Saint Stephen’s Anglican Church

“I just don’t understand what all the fuss is about,” a lady told me recently. “This contraception thing doesn’t affect Roman Catholic Churches. It only affects workers at their institutions, like schools, hospitals, colleges and universities. And the employees aren’t obliged to accept free contraceptives if they object to them.

“Actually,” she went on, “I . . . → Read More: Coach & horses through the First Amendment

Presidential elections, these days, tend to be uncharitable affairs. How else can one describe the behavior of political adversaries—mostly decent people who share the same ultimate goals, but differ greatly in the means of reaching them—who accuse each other of wildly exaggerated forms of wrong doing?

With so much uncharity on the air waves, it . . . → Read More: Don’t begrudge prayers for the politicians you dislike

When it comes to news these days, it seems to be a case of either feast or famine. Surveys indicate that in many American news markets people would hardly be aware that elections were underway if they had to rely solely on the broadcast media.

Readers of the nation’s daily newspapers, by contrast, could be . . . → Read More: Boring us to death … ?

The most profound social change that has taken place over the past half–century or so has been the abandonment of moral absolutes in favor of “situation ethics”—ethics that change according to the situation in which they are being applied.

In the early 1960s, for instance, John Profumo, the British defense minister, resigned his office in . . . → Read More: Time for a hypocritical tribute to virtue … ?

Somebody recently asked me why my sermons so often end with a reflection on our Christian obligation to love our fellow men. I replied that it is the subject of the most frightening passage in the whole of the Bible: The 13th Chapter of the First Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians.

Some might . . . → Read More: A virtue you can’t do without