By David Carlin

According to the ancient Greeks, the differentia between gods and men is that the former are immortal, the latter mortal. This belief in human mortality, it should be noted, was not incompatible with another widely held belief, namely that the souls (or ghosts) of dead humans live a miserable underworld life in Hades. But this "life" was hardly entitled to be called living. It was the antithesis of immortality. Only the gods were truly immortal.

In time, however, certain teachers came along - the Orphics, the Pythagoreans, Socrates, Plato, and others - who held that human souls too are immortal, or at least are capable of immortality. But given that immortality was the distinctive privilege of the gods, this was tantamount to saying that human souls are godlike; they're actual or at least potential gods.

That Socrates and certain others came to believe that humans are actual or potential gods means that they placed a very, very high estimate on the value of a human person. An Athenian contemporary of Socrates, older than himself by a generation, the tragedian Sophocles, gave classic expression to this sentiment when in his Antigone he wrote the famous choral ode that begins with the words:

Numberless are the world's wonders, but none more wonderful than man. (Fitts & Fitzgerald translation.)

Given this high estimate of man, doesn't it make sense to believe that humans, like the gods, live forever? How weird it would be for God or Nature to bring so wonderful a being into existence and then, after a few days or years, utterly destroy him!

In the following centuries, this belief in the immortality of the human soul spread widely, though not universally, throughout the Roman world. And then along came Christianity, which confirmed the view that humans could become gods (though Christianity called them saints, not gods). The new religion also confirmed the other Greek belief, the dark belief in the eternal misery of Hades. Persons who had been virtuous in this earthly life would become gods/saints; persons who had been wicked would be sent to the inescapable prison called Hades.

Well, that was a long, long time ago. Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. And then, as the Empire dissolved, it remained for many centuries the religion of both Western and Eastern Europe. And when Western Christianity in the 16th and 17th centuries split into Catholic and Protestant parts, both parties continued to believe that earthly humans are potential gods/saints - and potential devils as well.

But here we are today, in the 21st century. In a highly modernized country like the United States, many in our society, including especially those in our culturally elite sections, have repudiated the old religion and its belief in immortality. Of course, many ex-Christians have not yet repudiated Christianity by making an express verbal declaration; no, they remain nominal Catholics or Protestants; but, in effect, they've abandoned the old beliefs of their ancestors.

They continue to believe, based on empirical observation, that humans are capable of great goodness and great wickedness. But they no longer believe that good souls become gods/saints after death; nor do they believe that Hitler and Stalin go to Hell.

Now, if once upon a time the Greeks' exalted estimate of the value of the human person led, quite logically, to the belief that we humans have the capacity to become gods and to live, like gods, forever, what happens when we cease to believe in our immortality and godlike potential? Will we continue to have a very high estimate of the worth of an individual person?

Or will we think of humans as nothing more than biological entities, subject to death as are all other biological entities? Will we think of ourselves as things like birds and bees, flowers and trees, things of small worth that have their brief day and then vanish forever?

Will we inscribe tombstones for ourselves similar to ancient tombstones...

By Michael Pakaluk

But first a note: Be sure not to miss tonight's 8 PM broadcast of EWTN's "The World Over." Fr. Gerald Murray, Robert Royal, and host Raymond Arroyo ("The Papal Posse") will be discussing the latest document released by the Vatican - Fiducia Supplicans - which has raised a firestorm of commentary in its claims that priests may perform blessings of "same-sex couples" (as long as such blessings don't give the impression of being the equivalent of marriage), while maintaining that it's impossible for the Church to bless "same-sex unions." This will be one not to miss. And, as always, episodes of the show will be available on the EWTN YouTube channel shortly after first broadcast.

Now for Professor Pakaluk's column...

The U.S. Bishops issued a statement earlier this week on the Declaration Fiducia supplicans, reassuring the faithful that "The Church's teaching on marriage has not changed." But to say this is to miss the point, wildly.

More pertinent is whether the Church's teaching on non-procreative sex acts has changed; also, whether by the Declaration the Church now wishes to recognize a distinct type of relationship, which it regards as good - call it "spousal friendship between members of the same sex." Either change would mark a major shift in the Church's teaching on human nature and, it seems, a repudiation of St. John Paul II's theology of the body.

