Politics

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We're not all secularists now

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When I interned at The New Republic, an editor there told me something about Andrew Sullivan that I have been turning over in my mind ever since. Sullivan doesn’t care about Christianity, he said. He does care about Catholicism, but only because he grew up in the faith. For years, I failed to grasp what this editor meant. But after reading Sullivan’s panegyric on behalf of Barack Obama and reflecting on it, now I do. Sullivan is a secularist. For all of his love of Catholic rituals, he rejects and, in a few instances, disdains its morality and theology, not to mention its authority.


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The church of media coverage

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I know we always claim we’re going to stop talking about Pat Robertson but he keeps making it difficult. We just don’t know how to quit you, Pat! Whatever his other merits, the televangelist has an amazing ability to make news. Such as today when he gave Rudy Guiliani his endorsement for president. Even more newsworthy, Guiliani took the endorsement! Here’s how The Washington Post‘s Chris Cillizza wrote it up:


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Of the making of lists there is no end

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The right-of-center Daily Telegraph, Great Britain’s only remaining broadsheet, has published a list of what its editors consider the 100 most influential conservatives and liberals in the United States. The list tells us a lot about how the British see our next presidential election. It’s also a peek into how journalists across the pond understand America’s political power structure. Where do they rank the leaders of our political, business, social and, yes, religious institutions?


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Prayer in the Indiana Statehouse

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There’s been a surprisingly low level of news coverage on a trial judge’s ruling that “sectarian prayers” on the floor of Indiana’s House (the lower level of its General Assembly) violated the “constitutional separation of church and state.” Most recently, an appeals court tossed the case on procedural grounds, but didn’t look at the merits of the case because the plaintiffs didn’t have standing.


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Going to the source

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Catholic social thought is all the rage these days. Or so says Michael Gerson, in his never-ceases-to-annoy-me Washington Post column. I think Terry is going to look into the column and some of the recent media coverage of Gerson. But here’s just a snippet in which he argues that Catholic social teaching is battling for the soul of the Republican Party:


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