Category: Church
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Sed Contra: Court TV USA
Deal W. Hudson May 1, 1998 If you were a classroom teacher during the ’70s and ’80s, like I was, you probably noticed how students were adopting talk-show manners. The intensity of feeling, not a logical inference, was treated as the surest criterion of truth. To protect these privileged feelings, the font of wisdom, self-esteem…
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Sed Contra: Il Papa!
Deal W. Hudson April 1, 1998 I never thought I would be part of a cheering, waving crowd. After all, I was too old, too sophisticated. Then John Paul II walked out on the stage. It was his Wednesday public audience, and together with my family and six friends, I sat only a few rows…
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Sed Contra: A Dose of Sacred Discontent
Deal W. Hudson January 1, 1998 Thus we begin 1998, declared by our Holy Father as the year of the Holy Spirit. Surely, on this, the 25th anniversary of Roe v. Wade this country could use a strong infusion of that least understood person of the Blessed Trinity. There is no better way to get…
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Sed Contra: John Wayne Grows Old
Deal W. Hudson October 1, 1999 He was the strongest man I ever knew. He had will-power of iron. The doctor said to stop smoking. After that day he never smoked another cigarette. Years later a different doctor banned alcohol—not another drink passed his lips for more than thirty years. Of all the money he…
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Sed Contra: Bringing Closure to Closure
Deal W. Hudson September 1, 1999 Maybe I’m hard-hearted. But, except for rare occasions, I don’t consider feelings newsworthy. I distinctly remember the period during the early ’70s when reporters began interviewing people about their emotional reactions to events rather than about the event itself “How did you feel when the plane burst into flames?”…
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Sed Contra: Baiting Pro-lifers
Deal W. Hudson June 1, 1999 In a recent Washington Post op-ed (May 6, 1999), Richard Cohen unveiled a strategy that pro-life forces will need to resist before the next presidential election. Like Cohen, abortion advocates are likely to bait pro-lifers over the next 18 months, preaching that their presidential candidates lack integrity if they…
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Sed Contra: Mercy for Mr. Mease
Deal W. Hudson March 1, 1999 The popular film Dead Man Walking sent more than a few ripples through the country on the topic of the death penalty. Despite the film’s well-taken point about God’s mercy, its sentimental appeal only convinced me that most arguments against the death penalty are ill-founded. Not the overt emotional…
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Sizing Up Our Seminaries
Deal W. Hudson February 1, 1999 They are beautiful and imposing when you actually see them. Sitting like castles, resplendent atop prime real estate, these Catholic seminaries make you wonder, “How many men fill up those buildings? What is being taught there? How can the diocese afford the heating bill?” You may have noticed them…
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Sed Contra: A New Year’s Wish
Deal W. Hudson January 1, 1999 My “Notes Toward Unity” (Sed Contra, October 1998) elicited more response than any column I have written in the past four years. Catholics around the nation are frustrated; they want their voice heard in the culture. More and more Catholics are tired of being invisible. We can only hope…
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Sed Contra: What’s All the Fuss?
Deal W. Hudson November 1, 2000 On the heels of Cardinal Ratzinger’s letter to bishops, Dominus Iesus (Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church), comes the predictable chorus of boos. Once again, the papacy of John Paul II is accused of destroying post-Vatican II progress toward genuine interreligious dialogue by affirming the…
Deal W. Hudson 