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In Depth Analysis

Displaying 40 most recent blog posts.

• February 01, 2012 Clericalism By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  I read through Russell Shaw’s book on clericalism last night. I had missed it the first time around, when it was published by Ignatius Press in 1993. Now it is out in a new printing from Wipf and

• January 13, 2012 Banning Contraception? The Art of the Possible By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  Phil Lawler’s brilliant essay on contraception and gay marriage (On same-sex marriage, who are the real ‘extremists’?) reminds me of why we are so fortunate to have him as part of the team that runs

• January 11, 2012 Ignorance, Ideology, Sovietology and Provisional Politics at Home By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  In dipping into a series of essays on ideology and totalitarianism, I’ve been reminded of the ludicrous ways in which Soviet Communism was conceptualized, explained and assessed throughout the

• January 06, 2012 Saint Death, Churches, and Catholic Scholarship By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  As I finished skimming R. Andrew Chesnut’s new book on the Mexican/Mexican American cult of Santa Muerte (Saint Death), I happened to notice that the first cover blurb was from Thomas Tweed, author

• December 15, 2011 Toward a Realistic View of Society By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  In the “While We’re at It” section of First Things last month, I found this: “Critics of neoconservatism don’t seem to grasp that support for a market economy and limited government doesn’t express

• December 09, 2011 Evil in Human Guise: Reflections Occasioned by Plan B By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  It turns out that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius surprised everybody by denying approval for over-the-counter sales of Plan B. Had the petition gone through, it would have

• November 28, 2011 The Moral Obligation of Reality, II By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  In a Sound Off! comment on my last essay (The Moral Obligation of Reality), bservaes4399 explains that he does not see how my argument moves from what is to what ought to be. This question is not to

• November 17, 2011 Purgatory in Scripture: New Developments By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  The Catholic doctrine of Purgatory and the Catholic practice of prayers for the dead stretch back to the earliest Christian period, but the emphasis on salvation by faith has typically caused

• November 08, 2011 Abortion, the Poisoning of Social Justice, and the Rush to Judgment By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  I have a theory. I cannot provide statistical evidence to support it, but I still think it explains a good deal about why contemporary social services and anti-poverty initiatives, even in the

• November 03, 2011 Parsing Beleaguered Words: The Perils of Getting Things Wrong By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  Under duress, people say the darndest things. Often these comments help shape the world, for better or worse. But to get real value from these incidents, you have to parse the text; you have to

• October 26, 2011 Shooting the Messenger: What the Church teaches about her own authori... By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  Phil Lawler and I have had some very negative responses to our commentaries on Monday’s recommendation by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace to establish a new stratum of world government

• October 18, 2011 Fundamentalism and the Abandonment of Reason By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  Is fundamentalism a significant problem? Do we even know what fundamentalism is? Archbishop Thomas Menamparampil drew my attention to it at the end of September when he asserted that, in Asia at

• October 05, 2011 What is Special about What We Do? By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  The bottom line is that you can’t get what CatholicCulture.org offers anywhere else. This is a case we need to make effectively to our users if we expect them to dig deep to support this Catholic

• September 30, 2011 Toward a Viable Catholic Political Strategy for our Times By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  Yesterday’s Catholic World News story about the brutality of China’s one-child policy is heart-wrenching. You’ll find the testimony from the recent US Congressional hearing compelling. But it raises

• September 20, 2011 Difficult Theology and the Goodness of God By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  It is amazing, sometimes, the corners into which religious thinkers can paint themselves as they strive to unravel the mind of an infinite God. This can be true of any of us meditating on an aspect

• September 09, 2011 Prayer: A Primer on the Path to Union By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  Prayer can be classified in more ways than we can count. From one point of view, we are either praying with the Church in liturgical prayer, or praying more generally in a group, or praying alone.

• September 01, 2011 What Does it Mean to Be Saved? By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  A point that confuses both Catholics and Protestants is what Scripture means when it speaks of “salvation” or being “saved”. Protestants, following Luther, often think that being saved in Scripture

• August 25, 2011 Catholic Gender Moralism and Cultural Chauvinism By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  Bro. Rex Anthony Norris of the Little Portion Hermitage in the Diocese of Portland, Maine was kind enough to send us the text of a letter to the editor he found in the August 9th issue of Christian

• August 18, 2011 Our Collective Wisdom: Responding Properly By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  It is time to unveil the wisdom of the many CatholicCulture.org users who have kindly submitted their thoughts on how best to respond to those who condemn or rudely challenge the Church, the Faith

