Of the rock festivals of the sixties, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair was by far the most famous. Held on a 600-acre dairy farm near Bethel, N.Y. on August 15–17, 1969, the festival is the iconic representation of the drug-addled culture and sexual revolution that upended American life. This August marks … Read more
The working document (Instrumentum laboris) for the coming Extraordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the Amazon totally opens the gates of the Magisterium to Indian Theology and Eco-theology, two Latin American derivatives of liberation theology (LT). After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the failure of “real socialism,” the … Read more
A sign of the increased popularity of socialism in the United States is the Public Broadcasting System’s airing of a biography of Emma Goldman on its “The American Experience” series. For those unfamiliar with Emma Goldman, she was a self-described revolutionary. The depths of her radical egalitarianism and hatred of religion can … Read more
At first glance, Bala-Cynwyd, Pennsylvania hardly looks like a place to host a revolution. It is a suburb of Philadelphia, a quiet and upscale retreat from the stresses of city life. Its Belmont Hills Library is nestled in a park-like setting. Yet, revolutionary forces were very active there on the morning of … Read more
Upon his election in 1998, the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez launched a “Bolivarian Revolution” that would create “socialism for the twenty-first century” funded by billions of petrodollars. Chávez, an admirer of Fidel Castro, very clearly sought to transform Venezuela into a new Cuba. For the next twenty years, Venezuela has gotten … Read more
Identity politics requires each constituent group to be politically unified. In this way, activists can claim to speak in the name of a given oppressed identity group. Feminism has always had a problem with this unity. The woman’s movement claims to represent all oppressed women everywhere. However, Christians, pro-life women, homeschooling mothers … Read more
A Review of the Book Pius IX by Roberto de Mattei (Leominster, England: Gracewing, September 2004) Today’s problems often seem to be the worst ever faced by the human race. Thus, it is easy to be overwhelmed by focusing on the division, apostacy, scandal, and confusion of the current age. One … Read more
Pope Francis’s “Paradigm Shift”: Continuity or Rupture in the Mission of the Church? An Assessment of His Pontificate’s First Five Years. Pope Francis places Catholics in a dilemma. Many have the very understandable, indeed holy, desire to obey the Successor of Saint Peter. At the same time, Pope Francis seems … Read more
The devil would like to present man with a cultural vision of the universe that would destroy the very concept of being. However, absolutely speaking, he cannot destroy being. For example, it is not in his power to make the material in this table to stop existing. He can cause a man … Read more
Most people think of Communism—if they think about it at all—as a purely economic force. That is what we were taught in school and university; it is what we will hear in the rare instances when Communism is discussed honestly in the various media. That understanding may be correct as far as … Read more