Subscribe to Ailbe Newsletters
Sign up to receive our email newsletters and read columns about revival, renewal, and awakening built upon prayer, sharing, and mutual edification.
I rise today to salute America's two favorite holidays. This is only appropriate, of course, as they are both upon us just now, one today, and one in a month or so. That these are America's two favorite holidays is obvious in a number of ways: heightened economic activity, special…
Looking ahead to 2010, Adrian Wooldridge, writing in The Economist ("The World in 2010" special issue) observes that this is an excellent time for government to be hiring really smart people. After all, nobody else has any money to hire them, and governments in America and elsewhere seem willing to…
Remember that old joke about 500 lawyers at the bottom of the sea? It came to mind yesterday when it was reported that Rhode Island Bishop Thomas Tobin had instructed Patrick Kennedy to cease from taking the Lord's Supper because of his position on abortion. The Catholic Church has been…
Esther de Waal writes, "Who knows the secrets of the world? Not the learned men, but the poets." I note that she didn't include lawmakers in the possible answers. And yet America's lawmakers act as though not only do they and they alone know the secrets of economics, health care,…
No, I haven't read the health care reform bills currently before the Congress, either from the House or the Senate. But what has been reported about them leads me to think the abundance of verbiage is not so much designed to craft a careful law as to cover crafty lawmakers.…
Of course, we cannot really know what's on the heart of politicians, except insofar as it pleases them to reveal their motives in any matter. I can't imagine any politician offering as his explanation for some public policy position that he just likes the feeling of power or that he…
Do not adjust your set. That distinguished young gentleman talking about the need to curtail America's debt is indeed the same President Obama who has spent the first year of his tenure driving that debt through the ceiling. Suddenly Mr. Obama is listening to the voices of sanity and the…
The reports are beginning to come in on the impact of the federal stimulus package of last spring. From all over the country we are hearing of jobs being created and saved by the scores of thousands. There's only one problem: much of it is apparently untrue. The latest official…
Every parent knows that if you continue to do everything for your children, they'll never grow up. They will discover that they don't have to clean up their room, in spite of all your threats; sooner or later you'll do it for them. Homework due tomorrow? No problem; mom and…
The function of our eyes, at least in part, is to convey information to the brain about our immediate surroundings, thus allowing the brain to calculate the best course of action, say, around the jutting edge of a cedar chest. It is important, therefore, that our eyes be clearly focused…
Our growing postmodern consensus is breeding the poison of tolerance into the moral life of our society. So toxic has the nation's moral bloodstream become with this doctrine that it is increasingly difficult for the nation's opinion-makers to render meaningful judgments on moral issues. Who are we, the logic goes,…
The history of Western civilization shows us that a trinity of liberties is almost inextricably linked. Freedom of religion, free governments, and free markets have been found together in the West for nearly 1,000 years now. These did not develop all at once. Historically, freedom of religion had to be…
I've been mulling over the question of what Americans consider "news." That is, when we go to the evening news programs, pick up the daily paper, or peruse a periodical, what are we looking for? What do we want to know, and why? Just as important, how do the people…
In his remarks yesterday during the memorial service at Ft. Hood, President Obama declared that "no faith" would justify such horrible acts of violence against innocent people. While I appreciate the President's being present to express the nation's sorrow and outrage, I can't help but wonder what in the world…
In 1974 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put forth his formula for bringing down the Soviet Union. He wrote in an essay entitled, "As Breathing and Consciousness Return", that all that would be necessary to usher in the end of Marxism in Russia would be for every person who loved his country "to…