Let us return to a time long ago, back in 2021, when the Vatican taught that "the Church does not have, and cannot have, the power to bless unions of persons of the same sex." More telling than the holding, however, were the three reasons given.

The first reason was that blessings are sacramentals, so that, "when a blessing is invoked on particular human relationships, in addition to the right intention of those who participate, it is necessary that what is blessed be objectively and positively ordered to receive and express grace." But such is not the case, it taught, for relationships that involve sexual activity outside of marriage: "[God] does not and cannot bless sin." The Vatican emphasized that the presence of good elements in such relationships could not negate this point.

In support, the Vatican cited no less an authority than an Ecumenical Council, Sacrosanctum Concilium, 61. In that passage, tellingly, the Council Fathers refer to "the liturgy of the sacraments and sacramentals." The Vatican back in 2021 assumed, naturally enough, that since blessings are sacramentals, they are by their nature liturgical. That a blessing by a priest in a cassock at the back of a Church would be non-liturgical, in the broad sense of "liturgy", would be an absurdity. A blessing did not need to be situated in a ritual to be liturgical.

The second reason was that blessings of persons are inherently related to sacraments, so that, if a relationship were blessed, the blessing could not fail to import the significance of marriage, regardless of the intentions of the persons involved.

The third and related reason - apparently the least important - was that the blessing of same-sex couples would create confusion in the faithful, as it would lead them to think that the nature of marriage had changed.

If the Church is to purport to do in 2023 what it said in 2021 that it could not do, these reasons must be "handled." Fiducia, accordingly, handles the first by claiming that blessings are among the most rapidly "evolving" sacramentals. Then it identifies a new class of blessings, "pastoral" blessings ("of mercy"), which apparently are not even sacramentals. It supposes that if these blessings appear to be spontaneously sought after, and non-scripted, they will be non-liturgical.

However, already Fr. James Martin has tweeted a picture of himself in clerics at the back of a church holding up his hand in a priestly blessing over a professed "married" same-sex couple. And he himself explained the radical change of the document by saying, "Today I can do what I was forbidden to d...

By David F. Forte

But first, a note: Be sure not to miss tomorrow's 8 PM broadcast of EWTN's "The World Over." Fr. Gerald Murray, Robert Royal, and host Raymond Arroyo ("The Papal Posse") will be discussing the latest document released by the Vatican - Fiducia Supplicans - which has raised a firestorm of commentary in its claims that priests may perform blessings of "same-sex couples" (as long as such blessings don't give the impression of being the equivalent of marriage), while maintaining that it's impossible for the Church to bless "same-sex unions." This one will be a not-miss. And, as always, episodes of the show will be available on the EWTN YouTube channel shortly after first broadcast.

Now for Professor Forte's column...

"Put Christ back into Christmas," we are told, often from the pulpit. "Take time out to pray and meditate upon the Advent season. Don't be distracted by all the shopping advertisements." All well and good. But I would also argue the contrary. It's in the noise of the Christmas season that we find Christ. Mary and Joseph and the Magi sought not to escape from the commotion, the drama, and "noise" surrounding the great moment. They traveled into it.

Consider these scenarios.

She finally has the Christmas cards addressed. Darn! Not enough stamps, and the post office has run out of the religiously themed ones. Is her address list up-to-date? It took forever to compose the Christmas letter, trying not to leave out any important events and people. She still has to fold the letters, insert them into the envelopes, seal them, and take them to the post office. It's all such a rush.

When that happens, we should think of Mary. As I once heard Mother Teresa explain to her nuns, "What did Mary do, after she heard that she was to bear the Savior? Did she stay at home and meditate on the great mystery? No, when she heard that her elderly cousin Elizabeth was also with child, she immediately got up to go on a long journey - a very long journey to help her. To wash the pots and pans and do whatever needed to be done."

Our Christmas cards are messages of love to people that we perhaps have not seen in years. So when the rush of Christmas cards is upon us, we should think of Mary and offer a grateful prayer, for every card we send is a visit to Elizabeth.

It's three days before Christmas and the roads are packed. There's hardly a space available in the mall parking lot. Too late for an Amazon delivery, the husband fears. "Have I got the right gifts for the kids? Or am I spoiling them again? I still haven't bought the one for my youngest - that doll she asked for - and I almost forgot my wife!" His budget is stretched. He worried about his credit card statements come January. It's all such a rush.

