Newspapers

David Warren

Like so many who arrived in this "profession" of newspapering -- whether accidentally or on purpose -- I suffered from an early and irrational attraction to newspapers as physical objects. From about the age of six or seven, when the newspapers at hand happened to be the Pakistan Times and various Urdu-language journals seen at streetside kiosks in Lahore, I wanted to touch them, and turn the pages, and see the pictures, and read whatever I could.

From my late father, a designer, I learned the most elementary principles of typography. He was actually asked by the editor of the Pakistan Times to propose a redesign for it, and I was mesmerized by papa's sketches and "comps."

The smell of the ink on an old letterpress was, once, an intense thrill -- and the crisp bite of type into paper, from a technology now abandoned. The very shapes of individual letters in certain type founts still give me a shudder of pleasure.

My first job, on leaving school at 16, was as a copy boy at the Globe and Mail. And from my first entry into its (long since demolished) composing room, wandering among the linotype machines, I was in paradise.

I mention these things to make clear where my bias lies, in the competition between newspapers and the Internet. I have no special prejudice against the latter, and am myself mired in it almost every day, but it is not "real" in the way of a newspaper. You cannot even see the Internet without a fragile machine with a telecommunications link, and being "wired," whether visibly or invisibly. Whereas, a newspaper can be taken anywhere.

My preference was always for broadsheet over tabloid: for the widest practicable page with the greatest practicable accumulation of organized detail. The broadsheet page gives the reader a survey of events as no other medium. He will see things he'd otherwise miss, for searching. And because that page holds still, the reader's eyes have a chance to roam in an entirely conscious way. I have noticed that those who are raised on electronic text, almost to the exclusion of hard print, are nearly incapable of linear thinking. I have also noticed that lateral thinking is much oversold.

In the last generation or so, since the threat of the million-channel universe began to appear, most newspapers have made the same mistake as most churches. They hoist themselves on the petard of "relevance." They have been losing their audience the faster from their own efforts to turn themselves into something they are not.

The loss of some "market share" to the Internet was inevitable, and the need for some symbiosis with more "immediate" news media I take as given. "The wind commands," in the sailor's old adage. But the owners and publishers and editors and writers of newspapers too easily forget the peculiar advantages of their vessel.

A newspaper, or other periodical, can -- not just in theory but in practice -- provide hard copy (and stills) that encourage the reader to think for himself. It offers a kind of intimacy and candour quite different from that of other media: the "core intimacy" of reading without distraction. It can provide a "print-out" with both depth and range. Its tangible formality contributes to principles of aggregation and editing that are by nature more serious than anything that flashes by.

Rupert Murdoch, a man interesting for his past success as media entrepreneur, said in a memo to all his employees last Monday (and to the world via Drudge) that, "We are in the midst of a phase of history in which nations will be redefined and their futures fundamentally altered ... Many people will be under extreme pressure and many companies mortally wounded ... Our competitors will be sorely tempted to take the easy beat, to reduce quality in the search for immediate dividends ... Where others might step back from their commitment to their viewers, their users, readers and customers, we will renew ours."

I think the better minds in this field have realized that, just as people will always need food and clothing, they will always need reliable information, and they will not be well-served by the reduction of all news and commentary to entertainment. At the very least, those who need to know will always be willing to pay for intelligent reporting, and analysis.

The future of newspapers cannot be assured by making them any more frivolous or sensational. The other media can always beat us at that. Our medium has a future that points the other way.

The cost-cutting should be aimed at eliminating the frivolous, and concentrating instead on the classical function: fearless reportage and truth-seeking in a world that has always been too full of lies.

False Online Job Postings

Sarah Needleman

In October, Tom Greene was invited by email to interview for a vice president position he had applied for through CareerBuilder.com. Before accepting, the sales and marketing executive called the search firm that posted the ad to ensure it was indeed a job opportunity.

Mr. Greene didn't want a repeat of two years ago, when he agreed to an interview in the same circumstances only to find there was no position available. Instead, he had received a pitch from a career-marketing service costing up to $10,000 starting with a $6,000 upfront fee.

This time, the 53-year-old was assured by phone that the job was real and he wouldn't be asked to dig into his wallet. But after driving a half-hour from his home in Colonia, N.J., to meet the firm's recruiters, he says he found himself once again listening to a pitch for a career service, without any prospect of a job.

