One thing about the 2016 election that I am especially grateful for is how it caused principled conservatives to do some soul searching.  Faced with a candidate who was neither principled nor—let’s be honest—all that conservative, they could not help but question how far they would extend their allegiance. Some, I presume, even questioned th...

The Presidential Election of 2016 unveiled the growing divide of American culture. We are the most divided we have been since the Civil War. Lincoln saw the problem then and gave his famous House Divided Speech in 1858: “If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it.”...

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...

Let's face it: Catholic voter's guides are terribly abstract and unhelpful. Catholic political speakers often leave us with more questions than clarity. They offer bad advice or no advice at all. Before the 2004 election between George W. Bush and John Kerry, a respected Catholic philosopher, Alastair MacIntyre, made a claim I heartily disagree...

Unless you have been hidden away in a cave for the last year, you probably do not need me to tell you that our body politic is facing a serious crisis. The political events of the last year have been, in large part, disheartening. The reasons for this are many and varied; notable among them is a decline in religious faith. Of great concern also is ...

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...

Mr. Brian Jones In reflecting upon the goodness of early American New England townships, the French political writer Alexis de Tocqueville wrote the following: “The inhabitant of New England is attached to his township because it is strong and independent; he is interested in it because he cooperates in directing it; he loves it...he places...

These are tough days to be a voting Catholic. It was easier when we could pull the “intrinsically evil” card, and feel morally justified because we had avoided voting for anyone who supported an action which -- as the American Bishops put it in their document Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship -- is "always opposed to the authentic go...

During a visit to Australia, I witnessed a funeral on television that I have never forgotten.  It was April 8th, 2005, and the funeral was that of Pope St. John Paul II.Rome, the eternal city, was flooded with over a million foreigners that came to pray for a man most of them had never actually met.  Thousands overflowed from St. Peter’s squa...

On a recent radio talk show, a republican bigwig was lamenting the growing influence of “the Christian right” at the party confabs in his State. For this man, political pragmatism is the order of the day. Whatever gets republicans elected is good and whatever hurts that effort is bad. And since he believes that moral talk would drive voters awa...