When that happens, we should think of the Magi. If indeed, these "wise men" had come from Persia, it was a journey of over 1,000 miles over often inhospitable terrain, a daunting trip in that era. Uncertain of the kind of greeting that they would receive, especially by the Romans, they pressed on, transiting the Parthians, the Decapolis, crowded marketplaces, hostile stares. It wasn't an inexpensive journey even for them, and they too sought to bring just the right gifts for the child.

Our travels to the mall and the Christmas sales can be nerve-wracking. Frustrating, too, if that special gift is now out of stock. And then there is the wrapping, the shipping to distant friends and relatives. But at such moments we should remember the Magi, and meld our journey into theirs. We, too, look for the right gifts for the right persons, objects of our love.

It's Christmas Eve. The children and wife are asleep at last. But besides the electronic gifts, there are still toys to put together: the tricycle, and wagon. "Why are there so many bolts and screws to this thing? I'm so tired that I can hardly read the directions, and they are so confusing anyway." In just a few hours, the children will wake him and his wife as they burst into t...

By Father Thomas G. Weinandy, OFM, Cap.

Yesterday, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect for the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, published a Declaration, with the signed approval of Pope Francis, entitled Fiducia Supplicans, "On the Pastoral Meaning of Blessings." This Declaration articulated the importance of blessings in Biblical, historical, and ecclesial perspectives.

The Declaration states that it "remains firm on the traditional doctrine of the Church about marriage, not allowing any type of liturgical rite or blessing similar to a liturgical rite that can create confusion. The value of this document, however, is that it offers a specific and innovative contribution to the pastoral meaning of blessings, permitting a broadening and enrichment of the classical understanding of blessings, which is closely linked to a liturgical perspective."

So, the Declaration wants to uphold the doctrinal integrity of the blessing given within the sacrament of marriage, while simultaneously wanting to allow a blessing that is "linked to," but not similar to, a liturgical blessing given in marriage, thus, not causing confusion between the two. The Declaration boasts that this provision "implies a real development" that is in keeping with Pope Francis's "pastoral vision."

It continues: "It is precisely in this context that one can understand the possibility of blessing couples in irregular situations and same-sex couples without officially validating their status or changing in any way the Church's perennial teaching on marriage." Here, one perceives the real reason for which this Declaration was written - to bless "couples in irregular" marriages and to bless "same-sex couples."

The Declaration elaborates on these two situations. Within this pastoral vision "there appears the possibility of blessings for couples in irregular situations and for couples of the same sex, the form of which should not be fixed ritually by ecclesial authorities to avoid producing confusion with the blessing proper to the Sacrament of Marriage."

Nonetheless, although these blessing "do not claim a legitimation of their status," they "do beg that all that is true, good, humanly valid in their lives and their relationships be enriched, healed, and elevated by the presence of the Holy Spirit." The Declaration sees such blessings in accord with what's been traditionally called "actual grace. " The purpose of this grace is "so that human relationships may mature and grow in fidelity to the Gospel, that they may be freed from their imperfections and frailties, and that they may express themselves in the ever-increasing dimension of divine love."

In all the above, there is the appearance of reason, but also a great deal of jargon, sophistry, and deceit.

First, the Declaration professes that what is being offered is a development of doctrine in keeping with Pope Francis's "pastoral vision." In Essay on the Development of Doctrine, St. John Henry Newman provides criteria for judging what is true and what is erroneous doctrinal development (a "corruption"). Ultimately, he concludes, it's the infallibility of the Church that validates authentic development.

Newman puts forward, however, a hypothetical, though frightening, hypothesis. What if a council or a pope were to teach a doctrine that would contradict a previous council or pope? Newman declares that it would shatter the notion of doctrinal development, for who then would be able to judge what is authentically revealed and what is not?

Newman's alarming hypothesis is not so hypothetical today. Despite its claims to the contrary, the Declaration blatantly contradicts the perennial magisterial teaching of the Church concerning irregular marriages and the sexual activity of same-sex couples. Must one conclude, with Newman, that such teaching eradicates the very notion of doctrinal development and ultimately the very notion of doctrinal truth itself?

