Asserting and financing the Catholic Western tradition
by Nick Olson in Commentary
When I was in the middle of my college search in high school in Minnesota, I remember the University of Dallas stood out from its other 5,000 competitors for two keen reasons: its academic tradition and its Catholicism.
Now we are engaged in a presidential search challenging whether this University, and any university conceived and dedicated in the Catholic academic tradition, can endure and flourish.
Republicans need to rediscover their conservative identity
by Kevin Burns in Commentary
Many conservatives are biding their time, waiting for the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November 2010. Between President Obama's sliding approval numbers and Congress's stellar approval rating of 25 percent, many conservatives and Republicans are content to wait for the inevitable changing of the guard.
I am not one of those conservatives. I do not want Republicans to retake Congress merely because Democrats overreached and tried to implement socialized medicine, cap-and-trade and card check within nine months of taking office. I fear a Republican victory in 2010.
by Marjorie Jeffrey in Commentary
On Wednesday, Pope Benedict XVI endeared himself even more to conservative Catholics and Anglicans around the world, ushering in a new era for so-called Anglo-Catholics and effectively bypassing the ecumenical dialogues, which have made little or no progress over the course of years. The announcement was made that an "Apostolic Constitution" had been approved that would sweep away obstacles to Anglicans coming into the Church, leaving the hierarchy of the Anglican Church astounded.
How much has changed since the movie's 1943 release?
by Laurence Butler in Commentary
It is difficult and uncommon to find some piece of media, some exposition, which is particularly damning for one person or group. Kanye West's drunken belligerence has not curtailed his record sales any more than David Letterman's well-publicized affairs have brought him bad publicity. There are some few outbursts of the entertainment industry, be they songs or movies, which can define generations, encompass cultural movements, or capture a particular mentality with inimitable effectiveness.
Warner Bros.' "Mission to Moscow," first released in 1943, is one such film, and one whose re-release last Tuesday is as appropriate and unsurprising now as it was 65 years ago. This blatant, calibrated piece of Soviet and communist propaganda was requested directly by President Franklin Roosevelt and is, as a critic put it at the time, a $2 million love letter to Josef Stalin.
