Maryann White is the mother of a Notre Dame student, and last week she penned an Op-Ed for the Notre Dame campus newspaper titled “The Legging Problem.” The basic thrust of White’s article is a complaint against immodesty among women. In particular, she has a problem with the legging trend. She writes: I’m not trying to insult anyone or infringe upon anyone’s rights. I’m just a Catholic mother of four sons with a problem that only girls can solve: leggings. The emergence of leggings as pants some years ago baffled me. They’re such an unforgiving garment. Last fall, they obtruded painfully on my landscape. I was at Mass at the…

I woke up this morning to a troubling Op-Ed in The Washington Post by Cynthia Nixon. The entire article is a call for an end to civility toward anyone who holds Christian convictions about sexuality. In particular, the essay responds to the fact that former Vice-President Joe Biden recently referred to current Vice-President Mike Pence as a “decent man.” Nixon unloads on Biden for this flash of tolerance and civility, arguing that Mike Pence’s Christian convictions about sexuality are worthy of the severest public outrage and opprobrium. She writes, I think it’s important to explain why calling Pence “a decent guy” is an affront to the real meaning of the…

I don’t have a great deal to add to the voluminous online commentary about confrontation between some Catholic School boys and protestors at the March for Life. At this point, it is clear that the initial viral narrative condemning the boys was an embarrassing whiff on the part of the media (see here and here). It appears that many people were willing to believe the worst possible interpretation of a brief video clip simply because some of the boys were wearing MAGA hats. I wonder if the video would have gotten any attention at all had the boys not been wearing those hats. In any case, I was just thinking…

The Huffington Post apparently thinks it’s newsworthy that Karen Pence—wife of Vice President Mike Pence—has taken a teaching job at a Christian school. What’s so extraordinary about this? According to the report: It’s not a school where everyone is welcome. In a “parent agreement” posted online, the school says it will refuse admission to students who participate in or condone homosexual activity. The 2018 employment application also makes candidates sign a pledge not to engage in homosexual activity or violate the “unique roles of male and female.” “Moral misconduct which violates the bona fide occupational qualifications for employees includes, but is not limited to, such behaviors as the following: heterosexual…

I just finished a long and interesting Buzzfeed piece about Ellen Degeneres. There is much that I could comment on, but there is only one item I will highlight here. The author of the article writes this: Yes, we all have a shared humanity. But there is so much more that we don’t share—race, education level, class, marital status, ability, gender identity, the list goes on—and those are the things that directly contribute to our ability to succeed and survive in this world. I don’t know how else to read this except as a statement that what divides us is more significant than our shared humanity. Perhaps others read right…

In A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, Ebenezer Scrooge has a startling conversation with the ghost of his dead business partner, Jacob Marley. Jacob is damned in death for his misdeeds in life, and he appears to warn Scrooge that he is headed for the same fate. Scrooge resists the suggestion that Jacob’s life was damnable. Scrooge understands that if Jacob’s life is damnable, then so is his own. So this exchange ensues: “But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,” faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself. “Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing his hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my…