• August 08, 2011 Government, Natural Law, and the Modern State By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  The governmental horse still has life enough, I think, for one more beating. Several of our readers have commented on the importance of governmental adherence to a law higher than itself. One of the

• August 04, 2011 The Question of Government Size and Scope By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  In Budgetary Reform: Opportunity Knocks, I made the point that budgetary problems should be perceived as an opportunity scale back the size of government. My premise was that, at least in the modern

• July 27, 2011 Christian Human Dignity By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  I explained in the last installment why it made perfect sense to look to Revelation to determine the nature of human dignity, and I also explained why Judaism and Christianity were the first two

• July 08, 2011 Clarifications on Sterile Marriages By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  My recent writings have caused some readers to raise two problems with respect to my arguments against homosexual unions. More than one person has written to question my emphasis on the procreation

• June 30, 2011 Indifference to Evangelization, Rebuked By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  Not long ago I noticed some spam-like emails circulating from a certain Feeneyite source (to which I do not wish to give any publicity whatsoever), in which I was gratuitously denounced once again

• June 27, 2011 The Green Pope’s Dilemma By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  Criticism tends to run high on CatholicCulture.org whenever bishops speak out on environmental issues, though it is generally more muted when it comes to the statements of the Pope. It seems to me

• June 09, 2011 Hiding from Truth: Denying What We Can’t Not Know By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  In the second installment in this series on human dignity I asserted that “anyone who advances a particular understanding of the nature of man, the nature of intellect, the nature of will, or the

• June 03, 2011 Federal Rulings Against Catholic Colleges Raise Hard Truths By Patrick Reilly

  After years of urging from the Vatican and the bishops to renew Catholic identity in Catholic higher education, it seems the U.S. government is forcing the issue. The lesson? A college or

• May 16, 2011 How to Discuss the Liturgy By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  Inevitably the publication of Universae Ecclesiae has stimulated heartfelt exchanges on the liturgy, and once again I have seen a tendency (though not generally in the public posts on

• May 02, 2011 How Do We Know Our Faith? By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  This is hard for us. Every day we come across people who make the wildest assertions about what is true and not true with respect to faith in God, Jesus Christ, Mary, the Saints, Christian morality,

• April 15, 2011 Socio-Economics from the Outside By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  There is a certain paralysis that can afflict socio-economic discussions even among committed Catholics. For example, the other day I thought of adding my two cents to the discussion list for the

• April 05, 2011 Caring, Inclusive, and Afraid: A Case Study By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  One could hardly fail to notice the doctrinaire rhetoric of St. Columban’s College in Caboolture, Queensland, Australia. It seems the school (similar to an American high school) was forced to defend

• March 24, 2011 Benedict’s Second Volume and the Historical Critical Method By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  Jesus of Nazareth Part II is out, and I’m working my way through it, not only to pass along the highlights but for spiritual reading. The Pope’s first volume (see Benedict’s New Book, The “Our

• March 14, 2011 The Catholic Approach to Scripture By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  One of our users, who in the process of converting from a Protestant background, asked me to comment on some things she was taught about Scripture in her RCIA class. In particular, she was

• March 09, 2011 Human Judgment and the Neutral Public Square By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  Did you ever stop to consider that no moral or political judgment can be made without reference to the nature, purposes and ends of the human person? There is a kind of theory, or perhaps more

• March 03, 2011 Fathoming the Mercy of God By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  When I was a professor at Christendom College in the early 1980’s, I had an outstanding student named John Janaro, who also played bass in our little swing band. About the time John graduated, I

• February 24, 2011 What This Means: Christian Witness in the Modern World By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  In classical apologetics, arguments proceed step by step toward something which at least approaches a proof. The arguments are important, but they cannot logically force someone to believe. If that

• February 10, 2011 Can the Legion of Christ Be Fixed? By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  A searching article by former Legion of Christ priest Fr. Richard Gill, Can the Legion of Christ Be Repaired?, raises all the right questions, questions which merit serious consideration as the

• February 03, 2011 Is There Scandal in Ecumenical Prayer? By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  In response to last week’s In Depth Analysis (Ecumenism: The Conversion Question), one of our readers suggested, with reference to the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, that praying with

• January 27, 2011 Ecumenism: The Conversion Question By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  At Vespers on January 25th, Pope Benedict stressed the obligation each Christian has to work for Christian unity. That is clearly true, of course; after all, Our Lord prayed that His disciples might

• January 21, 2011 Ex Corde Ecclesiae in America By Dr. Jeff Mirus

  This year each Catholic college and university president will meet with his local bishop to review institutional progress in implementing The Application of Ex Corde Ecclesiae in the United States,