Towards the conclusion of class this past semester, I posed to my students a question that attempts to relate desire with happiness. I began by asking them to list desires or inclinations that they thought all humans possessed. To assist their reflections, I told them to start with more basic desires, ones that humans share with the rest of the cre...

For many teenagers, pornography is their primary source of sex education.  This is because the sex education they are getting at home and/or in school is inadequate.  They may learn about puberty, conception and birth, contraception and sexually transmitted diseases, but they learn nothing about God’s plan for sexuality and healthy relationship...

What could a text written in Germany well over a half century ago possibly teach us about our contemporary lives? For Josef Pieper, “leisure” properly understood is not just “sitting around,” but is a disposition of the heart and mind to receive the reality of the world as it is given to us – to receive life as a gift. Pieper remind...

Mr. Brian Jones A dear friend of mine recently brought my attention to something that I have been pondering ever since I began teaching in 2009. After I taught an RCIA class, my friend raised a rather interesting point regarding a shift in his own approach towards pedagogy. The shift has been the result of his teaching both RCIA and years of giv...

by Mr. Brian Jones One of the most frequently cited platitudes regarding the purpose of contemporary schools is that they must help our young people “to think critically.” Not only does the question about the precise content of this thinking go unquestioned, but more curiously is the inquiry whether such thinking is possible at all. Is it po...

Mr. Brian Jones When Freedom Gives Way to Tyranny  Elucidating the precise manner in which despotism arises in democratic societies, Alexis de Tocqueville has the following to say that is worth quoting in full: I seen an innumerable crowd of like and equal men who revolve on themselves without repose, procuring the small and vulgar pleasures w...

Americans are accustomed to trans-truth. Politicians openly lie. The media regularly fabricates. Moral relativism commonly falsifies. It is all part of the plan. Part of the agenda. And high on the trans-truth trajectory is transgender normalization and discrimination. From North Carolina’s bathroom bill, to retailers like Target establishing pol...

Fr. Timothy Combs, O.P. As Americans, we believe the State must maintain a certain neutrality regarding denominational creeds, and rightly so. The absence of an official state church—in keeping with the Constitution’s establishment clause—is a hallmark of civic life in the U.S. However wise this may be (when rightly understood), this princ...

Patriarchy today is often defined as an unjust social system that enforces gender roles and is oppressive, typically evoking male dominance over women. My own sister was recently taught this version of patriarchy in her women’s studies course at a state school here in Texas in which she was specifically asked to state times in her life when male ...

Do you think that in our lifetime we will witness the blood of Christian citizens on the hands of our nation’s leaders?  Will the “mild” persecution of government override of conscience, forced monetary compliance for morally objectionable ends and attempts at limiting free speech be the worst of what we will see?  Such an assumption seems,...