The Lamp magazine, assisted suicide, and the difference between Gen X and Millennial Catholics

By Peter Wolfgang ( bio - articles - email ) | Jan 18, 2025

I don’t get The Lamp magazine. I don’t mean that I don’t subscribe, although I don’t. I did subscribe for its first year (about which, more in a moment). I mean that I don’t “get” where The Lamp is coming from.

Here is Exhibit A in my incomprehension: Is 2025 the Year of Assisted Suicide? The “right to die” movement is gaining momentum in the states. The article appears in The American Conservative but it’s penned by the managing editor of The Lamp. It has the same defeatist tone I’ve come to expect from them.

In a recent piece for the National Catholic Register, for instance, I praised Lamp editor Matthew Walther’s brilliant coining of the phrase “Barstool Republicans” to distinguish anti-Woke libertarians from Christian conservatives. But I took issue with Walther’s conclusion that growing our coalition is a bad thing:

Walther was prescient in identifying certain trends. But where Walther sees cause for despair in those trends, I see opportunity. For those of us who do not accept that “the great battles have been lost for good,” but only that some battles have been lost for now, there is a lot to work with here…. Why should we assume, with Walther, that it is the Barstool conservatives that will influence the social conservatives? Why not the other way around? My sense is that there is a real opportunity for that to occur, for us to influence them.

Let’s call Walther’s cynicism about the coalition that just re-elected President Trump Exhibit B. But come back with me to Exhibit A. Nic Rowan, managing editor of The Lamp, treats the impending legalization of assisted suicide in the United States as almost inevitable. This is hogwash.

Twenty states introduced assisted suicide bills last year. Not even one passed. In fact, no state has legalized assisted suicide in the last three years, despite efforts in deep-blue states like New York, Massachusetts, Maryland and Minnesota. In the states where it has passed, it was by the slimmest of margins and against bipartisan opposition. In states where it did pass, like California, or where it almost passed, like Delaware, the pro-assisted suicide crowd usually gamed the system.

As for the polls, there is a whole lot of context missing from Rowan’s article. Yes, the polls show support for assisted suicide. If Rowan had bothered to speak to anyone on our side, he would know the support for assisted suicide is a mile wide and an inch deep. When we drill down on the issue with people who say they support it, when we explain what it would involve, they change their minds. That is how we’ve been beating it here in Connecticut for over a decade. A local disability rights group leading the fight against assisted suicide calls itself “Second Thoughts Connecticut” for precisely this reason. The polls on assisted suicide are very misleading.

Of particular interest to me personally is Rowan’s claim that two columns by George Will in pushing assisted suicide were “eloquent.” They weren’t. Those two columns specifically targeted Connecticut for assisted suicide legalization in 2022. Here is my wife in the Waterbury Republican-American, responding to the first Will column:

And here I am in the Hartford Courant, responding to Will’s second column:

Will’s columns were timed to bring maximum pressure on the Connecticut state legislature as it was hearing the assisted suicide bill in 2022. We beat assisted suicide in 2022. We beat it even more in 2023. In 2024, assisted suicide supporters did not even propose a bill, after their media gimmicks flopped.

What is going on here? Why am I—an older guy who has lived through the defeat of causes to which I have given my adult life—more upbeat about the future than the cynical young people at The Lamp? I have a few thoughts on that, based on having read the magazine during its first year of existence.

I think The Lamp is more for the Millennial integralist, or BenOp enthusiast, than it is for the Gen X pro-life activist. For Walther, the discovery and naming of the Barstool Republicans is an impetus to view political engagement in general with cynicism, whereas for me, it’s simply a new scorecard outlining a fresh set of challenges to overcome in our political activity. I think that’s a key difference between the Millennial Catholic and the Gen X Catholic.

The younger set grew up in a country that considers Catholics “enemies of humanity,” as Justice Scalia put it in his 2013 dissent in the gay marriage Windsor ruling. The Benedict Option, Patrick Deneen’s low view of the American founding, doubling down on internals like the Traditional Latin Mass...this all makes sense given their generation’s experience. If it was my experience, I might be right there with them.

But my formative experiences were the Bicentennial and Ronald Reagan and John Paul II and the Fall of the Berlin Wall and digging in my heels on the pro-life fight during Bill Clinton and ever after. I’m not the kind of guy who shares, say, Pater Edmund Waldstein’s strange belief that medieval France is an ideal to be sought in the 21st century United States. I’m the kind of guy who cheered Ross Douthat’s polite takedown of integralism, and double-cheered Douthat’s response to Waldstein.

That’s not to say The Lamp shouldn’t do what it does. It speaks for an important school of commentary in the Catholic world. There must be a place for that. For New Oxford Review, for The Lamp, for all Catholic points of view that are non-establishment but still faithful, still orthodox. That is how I view The Lamp, a sort of New Oxford Review for the younger set, and I wish it well. During the one year I was reading it, I loved every single reference to the Anglican Ordinariate. I think Sam Kriss is great. I like the Brandon McGinley-style ground level writing about Catholic communities that I saw in The Lamp, by Brandon and others. Even after I didn’t renew my subscription, I was fortunate to acquire its issue commemorating the life of Pope Benedict XVI, with the finest articles anyone had published on the occasion of the great man’s death.

But in the matter of public policy, I will say this. Leadership is about seeing the possibilities and working to bring them to fruition. Not always lamenting about how gosh darn bad the world has gotten.

Peter Wolfgang is president of Family Institute of Connecticut Action, a Hartford-based advocacy organization whose mission is to encourage and strengthen the family as the foundation of society. His work has appeared in The Hartford Courant, the Waterbury Republican-American, Crisis Magazine, Columbia Magazine, the National Catholic Register, CatholicVote, Catholic World Report, the Stream and Ethika Politika. He lives in Waterbury, Conn., with his wife and their seven children. The views expressed on Catholic Culture are solely his own. See full bio.
Sound Off! CatholicCulture.org supporters weigh in.

All comments are moderated. To lighten our editing burden, only current donors are allowed to Sound Off. If you are a current donor, log in to see the comment form; otherwise please support our work, and Sound Off!

  • Posted by: ewaughok - Jan. 20, 2025 11:02 PM ET USA

    I am grateful to Mr. Wolfgang for his work on the pro life issues throughout Connecticut and the nation. He deserves our deep thanks. And the Lamp has both good and bad points. But so does everything! I cannot agree that Mr. do that scored many points in his First Things articles. They were long, turgid and, if not completely uninsightful, they were full of puff. They certainly showed off his “insufficiencies as a philosopher,” to quote his self-description in the second article on Fr Waldstein.

  • Posted by: winnie - Jan. 20, 2025 5:03 PM ET USA

    Wise words from one tested in the continuing pro-life battle.