"It's extremely frustrating," says Mr. Greene, who weeks later was laid off from the financial-services company where he worked. "You get very skeptical about the job market."

If you're launching an online job hunt for the first time in a while; take caution. What may look like an ad for employment may lead to something entirely different, like a hard sell for career services or job-training manuals. Or worse, it might be a plan by identity thieves to get you to share sensitive personal information via "phishing" expeditions. Some of the job postings -- sometimes for positions long filled -- also could be from recruiting agencies looking to collect résumés.

The problem of job postings that aren't what they seem is adding to the frustrations of the more than two million recently laid-off workers who are competing for an increasingly limited number of jobs. The good news is that there are several tip-offs that indicate an ad is likely to lead you down the wrong path. And as long as you don't give out any private data, getting duped into responding to a fruitless job ad will likely only cost you time and energy.

Last fall, for instance, Mary LaFleur Langdon searched for children's photography and teaching-assistant jobs near her home in Milford, N.H., at craigslist.com. She answered several ads that didn't name the hiring companies and received email responses all asking her to complete the same application at Career-Hub.com, which no longer exists.

After filling it out, Ms. LaFleur Langdon says she received an email instructing her to return to Career-Hub.com and provide additional information. Once she did that, she says, she was directed to a Web page advertising various jobs and no explanation as to the fate of her application. She completed the form again, and this time she answered "yes" to a question asking if she was interested in furthering her education. The result was an ad for an online university. "I was pretty angry," says Ms. LaFleur Langdon, 46 years old.

Some recruiting agencies post ads for eye-catching positions to attract applicants for the less-desirable jobs in their portfolios, says Steven Greenberg, publisher of jobs4point0.com, a job site for experienced professionals. Often the jobs were already filled, or they're a composite of several ads. Recruiting firms do this because "they're looking to gather as many résumés as they can for posting the fewest ads," says Mr. Greenberg. Later, they'll pitch these low-interest jobs to people whose résumés they've collected in hopes they are desperate enough to take a less-attractive position.

Meanwhile, independent recruiters often dilute the marketplace by posting their own ads for the same position, says Elaine Rigoli, editor of the Fordyce Letter, a trade publication for recruiting professionals. They're competing against one another for a fee that comes with placing the winning candidate, she explains. The ads contain different language and contact information, giving job hunters the false impression that there are several openings on the market, she says. Still, it can be beneficial for job hunters to apply to them all since recruiters don't always agree on who makes an ideal fit for a position, says Ms. Rigoli.

The ads to most watch out for are those pretending to offer a job but are really trying to get you to give up personal information, such as a bank-account or Social Security number. They often mimic real postings, with some featuring company names and logos nearly identical to those of actual employers. The individuals behind these postings may even exchange multiple emails with job hunters to build up trust.

To be sure, many job Web sites review submissions to try and prevent inappropriate ads from getting published. A spokeswoman for CareerBuilder says the site employs a team to screen job postings and verify their information. But job boards can't spot everything ahead of time, site publishers say. "Fraudulent activity across the Internet continues to evolve and mutate," writes CareerBuilder spokeswoman Jennifer Sullivan Grasz in an email.

Of 132 job-site publishers polled in October, 39% said they frequently find ads that peddle sham investment opportunities or request personal information under false pretenses. More than half said the review process regularly turns up ads to get job hunters to buy services or products, according to the survey by the International Association of Employment Web Sites, whose members power more than 60,000 job boards.

Some deceptive ads end up on job boards anyway because "scammers learn each time how to break through whatever the filter is that's knocking them out," says Gerry Crispin, co-founder of CareerXroads, a Kendall Park, N.J., consulting firm that specializes in recruiting technology. "They come back over and over again trying new techniques." Big job boards are particularly vulnerable, he adds.

So how can you tell if a job posting is insincere? One sign is that it lacks details about the hiring company and position, says Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum, a nonprofit group in Cardiff by the Sea, Calif., that specializes in privacy matters. Such an ad might describe an employer as a "major technology firm" rather than cite annual sales or say what kind of technology it produces. It also might offer a vague job description or list a salary range spanning more than $50,000. Genuine ads typically target applicants who have a specific amount of experience and pay salaries commensurate with their backgrounds, says Ms. Rigoli of the Fordyce Letter.

