Next year, the United States will celebrate its Semiquincentennial, or 250th anniversary. Per Wikipedia, other names under which this occasion is being heralded include “Bisesquicentennial,” “Sestercentennial,” “Quarter Millennium,” and—inspired, no doubt, by the advertising and marketing fads of late capitalism—the banal “America250,” which sounds more like a software suite than a memorial.

To be Chestertonian means a particular mode of being Christian. Of course, to some Christians this very idea is offensive, even blasphemous. Chesterton himself, however, was not such a one. He believed in the witness and example of the Saints – that there was no contradiction between emulating them and following Christ. As he wrote of the great Saint whom he chose for his Confirmation patron, “St. Francis is the mirror of Christ rather as the moon is the mirror of the sun. The moon is much smaller than the sun, but it is also much nearer to us; and being less vivid it is more visible.” In this, he was merely recapitulating the logic employed by Saint Paul: “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.”

There is nothing new about emergent technologies and strategies being tested in evangelization. Stained glass, question-and-answer catechisms, casuistic manuals, vademecums, and so many other examples may be cited. In all of these cases, the integration of new means and methods was achieved by striking the right balance amidst possible tensions. A stained glass window could only capture the basics of the story of the Annunciation; it couldn’t replace the actual reading of the narrative from Luke. The pat answer in the printed manual possibly lacked in some points the leavening of wisdom possessed by the priest sitting in the box.

We needn’t always be comfortable in our perilous perch in the giddy chariot that is the Church. From time to time, we may be bewildered, experience whiplash or worse jolts, when those at the reins seem to take a turn too fast or fail in avoiding a pothole. The charism of infallibility pertains to the chariot, in the end, not to the driver: we are assured that the wheels won’t come off, that the Thing will never turn over into a ditch. We are not assured of a smooth ride. ​

Recently, a very well regarded prelate of the Church — whom I happen really to believe to be a very good and holy man — tweeted about the Moderna coronavirus vaccine. He wrote that vaccine “is not morally produced,” owing to the use in some phases of its production of biological specimens obtained originally through abortion. He “urge[s] all who believe in the sanctity of life to reject” this or any vaccine produced using such technologies.
...
[E]xperts indicate... that this is a more complex subject than the good bishop’s tweet would suggest.

The impetus behind the viral clip of Meloni’s speech, in the end, wasn’t Meloni herself, however impressive people may find her. What inspired the crowd that day, and what inspired the social media frenzy over her rousing remarks, was the content of the message. And the most remarkable thing about that is how unremarkable it really is. ​

Human Rights Campaign’s “Business Coalition for the Equality Act"... brags...“437 member companies … [with] operations in all 50 states, headquarters spanning 33 states and a combined $6.9 trillion in revenue, and employ over 14.7 million people in the United States.” This coalition is simply one part of a network that also includes, “a majority of Americans, hundreds of members of Congress, hundreds of advocacy organizations, and more than 60 business associations — including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers.”
...
If this is socio-political disenfranchisement and marginalization, what do they think power and influence would be?

Others have described [Martin] as “going right up to the line, and never crossing it.” This is a fair metaphor, but not completely accurate. Martin frames his arguments in a way that seems compelling, not only emotionally but logically. The key, however, is that there’s always one element left unsaid; one point deliberately evaded in order for the logic to inhere. If the unsaid thing were introduced, the argument would fall apart.

The application of the First Amendment to this matter should not be about the Religious Sisters of Mercy and their right to free exercise. It should be about how the government, in following fad of gender ideology, has sought to establish a secular religion and impose it on America.

I’ve often sat with people to puzzle over a loved one’s abandonment of the Church. As people detail to me the reasons a friend or loved one gave for leaving, and ask me to help them understand them, one thing very often occurs to me. The fundamental question isn’t “Why did they leave?” It’s “Why were they Catholic to begin with?”

I don’t mean the obvious here, that they were baptized as an infant and raised in the Church. I mean what reasons did they adopt at the age of maturity for remaining in the Church? By what logic did they take ownership of what they received in the nursery or Sunday School? Did they ever even take such ownership of their religion?

Cooler, saner heads might have found Greene’s initial behavior “uncalled for,” perhaps downright “inappropriate” or even “extreme” — except that her colleagues and the media went out of their way to make it very hard for any sane person to end up saying so in retrospect. For in their own conduct, in their own bigoted and irrational labelling and hysterical vituperations, Greene’s critics only ended up making it seem like Greene — the erstwhile QAnon sympathizer — was the most sensibly behaved person in the whole scenario.

Flynt was more a product of a decaying culture than a cause. We very often complain about the media we have, and yet, in very many ways, the media we have are the media we have deserved. The law of supply and demand definitely holds. Whether it be a substandard journalism or a subhuman pornography, at the outset the would-be consumers of such things are as much to blame as those who descend to provide them. If no one bought it, no one would sell it.

The creche is embarrassing. It’s not the depiction of the birth of our Lord faithful Catholics want and the world needs to see. I’ve often complained that Catholics ought to be more careful about airing our dirty laundry before the world, or allowing our internal debates over theology and praxis to become stumbling blocks to those outside the Church. I don’t want to give scandal with this piece. I want to admit the obvious — this creche is comically awful — but I also want to try to put it in some perspective.

My message to Trump voters is that not everyone who really hated your choice is some kind of socialist revolutionary who hates freedom. Many had real concerns, the same kinds of concerns that Trump voters had, like jobs and health care. A lot of them were genuinely opposed to Trump’s words and behavior.

​To the Biden voters, I’d say that few people who voted against your choice are racists or fascists. Many had real concerns, the same kinds of concerns Biden voters had. They saw your candidate as a threat to things they deeply valued, like religious liberty, with good reason. I’d also say that a lot of people who voted for Biden were absolutely unenthusiastic about him, and he owes his victory to his opponent and not to his own winsomeness.

This conversation comes back to me today, Father’s Day. She and I were really saying many of the same things — but between what we each meant by those things is a very wide gap.

Our talk ended with her in tears. She said she couldn’t help feeling that I was implying her child would somehow be deprived something he needed. That is what I was suggesting.

​But in my mind, the whole time we talked, the main culprit for that deprivation — the only person toward whom I was tempted to feel any real anger or scorn — was that man who would be a “donor” and not a “father.”