Tony

Crisis – “Pursuing True Happiness in a World Without Truth”

Among the many confusions in our modern-secular culture is the fundamentally incoherent idea—which is also a promise, a hope, and a dream—that true happiness is possible without truth, but instead can be had with more freedom and more power.

National Review – “Priest, Face East”

Cardinal Robert Sarah proposes that the Church recover a piece of its tradition.

Crisis – “Christianity: An Antidote to Tyranny”

Like all modern tyrants, Karl Marx hated religion, Christianity in particular, because he understood that it was going to be very difficult if not impossible to get men to follow him so long as they continued to follow Jesus Christ, and so the first thing an aspiring tyrant in the middle of Christian Europe needed to do was to uproot and destroy Christianity.

Catholic World Report – “Universities are Complicit in the Fetal Tissue Scandal”

While the practices of body-part harvesting at Planned Parenthood are horrific, the role of federally funded medical researchers at some of the country’s most prestigious universities and hospitals must also be investigated by Congress.

National Catholic Register – “Setting the Record Straight About Zika and Contraception”

Even if a definitive connection is made between the virus and birth defects such as microcephaly, contraception isn’t an effective or moral solution.

Crisis – “The Decline of the West”

According to the German Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper, the “wisdom of the West” expresses the sum total of what man “ought to” be.

Crisis – “Well Being vs Well Feeling: On Defining True Happiness”

In the twenty years since the publication of Deal Hudson’s marvelous book Happiness and the Limits of Satisfaction, the eclipse of Greek and Christian ideas about happiness by the pursuit of pleasure, of “well-feeling” rather than “well-being,” has only advanced.

Crisis – “Can Dissenters Alter the Course of Doctrinal Development?”

With the New Year and the Year of Mercy begun, last year’s Synod of the Family seems like old news.

Crisis – “God and the World in Christian Theology”

Once it became clear that I was returning to the Church (a story for another time), I set out to study the Catechism, along with as much Catholic theology and philosophy as I could get.

Crisis – “Down the Sociological Road to Nihilism”

This semester I am teaching a basic undergraduate class in social theory, and the text we use (Contemporary Sociological Theory and Its Classical Roots, The Basics, Ritzer and Stepinsky) presents many “key concepts” in the field.