Here I would offer a thesis that Newman did not consider ...

Robert Royal and Fr. Gerald Murray discuss a new document — Fiducia supplicans — that came out today from the Dicastery on the Doctrine of the Faith, and approved by Pope Francis, that seeks to “broaden” and “enrich” the concept of “blessing” in the Church. This innovation, its seems, will even permit blessings for “same-sex couples” — just as long as they don’t give the impression of being the equivalent of traditional marriage.

By Brad Miner

Where has the time gone?

In 1990, when I was Literary Editor of National Review, I suggested that we do a college guide. It had the obvious title with a less obvious subtitle, "America's Top Liberal Arts Schools." I recruited Charles J. Sykes to help with the project. He'd recently published a fascinating book, ProfScam: Professors and the Demise of Higher Education. We then recruited five conservative scholars, flew them to New York, and developed, with them, criteria for evaluating American colleges and universities.

William F. Buckley Jr. wrote the Introduction.

I insisted that at the end of our endeavors, Charlie and I choose the school we'd want to attend were we 17 again. He considered the University of Chicago, University of the South, and St. John's College (the 2-campus liberal arts school), opting for the last. I titled my squib, "Somewhere in Indiana," and made the case for Wabash College and Notre Dame, opting for the Irish.

The second edition of the book came out exactly 40 years ago. My, how things have changed!

Of course, the term "politically correct" was very much in the air in the 1990s, so prophetic commentators might have seen our current (then future) madness coming, although even the most Isaiah-like seer couldn't have imagined the extent to which higher education would become subordinated to indoctrination. Transgenderism? Really?

One hears and reads a great deal these days about the rise of repressive leftism on campuses - of the kind that demands ideological conformity and rejects intellectual diversity: promoting LGBTQ-ism and refusing to allow dissenting voices on campus - or shouting them down if they try to speak. I've wondered if this is statistically valid or just the repetition of anecdotes blown up into a faux crisis.

For insight, I turned to the 2024 College Free Speech Rankings from College Pulse and FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education).

The rankings are not prophecies, of course, so the 2024 date is meant to suggest what students (and their parents) should expect to encounter on campuses in the next school year. The survey is based upon responses to a battery of questions from 55,102 students enrolled in 254 colleges and universities. That's a small number of the nearly 4,000 institutions that might have been surveyed, but it's certainly enough to indicate trends and differences.

I'll concentrate here just on Catholic schools. Out of the several hundred in America, the present survey looked at just 13. You may find it interesting that, overall (religious and secular), the best school for free speech is the Michigan Institute of Technology (score of 78.01) and the worst is poor, beleaguered Harvard (0.00).

Here are the Catholic schools listed in the FIRE report:

(Rated) Average:

DePaul (Chicago, IL) 53.18

Slightly Below Average:

University of San Francisco (San Francisco, CA) 40.84

Below Average:

University of Notre Dame (Notre Dame, IN) 39.92

Creighton University (Omaha, NE) 38.58

Santa Clara University (Santa Clara, CA) 38.47

Loyola University Chicago (Chicago, IL) 38.09

University of Dayton (Dayton, OH) 33.83

Poor:

Boston College (Boston, MA) 29.94

Marquette University (Milwaukee, WI) 29.60

Duquesne University (Pittsburgh, PA) 25.25

Fordham University (Bronx, NY) 21.72

Very Poor

Saint Louis University (St. Louis, MO) 18.74*

Georgetown University, Washington, DC) 17.45

[*Saint Louis is a school that "clearly and consistently states that it prioritizes other values over a commitment to freedom of speech." With 5 others, it was "excluded from the rankings and. . .scored relative to" only those 5 others.]

Take all that as you will, but one thing in the FIRE overview struck a nerve:

More than half of students (56%) expressed worry about damaging their reputation because of someone misunderstanding what they have said or done, and just over a quarter of students (26%) reported that they feel pressure to avoid discussing controversial topics in their classes. Twen...

By Stephen P. White

Early in the sixteenth century, Pope Julius II decided to tear down St. Peter's Basilica. The old basilica, built over the tomb of the Apostle by Constantine in the fourth century, had had a good run, even by Roman standards. But after twelve centuries of earthquakes, pillaging, and general neglect, Old Saint Peter's was in danger of falling down. So Pope Julius gave up his plans to renovate and had the thing torn down and replaced.

