A look back at 2024, Catholic Culture, and me
By Peter Wolfgang ( bio - articles - email ) | Dec 27, 2024
Since September 5th I have been writing a weekly column for Catholic Culture. If you include one other column from July 22nd and this one, that makes 18 columns in 2024 for Catholic Culture’s newest columnist. This being my last column of the calendar year, let’s look back and assess. How did I do?
The presidential election loomed large. My first piece for Catholic Culture took the Trump-Vance campaign to the woodshed for gutting the GOP’s pro-life platform. I understand the need for prudence in difficult political circumstances but Trump-Vance, it seemed to me, failed Pope St. John Paul II’s requirement that, even when compromising, pro-life politicians must be clear about their goal of ending abortion.
One commenter, FredC, argued that such clarity was itself imprudent:
I don’t think that Trump/Vance need to make public their ultimate goal, which I hope is the abolition of abortion, even if accomplished incrementally. They probably think that if they were to state this as their ultimate goal, they would not be elected. By discarding reason and emphasizing emotion, the Democrats have made abortion the sine qua non for a majority of voters. Trump wanted to remove abortion from the Democrat arsenal.
There is a strong case to be made that Fred was right. Kamala Harris ran on abortion above all else. In voting against her, the country voted against abortion—or at least against Harris’ extremist to-the-nth-degree advocacy of it. Furthermore, the pro-life assurances of pro-abortion HHS nominee RFK Jr shows what a wily game Trump is playing on the subject.
On the other hand, Trump refuses to restrict the abortion pill, which is how most abortions occur. What is to be done?
Lots. For one thing, we cannot give up on restricting abortion, any more than we would on any other form of homicide. My Catholic Culture column was noticed by the Washington Examiner, which in turn was noticed by the New York Times, in an article in which Sherif Girgis, “a Catholic legal scholar at the University of Notre Dame who attended law school with Mr. Vance,” seemed to clarify Vance’s position on Vance’s behalf.
Either way, we need to hit the demand side as hard as we do the supply side. That means acknowledging that most abortions are the result of nonmarital sex and that encouraging and strengthening marriage will reduce abortion. In my September 26th column, I drew attention to Ryan Anderson’s excellent article on the subject.
My second weekly column, on September 13th, argued that Trump beat Kamala in their debate. It’s a view held by almost no one and I took some hits in the comments for writing a Catholic Culture column “untethered” to anything specifically Catholic. Mea culpa.
My October 26th column urging Catholics to break out of the usual “on the one hand, pro-life/on the other hand, social justice” way of viewing politics stood up better. In my post-election Nov. 9th column it seemed to me that the Catholic electorate did break out of the old paradigm. As I have argued elsewhere, even some of the recent erosion of our political witness may have opened new doors for evangelization—if we seize the opportunity.
Some of my politics-adjacent articles had nothing to do with the election. My September 20th column on the GOP and freemasonry caused a stir in certain circles. I heard from readers who told me it was only a problem in New England or even just my part of Connecticut. Others wrote to me privately with firsthand accounts indicating that it’s an issue that is much more widespread than we know.
My October 4th column on the Israel-Gaza War caused me to learn of the Philos Project, which fosters Catholic-Jewish friendship and a better understanding of our faith’s Middle Eastern roots more generally. My December 7th column on the passing of Connecticut’s former governor, Jodi Rell, was so hot here in my state that people were afraid to link to it. My December 21st column on Trump’s nomination of Brian Burch to be U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, on the other hand, has received a lot of feedback—all of it positive.
A weekly column is a great opportunity to get pet peeves off your chest. For instance, defending Columbus Day against Cultural Marxism, as I did on October 11th, and the traditional American Thanksgiving against the one-upmanship of our tribe, as I did on Nov. 16th. On October 18th I even leaned into Peter Kreeft’s argument that the Reformation is over. Not for everyone, apparently. “The Roman Catholic Church is a counterfeit. She is a prostitute. The Church of Rome is the masterpiece of Satan,” wrote someone on my Facebook, in response to my column. Father Raymond J. de Souza had more a genteel reaction.
On Nov. 2nd I commented on the 100th anniversary of Commonweal Magazine and on Nov. 22nd I had something to say about the 10th anniversary of Joseph Bottum’s “An Anxious Age.” The role of the Catholic commentariat in shaping our perceptions—and the epic nosedive of 1990s giddiness about Catholicism’s prospects in the early 21st century—deserves more attention than it gets.
A friend of the Pillar objected to my November 29th column on Fr. Carlos Martins. But the Diocese of Joliet has yet to provide the “context” she claims, other than to say that the exorcist’s lawyers gave “incomplete information.”
My December 14th column on the Catholic New Left may have generated the most feedback of all. One of the subjects blocked me on Facebook. Another told me they felt misrepresented. One person said I was too easy on EWTN. Nearly everyone else said I was too easy on the Catholic New Left.
I’ll end where my weekly columns began. My September 5th column asking why there aren’t more Catholic Bibles. I spoke too soon! The long-awaited Ignatius Catholic Study Bible is out. Ascension Press just published what many consider to be the first premium Catholic Bible. Catholic Bible Press is putting out great new editions of the RSV-2CE and the NABRE. Word on Fire’s Bible presses are, well, on fire. My own dear wife just got me the nicest ESV-CE in existence. And if you are all about the Douay-Rheims, get thee to a Baronius Press.
Merry Christmas, Catholic Culture readers. And thank you for reading!
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.
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