If you're unsure whether an ad is sincere, you can protect your identity when responding by providing a resume with a post-office box address instead of your home address, says Ms. Dixon. You might also list just your initials in the document and not your full name. Further, consider using a disposable email address to prevent spam from clogging up the one you normally use. If a business address or company name is provided, and it's a name you don't recognize, search for the employer's Web site to learn more about it. You also can check for any complaints filed against it with the Better Business Bureau at bbb.org and consult with people in your network.

Published originally in The Wall Street Journal

Saving What Can Be Saved

George Weigel

In May 2006, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) made public its decision to “invite” Fr. Marcial Maciel, founder of the religious order the Legion of Christ and the lay movement Regnum Christi, to “a reserved life of penitence and prayer, relinquishing any form of public ministry.” The CDF decision was approved by Pope Benedict XVI. From that date forward, both before and after Fr. Maciel’s death in 2008, senior officials of the Holy See have insisted that this action was intended to “save the Legion and Regnum Christi,” as one such official put it to me.

Assuming, as we can and must, that this remains the Holy See’s intention, it must now move without delay to address the accelerating train-wreck-heading-toward-the-cliff that the Legion and Regnum Christi have become over the past ten days, as credible reports appeared in the blogosphere that Fr. Maciel had lived a life of sexual and financial scandal, probably for decades.

The reports have emanated from those who had been advised of the Legion’s own investigation of Maciel, but there is still no formal statement from the leadership of the Legion as to what its internal investigations have uncovered. There has been no full disclosure of what is known about Fr. Maciel’s corruptions. There has been no disclosure as to the nature and extent of the web of deceit he must have spun within the Legion of Christ, and beyond. And there has been no public recognition of what faithful, orthodox, morally upright Legionary priests believe have been grave corruptions of the institutional culture of their community.

The letter from Fr. Alvaro Corcuera to the faithful of Regnum Christi, distributed last week and immediately available online, was completely inadequate in naming these sins for what they were. Public statements by Legion spokesmen in Rome and in America have been just as bad, due largely to failures by Legion leadership and to an institutionalized culture of defensiveness.

Two courageous Legionary priests, Fr. Thomas Berg and Fr. Richard Gill, have issued personal statements that face the facts as we know them, while not shying away from their implications in respect of any assessment of Fr. Maciel. Another Legionary priest, Fr. Thomas Williams, manfully confronted the truth of this wickedness on EWTN this past Friday night. Fathers Berg, Gill, and Williams have also conceded, admirably, their own failures to see through the web of deceit spun by Fr. Maciel. Their words reconfirm what those of us who have benefitted from the friendship of Legionary priests have known for years—there is great good here, as there is among the faithful members of Regnum Christi.

The question now is, how shall that good be saved?

It can only be saved if there is full, public disclosure of Fr. Maciel’s perfidies and if there is a root-and-branch examination of possible complicity in those perfidies within the Legion of Christ. That examination must be combined with a brutally frank analysis of the institutional culture in which those perfidies and that complicity unfolded. Only after that kind of moral and institutional audit has been conducted, and has been seen publicly to be a clean audit, can the Legion of Christ, and the broader Church, face the questions of the Legion’s future—which are, candidly, open questions:

• Can the good that has come from the Legion of Christ and Regnum Christi be disentangled from the person and legacy of Fr. Maciel?

• Can the Legion be reformed from within, after those complicit in the Maciel web of deceit have been dismissed?

• Must the Legion be dissolved, with perhaps a core group of incontestably honest former Legionaries re-forming a religious congregation dedicated to the ideals that have been fouled by Fr. Maciel’s sins and by a manifestly wounded institutional culture?

None of these questions can be thoughtfully or prayerfully answered until there is a full audit.

And, as the flailings and failures of the past ten days have made clear, that audit cannot be conducted by the Legion leadership, which is likely beset by a maelstrom of internal and external pressures. It must be mandated by the pope, and it must be conducted by someone responsible to the pope alone—not responsible to the relevant parts of the Vatican bureaucracy, not responsible to the cardinal secretary of state, but responsible to the pope alone. There is simply no other way open to an accounting that will be both scrupulously honest and publicly credible.

To take an image from corporate law, the Legion of Christ must be immediately put into receivership: A personal delegate, appointed by the pope, must be empowered to take over the governance of the Legion of Christ and to conduct the moral and institutional audit required. The papal delegate would be instructed to report his findings, both interim and final, to the pope alone, and he would be instructed to make recommendations (again, to the pope alone) addressing the possible futures, including dissolution or dissolution-and-reconstitution, of the Legion.