The basilica we know today with its majestic dome - the St. Peter's of Bramante and Michelangelo and Bernini - was begun in 1506 and consecrated in 1626. Which is to say that the St. Peter's we know has stood for only a third of the time that its ancient predecessor stood.

If tearing down one of Christendom's most hallowed sanctuaries wasn't enough, marble for the facade of the new basilica was sourced locally and relatively cheaply from one of Rome's favorite quarries: the Colosseum. Romans, particularly in the Middle Ages, but well beyond that, were not fussy about repurposing stone from old buildings and monuments.

Stripping marble from the Colosseum may seem an act of historical and cultural vandalism to us today. Repurposing the beautiful stone for something as grand as St. Peter's seems positively reverential compared to some other uses to which the Romans were known to put the Colosseum's acres of marble cladding. They used to crush and burn it to make quicklime.

What sort of culture has the audacity to use the Colosseum (and not just the Colosseum but most of the ancient Roman buildings) as a rock quarry? What sort of culture has the temerity to tear down one of the world's most venerable buildings, like Old St. Peter's, and yet has the confidence, capacity, and vision to build something as magnificent as the basilica that stands over the tomb of St. Peter today?

I remember being struck by this incongruity while in Rome some years ago. On the one hand, one cannot but lament this seeming indifference to the preservation of monuments we now think of as having irreplaceable cultural and historical significance. Yet this same willingness to plunder the past produced some of the greatest achievements of art and architecture in all of Western civilization.

We would never think of tearing off bits of the Colosseum to build a new church today. But neither do we seem capable of building anything of the lasting significance and beauty of St. Peter's. We might attempt to maintain or refurbish an ancient building, but it is hard to imagine simply tearing it down and even harder to imagine our culture building a replacement that might rival or exceed the enduring beauty and magnificence of the original.

I found myself wondering, that day in Rome, if there might actually be a causal connection between a culture's willingness to let go of the past - to allow the past to fade into memory or even be forgotten - and a culture's capacity for the kind of creativity and confidence to build something at once as new and magnificent as St. Peter's?

Our world has a hard time letting go. Museums, which we build to house beautiful things, but also curious, or even merely old things, are a relatively recent invention. The ancient and medieval worlds had nothing like the museums in the sense that we have them now. Yes, there were collections of art and sculpture and so forth, but the large-scale preservation of the minutest artifacts of the past is a distinctly modern phenomenon.

We studiously preserve the detritus of past eras yet build little that would be worth preserving a thousand years from now, if it even lasted that long. What we create these days is rarely intended as permanent, or even of enduring beyond a generation or two. It's not just architecture. Consider how much of contemporary art and literature consists in peddling nostalgia, of endless sequels and prequels, or of remaking old movies, this time with better, modern special effects.

Don't think that I'm undervaluing the past. Me...

By Rev. Peter M.J. Stravinskas

I often hear "Your generation destroyed the Church," from Catholics under the age of 50 - both clerical and lay. And I resent it. I don't mind owning up to mistakes I have made, but I refuse to be blamed for mistakes I didn't make. Let me explain.

It was precisely my generation that had our Catholic patrimony ripped from us, and, yes, precisely by the pre-Vatican generation (so extolled by so many young "conservatives"). The dismantling of the liturgy began when I was a freshman in high school; interestingly, the only time I ever got sent to the principal's office was because I mocked the singing of "Kumbaya" at a school Mass.

In my four years of Catholic high school, we had a different religion textbook each term. Three-quarters of the Sisters who taught me in high school fled the coop, as well as half the priests, thus discrediting themselves and many others as models for commitment to any vocation - marital, clerical or religious.

Entering the seminary just three weeks after Humanae Vitae, I embarked on the worst eight years of my life: heresy in the classroom, a liturgical nightmare, and a moral cesspool - all orchestrated by the pre-Vatican II generation (or at least countenanced by them).

Opposing the lunacy of the seminary scene got me thrown out three months before diaconal ordination as being "unsuited for ministry in the post-conciliar Church."

