Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has publicly claimed that there has been a recent onslaught of “modern day lynchings,” citing several cases of Black Americans found hanged. However, investigations have found that most of these tragic cases were suicides, while others are still unresolved. Lynching has a specific history. Treating that word as a rhetorical synonym for every suspicious death involving a minority cheapens the historical reality and peddles undue social unrest. Marcus has more.

Further Reading

AOC’s ‘Modern-Day Lynching’ Claim Is Built on Sand

Search the Catechism, the Compendium of Catholic Social Doctrine, indeed the entire Vatican website – search all you want – for teaching about what we call the “national debt.” You will not find it. You can find teaching about the debt that poorer nations owe to wealthier nations, “foreign debt,” but not about the debt that a government accumulates through financing deficits. But it is nevertheless an important facet of social justice. We talk about it with Michael Pakaluk.

Further Reading

A Blindspot in Catholic Social Teaching: Generational Theft

Guest Info

Michael Pakaluk, an Aristotle scholar and Ordinarius of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, is Professor of Political Economy in the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America. He lives in Hyattsville, MD with his wife Catherine, also a professor at the Busch School, and their children. His collection of essays, The Shock of Holiness (Ignatius Press) is now available. His book on Christian friendship, The Company We Keep, is now available from Scepter Press. He was a contributor to Natural Law: Five Views, published by Zondervan last May, and his most recent Gospel book came out with Regnery Gateway in March, Be Good Bankers: The Economic Interpretation of Matthew’s Gospel. You may follow him on Substack at Michael Pakaluk.

Advocates of so-called Death with Dignity have harnessed the understandable fear of dementia to argue that patients diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or other degenerative impairments receive medical help in committing suicide by intentional self-starvation and dehydration. We talk about it with Wes Smith.

Further Reading

Alzheimer’s Patients in the Crosshairs of VSED—Suicide by Self-Starvation

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Guest Info

Wes Smith is the Chair and Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism. He’s also the host of the Humanize Podcast. He’s the author of 13 books including “Culture of Death: The age of Do-Harm Medicine.” Follow him on Twitter @thewesleyjsmith and check out his articles at National Review, First Things and more.

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. The Cross is the central symbol of the Christian life. It is the place where all of history reaches its divinely intended goal. Those who embrace the cross long for the salvation that comes from it. Marcus has more.

If there was a silver lining to the horrors of the September 11 terrorist attacks, it was how the nation came together. Americans understood that they shared a brotherhood that went beyond race or political affiliation. Stores sold out of American flags for weeks. Today, such a climate seems like something out a different life. Can we ever recover this? Peter Laffin joins us.

Further Reading

Sept. 11 and the work of my father-in-law’s hands

Guest Info

Peter Laffin is a senior editor at the Washington Examiner , overseeing In Focus and Restoring America. He was formerly a staff writer for the National Catholic Register. His commentaries, news features, and book reviews have appeared in the Boston Globe, Catholic Herald UK, The Catholic Thing, RealClearPolitics, and RealClearReligion, and he has offered analysis on Fox News, C-SPAN, EWTN, and Sirius XM’s POTUS.

The readings this Sunday are dominated by themes of mercy and forgiveness. “Wrath and anger are hateful things,” we hear from Sirach. “The Lord is kind and merciful” we say in the Responsorial Psalm. And in the Gospel, Jesus tells Peter he must forgive his brother seventy-seven times. We unpack the readings with Rob Corzine.

Guest Info

Rob Corzine is the vice-president of programs for the St Paul Center for Biblical Theology.

Shortly after the horrific events of September 11, 2001, George Weigel was having dinner at the papal apartments with John Paul II. The pope was somber – his hopes of a “new springtime of the human spirit” had seemingly been thwarted. George said that we were at a turning point in world history. A quarter century later, how do these predictions hold up? He joins us.

Further Reading

Unlearned lessons of 9/11, a quarter-century later

Guest Info

George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is the author of over twenty books, including Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II (1999), The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II—The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy (2010), and The Irony of Modern Catholic History: How the Church Rediscovered Itself and Challenged the Modern World to Reform. His most recent books are The Next Pope: The Office of Peter and a Church in Mission (2020), Not Forgotten: Elegies for, and Reminiscences of, a Diverse Cast of Characters, Most of Them Admirable (Ignatius, 2021), and To Sanctify the World: The Vital Legacy of Vatican II (Basic Books, 2022).

Fr. Vincent Ferrer Bagan grew up in a small Minnesota town and was in high school on the day of the 9/11 attacks. He never imagined he’d be working at the Pentagon someday, but that is where he now serves part time at a chapel memorializing the people who died there on 9/11. He joins us.

Further Reading

Catholic faith endures at Pentagon 25 years after 9/11

Guest Info

Fr. Vincent Ferrer Bagan, O.P., has served as the Director of Music for the Cathedral of St. Thomas More and the Diocese of Arlington (Virginia, USA) since August 2022, where he conducts the Cathedral and Diocesan Choirs and serves as organist and cantor. He is a Dominican priest of the Province of St. Joseph and helps celebrate Masses at the Pentagon’s 9/11 memorial chapel

In any tragedy or act of evil, there are also acts of heroism. There are stories of people who answered the call to put themselves at risk for the sake of others. 9/11 was no exception – and there are many stories of Catholic heroism on that day. Tom Hoopes joins us to talk about some of them.

Further Reading

The Catholic Heroes of 9/11

Guest Info

Tom Hoopes is writer-in-residence at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, where he teaches in the Journalism and Mass Communications department. He was executive editor of the National Catholic Register between 1999 and 2009.

When the Jewish people celebrate Passover, they recite a millennia-old question: “Why is tonight different from all other nights?” Commemorating important events is an essential part of preserving our heritage. When the attacks happened on September 11, Americans swore to “never forget.” But Never Forgetting means being honest about the attacks and what caused them. Marcus has more.

Further Reading

Canada’s CBC instructs staff not to call 9/11 a ‘terrorist attack’ in news coverage