Why not work through the normal curial processes with, perhaps, an apostolic visitation of the Legion being mandated by the pope and run through the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life (typically called the Congregation for Religious)? Because, according to reliable sources, senior curial officials resisted that solution in the years leading up to CDF’s 2006 action, and the Congregation for Religious has been resisting it ever since the latest Maciel firestorm broke.

Such reluctance hardly befits any curial office for a supervisory role in a credible moral and institutional audit of the Legion. Moreover, the last several weeks of curial chaos, confusion, and incompetence in the wake of the lifting of the excommunications of four Lefebvrist bishops have made clear just how dysfunctional the curia remains in terms of both crisis analysis and crisis management. A curia in which no one in authority had the sense to Google “Richard Williamson,” and no subordinate had the nerve or capacity to compel the superiors to pay attention to a potential landmine, is not a curia capable of getting to the roots of the Maciel betrayal. Nor, candidly, is it a curia capable of conducting an investigation that can command public credibility. It is regrettable that this is the case, for there are many honorable people working in the Roman curia. But it is the case.

What should be the qualifications of a man empowered by the pope to assume the governance of the Legion as papal delegate and to get the bottom of the Legion crisis? He should be a priest and a vowed religious, who knows the dynamics of religious life, both for good and for ill. He should, obviously, be a man of recognized probity. Perhaps not-so-obviously, he should have had experience in dealing with financial and sexual scandal in a forthright, courageous, and effective manner; ideally, he would have been involved in the reform of a religious house, seminary, or community that had suffered a fall from its professed ideals. He must have good Spanish, for much of the paper trail here will be in that language; he should also have good Italian and English, so that he can conduct his investigations and interviews in the principal languages of Legion life. He must know something of canon law, and he must know competent canon lawyers.

Men with these qualifications exist. One of them must be given this difficult, onerous, but essential task—and soon—if the good that remains among faithful Legionary priests and among the members of Regnum Christi is to find a path toward the future, for the sake of the entire Catholic Church.

George Weigel is distinguished senior fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.

Originally published by First Things

A Miracle at Lourdes

Brian Caulfield

My firstborn son was healed of a heart ailment as an infant at the Marian Shrine in Lourdes, France.

I don’t talk about this often because I’ve had this nagging notion that one day I’ll wake up and realize that it didn’t really happen and my son will be scheduled again for surgery. But Stephen is 8 years old now, and the healing is real.

My wife and I may never submit the details to the medical board at Lourdes, but we only have to look at Stephen to know in our hearts that a miracle took place.

Our son is a fast runner, a Little Leaguer with a keen batting eye, a Bear Scout who can hike a mountain, and a big brother to our 4-year-old Justin.

Stephen was born more than seven weeks premature on the feast day of St. Padre Pio (who was a Blessed at the time). He spent 10 days in the neonatal ICU, where they detected a heart murmur. Tests revealed a mild coarctation. If you are like my wife and I were at the time, the word is unfamiliar and frightening. Coarctation is a narrowing of the aorta, a condition that restricts blood flow and could lead to hypertension and stroke.

We got a second opinion, with the same diagnosis, and our son was scheduled for surgery at 7 months of age. By God’s grace, we were accepted for a pilgrimage to Lourdes with the Knights of Malta, who each year charter a plane to bring sick children and their parents to the place where St. Bernadette Soubirous saw the Blessed Mother and unearthed a stream of healing water.

We got little Stephen a passport, flew to Lourdes with the wonderful assistance of the Knights and Dames of Malta, and immersed ourselves in the grace of the famous shrine. My wife dipped him in the frigid water on two occasions, splashing extra water on his chest for good measure, and we prayed for healing. We also took part in a healing Mass, an amazing candlelight procession, a visit to St. Bernadette’s little home, and many other activities during our week in Lourdes.

My wife had the distinct feeling that something had changed with our son. I was not sure, and thought that her hopeful emotions were natural for a mother who had gone through a high-risk pregnancy and an emergency delivery.

We returned home and a few days later had an appointment with the pediatric cardiologist, who performed the usual tests, this time in preparation for surgery. He spoke little and said he would call us later. We were puzzled, and concerned. Had things gotten worse?