When we seminarians challenged problematic statements or practices with counterevidence from the Tradition of the Church, we were told those rebuttals were out of step with the "new" Church. We would have to wait nearly fifteen years for the revised Code of Canon Law (1983) and nearly a quarter-century for the Catechism of the Catholic Church(1992). And who can forget the bowdlerized English translations inflicted on us, which we had to endure for forty years, like the Hebrews of old wandering in the desert?

All of which reminds me of a snide remark the late, heretical Father Richard McBrien tossed in my direction during a PBS debate two decades ago: "Father Stravinskas would like the revival of the pre-Vatican II Church. Maybe he's right. After all, it produced me, and Charlie Curran, and Hans Küng!"

Once we came into our own, it was exactly "my" generation that took up the gauntlet thrown down by Pope John Paul II to reverse course on the madness we had inherited. For four decades and more, people like Robert Lockwood, Francis X. Maier, Robert Royal, Dr. Janet Smith, and Fr. Robert Sirico, among many others, have been in the vanguard of liturgical renewal, the promotion of theological clarity, authentic lay formation, and the restoration of Catholic education.

For which efforts, we were generally persecuted by The Establishment in the 1970s and ignored in the early 1980s. Thanks to John Paul's appointment of "restorationist" bishops like Pio Laghi, Sean O'Malley, Charles Chaput, William Baum, and John Donoghue to replace the fomenters of dissent like Jean Jadot, Peter Gerety, and John Dearden, the Church in America began to turn the corner into an era of sanity.

The younger generation of American Catholics often succumb to the temptation of engaging in revisionist history. Their frustration with the re-surfacing of the confusion of the 1960s and 1970s in the Francis era not infrequently leads them to blame not only my generation but also John Paul II and even Pius XII!

In mentioning all this I am not seeking accolades for myself or my generation, because I take seriously Our Lord's reminder to His disciples of the need to say: "We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty." (Luke 17:10) But please don't blame us for what we didn't do. I hold the very same positions today that I did in 1968, for which I was then condemned as a reactionary and now, by not a few hyper-traditionalists, as a liberal!

In third grade, delivering a book report to the class on the North American martyrs, I was asked by Sister Vera if I had learned an...

By David Warren

From the earliest moments of the Church, the Maccabean martyrs have been recognized as models and precursors of the Christian martyrs. More than a thousand years later, they inspired the Crusaders in their struggle to repossess the Holy Land.

My notion of a Christian Zionism may be obscurely tied up with my own habit of reading 1 Maccabees, each year when the Jewish calendar requires it: specifically, the remembrance of the liberation of Jerusalem from Seleucid rule, and the rededication of the Second (Herod's) Temple.

It is implicit in the celebration of Chanukah, the eight days of which conclude at nightfall this evening. We Jews (for Catholicism, founded by a Jew, is in the descent from Judaism) remember righteous warriors and saints, and all the miracles of our survival - which will continue, we believe, beyond the present day.

Our faith is, in this sense, a warrior faith: we may "submit" to death, where death is inevitable, but the living and the dead are joined in service to God, the Father.

It is a kind of spiritual "string theory" that I am advancing here, in my conception of the Church. The liturgy for the sacrifice of the Mass descends from the Temple worship at Jerusalem (as opposed to later rabbinical Judaism); "mainstream" Christianity follows from "mainstream" Judaism; and the Jews, in winning freedom, won freedom for us.

Events in the Middle East have reawakened Jewry to their peril, and to their destiny; the same should be the effect on Christians.

We had, in the events of 7th October, a reminder not only of the military situation (the Books of Maccabees are good at describing these), but of the moral realities. The Hamas terrorists who raped, tortured, and murdered Jewish innocents of all ages, and their guests, were exhibiting the opposite of prescribed "Judeo-Christian" behavior.

They belong to a religion founded upon Submission. Christ taught that we should rather KNOW the truth, and that the truth shall make us free.

He declared this, we read in our Scripture, "to those Jews, who believed him," and made disciples of them. Note, particularly: disciples, not slaves.

This continues to be an important distinction, at the present day, as the post-Christian inhabitants of the West show their preference for slavery.

The loss of religious faith is, to my mind or my knowledge, the very cause of this. The idea that human life can offer anything beyond a choice of submissions (to Islam, to Communism, to commerce, to perversity) is falling into desuetude; and by no surprise we have come to accept instructions from new masters.

