-Nothing Catholics on Muslim Immigration

“In order to protect Americans, the United States must ensure that those admitted to this country do not bear hostile attitudes toward it and its founding principles.” ∼ Executive order: Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United  States It can be expected that Catholic bishops will respond with dismay to President Trump’s order banning […]

What Happened to American Liberalism? 

In an obscure article entitled “Catholics and Liberals: Decline of Détente,” in America magazine in 1974, the eminent Catholic scholar and historian James Hitchcock discussed a profound change that had occurred in American liberalism and argued that its new thinking put it increasingly at odds with Catholicism. Hitchcock was one of a number of writers […]

Illegal Immigration Is Not a Religious Issue

In the margin of a public speaker’s manuscript was the notation: “Weak point. Shout.” Such is the rhetoric of those who place emotion over logic and make policy through gangs rather than parliaments. In Athens some 2,400 years ago, Aristophanes described a demagogue as having “a screeching, horrible voice, a perverse, cross-grained nature and the language […]