The cardiologist called that evening to say that he was taking Stephen off the surgery list for now. Too stunned to think, I told him not to let our hesitance sway him; we wanted the best for our son’s health. The doctor explained that the tests that day showed a marked improvement. He didn’t say anything after the exam because he wanted to consult with colleagues before breaking the good news.

“Is this the miracle we prayed for at Lourdes?” I asked. He said that as a doctor he didn’t deal in miracles, but he had never seen such a rapid improvement of this condition.

Over the months, the coarctation continued to improve, so that a specialist at one of the nation’s top hospitals said he could not detect any evidence of the condition.

Stephen was healed. The only explanation is Lourdes.

I tell this story to inspire faith and hope in others, as we approach the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes on February 11th. Not everybody who goes to Lourdes receives a physical healing. But everyone is healed in some way, spiritually, emotionally, mentally.

Please join me in thanking the Blessed Mother for her intercession before God, for all the graces she bestows on souls and bodies. Let us give glory to God in the highest.

Originally published by Fathers for Good

Non-options

David Warren

One of the key functions of modern government is to reduce, by law, the options people have, especially when they are facing challenges to survival.

A classic example of this is socialized medicine. Like all socialist systems, government health care creates big shortages and surpluses, beyond the reach of market correction: in this case, serious shortages of doctors, nurses and essential equipment, balanced by huge surpluses of administration and unspecialized support staff.

By contrast, one need never go far to find a dentist or a veterinarian in Canada, because these fields have not been fully "socialized."

So if you have a toothache, or your cat is ill, you know where to go. If the case is serious, you hardly need an appointment. It will cost you or your insurer money, of course, but within reason, and there will be no waiting lists, or all-night encampments in a crowded lounge outside the emergency ward, among the moaning and wheezing. (Then later, the waiting room inside.)

If you need serious tests, because you are stressed-out by medical symptoms, you may wait for a very long time. If you have money, and are still mobile (unlike so many of our old and ill), you may consider crossing the border. But in principle, in Canada, you wait your turn -- and if symptoms get worse you can try emergency. You might be extremely willing to pay for the tests, but the government won't let you. You could, in more than theory, die, because the government has restricted your options.

Guns are another good example. There are places on the surface of this earth -- and some of them are in our cities -- where life is fairly dangerous. Things may happen that have happened to others, and the police cannot be everywhere at once. The wisdom of our ancestors, not only Stateside but here, was to allow the honest citizen to carry. Gun accidents happen, as car accidents happen, but the citizen was granted a powerful "option" against assault, mugging, robbery and worse. This in turn reduced the options of potential assailants, muggers, robbers, etc.

The right to life, which necessarily includes the right to defend your life when it is threatened, underpins both freedom and order. The ham fist of government chips away at both, when it employs the implements of social engineering.

But survival does not come down only to select, momentary, life-threatening situations. The whole Nanny State was, after all, erected on the premise that someone must take care of the poor and helpless -- or more precisely, that this immortal task should be taken away from religious and other "faith-based" institutions. The vagaries of private donation -- in goods, services, time, money and devoted love -- were replaced by bureaucratic appropriation through taxes, and the love that comes from bureaucratic decree. From there, the state spread into taking over everything.

My third example of the withdrawn "option" is something that will be coming more clearly into view as our economy absorbs the shocks administered by the international financial crisis, and foolish profligate government responses ("bailouts" and "stimulus packages" on an unprecedented scale). Whole nation states may become effectively bankrupt, and thus unable to pay out welfare and other customary benefits without triggering hyperinflation by simply printing money. (We've been here before; we learned nothing.)

Labour law sets "minimum wages," which hardly make a difference in good times, but must be very constraining in bad.

Beyond such obvious legislation, the Nanny State has created an incredibly cumbersome apparatus to regulate the labour market.

The tax system burdens employers with huge costs -- both direct in cash and indirect through the cost of administrative compliance -- that are invisible to most employees. Each sees his salary, and the deductions taken from it directly; he does not begin to see the other costs associated with employing him, unless he is of an unusually curious, imaginative and generous disposition.

Compounding this, feminist developments in family law, over the last generation, have added a new layer of garnishes that trump labour law -- together with the bureaucracies to impose them -- as the social costs from the destruction of the family are monetized and arbitrarily reassigned. Males, the traditional bread-winners, especially in hard times, are often bankrupted by spousal and child support payments set at whimsical levels by ideologized family courts. This prevents them from, for example, supporting aging parents and the new families they have formed.

