Scott P. Richert

Two thousand fifteen was the year that we Americans broke history. By “breaking history,” I do not mean something like “breaking news,” or “breaking records,” or even “breaking the Internet” (though the Internet certainly played a role).

The editors were saddened to learn of the passing, on April 3, of our onetime colleague and longtime friend Matthew A. Rarey.

Today, we need to consider the challenges faced by those who are celebrating Trump’s victory. And the most important challenge is the temptation to make it personal.

Omar Mateen, a U.S. citizen and the son of Muslim immigrants, was investigated by the FBI twice for connections to Islamic radicals. Twice they dropped the investigation. He killed 49 and injured at least 50 others in Orlando in June 2016.

If local Planned Parenthood affiliates can maximize their profits by “accepting money” in return for “fetal tissue donations,” why wouldn’t they?

A glorious future awaits, if only we choose to embrace it.

It's time for the separation of marriage and state.

The Constitution is a living document, and its name is Anthony Kennedy.

ObamaCare has never been about socialism, but about Big Insurance—as the U.S. Supreme Court has now confirmed.

As the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to hand down its decision regarding gay marriage, Scott P. Richert tells us what to expect and reminds us how we got here.

Was the murder of 11 members of the staff of a French “satirical” magazine a civilized act? Even to ask that question seems absurd.

Even before the announcement of his “executive action” plan for amnesty for five million illegal immigrants, the President’s defenders had claimed that he wanted to do nothing more than Ronald Reagan had done.

For many Catholics of a certain age, Joseph Sobran will forever be remembered as one of the greatest literary defenders of the Catholic Church's teaching on life over the past 40 years.

There are no political solutions to cultural problems. But in the public square, all problems are political, so, by definition, all solutions must be, too. Let me be blunt: How's that been working out for you?

Twenty-five years ago, the simple line "There is little doubt about the urgency of the crisis for Europe" in a publication such as Chronicles might have earned a stinging rebuke on the editorial page of the New York Times. Now, the Times simply reports it as fact—which it was then, just as much as it is now.

Four-and-a-half months into Pope Francis's pontificate, it's become more than a little tiresome to hear both his admirers and his detractors compare him with Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. "Benedict would never have done . . . " rolls as easily off the lips of aging Call to Action types as it does off the fingers of the bloggers at the traditionalist website Rorate Caeli.

Those who mourn the Senate's failure to confirm President Reagan's nomination of Judge Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court make the undeniable claim that a Justice Bork would have been different from a Justice Kennedy. But the real question is how different, and in what ways?

I certainly understand Mr. Oliver's point, but I'm afraid he has misunderstood mine. Do I think that John Roberts has a burning desire to impose a "radical social agenda" on the country? No.

Chief Justice John Roberts was initially nominated by President George W. Bush to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the country's high court. So, in the wake of today's ObamaCare decision, authored by Roberts, it's no surprise that many who wanted to see the Court drive a stake through the heart of the most overreaching piece of federal legislation in American history are comparing Roberts to O'Connor.

In Earl Warren Rides Again, I wrote: Roberts portrays his decision as a check on federal power—if the Court had upheld the individual mandate under the Commerce Clause, it "would open a new and potentially vast domain to congressional authority." But it's unclear whom he thinks he is fooling. Silly me. I should have known the answer.

America has lost one of her best novelists and writers of short stories, and perhaps the last chronicler of a world that can no longer be found.

I learned of the death of my friend and schoolmate Ellen Middlebrook Herron the way I increasingly learn of all such milestones on life's journey: through Facebook.

"All these things are a lot like TV." Well, yes and no. The damage done by TV was rather total. The older neighborhoods of Rockford have many front porches; very few of them are ever used today, even on evenings that are as beautiful as today's is likely to be.

Few technologies (and I'm using that term loosely here, because I think that social media doesn't really deserve that title) are wholly evil, though I am willing to stipulate that, on a continuum from fire, the lever, and the wheel (the relatively good) to nuclear energy (the relatively evil), the entire computer revolution sits very close to the latter. But, as you've suggested, Tom, we have to use the tools we have if we wish "to survive in an increasingly inhuman world."

Memorial Day has always been my favorite secular holiday, in part because it is the most Catholic of all U.S. holidays. It is the only day of the year in which significant numbers of Americans (of all religious backgrounds) visit cemeteries to honor the dead, though their numbers (the honorers, not the honorees) are dwindling with each passing year.

Tom, I'm pretty optimistic about the lawsuit filed by Notre Dame and 42 other Catholic organizations. Filing essentially the same case in multiple federal district courts increases the possibility of getting the right result out of at least one, and getting mixed results will kick this issue up to the Supreme Court.

Executive editor Scott P. Richert uncovers an unwitting plot to promote Chronicles. Find out who's behind it, and take advantage of a special offer.

In late February, in the midst of the uproar over Live Action's exposé of Planned Parenthood, I wrote a piece about the controversy for the About.com Catholicism GuideSite. The piece argued that, whatever good intentions Lila Rose and her comrades at Live Action may have had, they stepped over the line, and their tactics could not be justified under Catholic moral theology. But now, five or six weeks later, I'm beginning to have second thoughts.