They may not be human masters. Only our obedience is human. The new bureaucracies for the Batflu regime, or the climate regime, or "gender transitioning," are inhumanly, or "trans-humanly" guided. These are signs of the times.

"Democracy" has been reversed in our political life. Where, at least in theory, it meant that men would choose the members of their government, it now means government has been imposed - for "the people" have spoken, and our conscience is obviated. Voting decides all.

The individual Christian citizen is commanded by recent laws to obey not Christ, but Satan. In Canada, where I live, for instance, he must willingly kill babies and the old and ill if he is a medical professional. His conscience is no legal defense against the demands of a devil in human flesh.

The machine principle of bureaucracy can thus be applied in matters of life and death, as it was in Nazi Germany; and has been by many other psychopathic governments in the course of recorded history. The German people, like North Americans today, simply allowed it, from fear.

Free men do not allow tyrants. This has nothing to do with laws.

They use whatever means are necessary to recover their freedom. That is the principle behind the right to bear arms, which was not invented in America, but goes back through British and Mediaeval tradition.

This is what most of the victims of Hamas were lacking on...

By John M. Grondelski

In the Confiteor, Catholics acknowledge they sin "in my thoughts, in my words, in what I have done, in what I have failed to do." One can wrong another in many ways.

That perspective seemed to be missing in the testimony of three prestigious university presidents - Harvard's Claudine Gay, MIT's Sally Kornbluth, and Penn's already-defenestrated Elizabeth Magill - before a House committee about on-campus antisemitism. All three were excoriated for being unable to say whether employing antisemitic slogans - like "from the river to the sea" (the Palestinian saying about being free from Jews) - violated student codes.

They may have been lawyerly in their responses in order to evade liability or establish a precedent. But the heart of the question wasn't legal, but ethical: Are antisemitic threats inconsistent with the values of your university?

As Congresswoman Elise Stefanik put it: antisemitic slogans do not "depend on context. . .and this is why you should resign."

The presidents were parsing the difference between speech and behavior, setting themselves up as advocates of free speech, as long as it was peaceful and did not attack others.

Given their institutions' histories of suppressing campus speech deemed "hateful" (and usually conservative), some critics were quick to brand the trio as hypocrites. Others claimed the presidents and their conservative interlocutors had traded places: the presidents were suddenly for robust speech, while the legislators argued "they believe in free speech. Except when it comes to Israel."

A passel of commentators, channeling their inner Voltaire ("I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it") insisted "the fight for truth must be fought in the push and pull of unfettered debate" and "Let students grow up and engage with even the most vile of ideas." The latter view - David French's - even got a patriotic twist: "It's true liberty."

All those choices have one thing in common: they are the offspring of the dictatorship of relativism, unsupported by a thick, substantive ethic (much less metaphysic).

Most university speech codes are the product of woke-ism. Superficially, this might look like a system built on morality, but push hard enough and the "morality" reveals itself as political ideology, because its goalposts tend to move. Yesterday's perfectly acceptable position (e.g., that there are men and women and nothing else) is today's heresy.

Same with the presidents' "context-driven" solution: the essence of relativism is that everything is "context-driven." There are no fixed moral points. X might be good here but bad there. "It depends."

But what about the free-speech advocates? Most of them, too, are relativists. Their "free speech" is a proceduralist ethic, mostly agnostic about any intrinsic goods or evils about what is spoken. For them, "good" or "evil" consist in everybody abiding by a particular set of procedures.

No real goods (or evils) underline those procedures, only a "diversity" of "values" that a "democratic society" must "respect" or at least "tolerate." Most of these free speech advocates are also in a perennial quest for truth but equally convinced that truth is an unreachable star. Challenged by certitude they ask, like Pilate: "What is truth?"

My objection to free speech absolutists is their ultimate conflation of the "good" with "free speech" itself. It is not "good" to advocate genocide as long as you don't act on it. It is not "good" to shout "fire" in a theater when there's no fire, even if nobody gets hurt.

What underlying moral principle measures these words and behaviors?

A more substantive ethic (like Catholicism, which once upon a time was called "the Judeo-Christian ethic") has a set of principles to assess what is being said or done.

"Innocent people should not be deliberately killed" would be one principle in such a substantive ethic. By implication, it excludes advocacy of genocide in thought, wo...