My question for today is, what will the citizen do when he has lost his job, can no longer depend on the "social safety net," and needs to earn money any way he can? Forget the minimum wage -- just money for immediate food and shelter.

We are presented, it seems to me, with two terrible "options." The first is, that honest citizen methodically continues to obey all laws, and he and his immediate dependents quietly starve. And the second is, the entire economy is metamorphosed into a black market, carrying society into real lawlessness, as the Nanny State crumbles under its own weight.

Perhaps my prognosis is too dire. Discuss.

Collegiate Sex-Ed

Ryan Anderson

Every fall, kids arrive on college campuses and learn that their basic moral intuitions on sexual matters don’t square with the reigning ideas. Thanks to debased campus culture and overreaching on the part of administrators and professors, students are beginning to respond systematically -- and they’re having an impact. Here's how.

No two undergraduate experiences are quite the same. But the undergraduate years are marked by certain commonalities: students are challenged intellectually, socially, and ethically. Long-held beliefs are forced to submit to rational scrutiny. No longer is "that's just the way we do it" or "that's just the way I feel about the issue" sufficient. In philosophy classrooms and biology labs, students are expected to slough off the opinions they held in their pre-critical-thinking days and adopt the conclusions of the best arguments. Everything is to be tested, and only the rationally defensible is to be retained.

Most students arrive at college knowing few, if any, of their classmates. Navigating the maze of social expectations and the ensuing climbing of social ladders in a community of strangers, students are forced to ask themselves questions: what type of a person am I; what type do I want to become; and with what type do I want to become friends? For many, this explicit self-examination and social-selection -- choosing which finite group of people to befriend from a seemingly limitless pool of possibilities -- is a first-time experience. In grade school, junior high, and high school, such choices weren't quite as necessary -- there were certain cliques and people just naturally fell into place. Get to college and you get to reinvent yourself -- you have to define yourself one way or another.

No longer living under their parents' roof, no longer in a supportive school, neighborhood, or church community, students no longer have external supports encouraging them to strive to meet the demands of ethical living -- and holding them accountable when they fail. Instead, they find themselves subjected to new forms of pressure: a campus culture that demands conformity as the price of social acceptance, a professoriate that preaches new ethical dogmas, and administrators whose policies recognize no values but legality, liability, and physical health. It's easy to see how otherwise virtuous students can begin to go astray -- and how those already set on a bad path from high school have little hope of reforming themselves.

Yet most students arrive at college completely unaware of the patterns of life that await them. The fact is that many unsuspecting freshmen innocently join sports teams, enter into Greek life, and otherwise expect to lead active social lives, but have little idea of what sexual expectations are awaiting. Once seduced into the campus culture, they find it hard to break free. Even if dissatisfied and unfulfilled, they assume the problem is with them, not the culture. And for those who resist it from the get-go, it's unclear what the alternative is.

Apart from some religious campuses and religious enclaves on secular campuses, the late teens and early twenties are a bit of a wandering. Sex is to be expected, but with no expectation of commitment, never mind marriage. Those desiring an alternative have no example to look to, no role-models to emulate. Gone are the days of courtship. Gone are the days of dating as an explicit preparation for marriage. Gone are the days of using one's late adolescence and early adulthood to form the habits, the stable dispositions, the virtues required for healthy male-female relationships -- both friendships and marriage. Instead, exploitation looms large. And most marriages fail.

But it only gets worse. Campus officials in lecture halls and administrative offices, rather than challenging debased campus culture, actually aid and abet it. "Abstinence education?" That's a scientifically disproven method of avoiding pregnancy and disease. A pill and a latex sheath is all you need. "Chastity?" Hardly a virtue, the best moral philosophy and clinical psychology tell us that it's a vice -- an unhealthy attitude of repressing sexual desire, hating one's body, and viewing sex as dirty. Courtship, dating, marriage, and then sex? All you need are consenting adults (in any number or pairings) to have good sex. And marriage is an outdated ideal anyway.

Most won't buy that last argument -- they still long for a marital relationship, of some sort, at some point. But they don't know how to get there or what to do now. And anyone entering the secular academy holding anything resembling traditional Judeo-Christian views about sex, marriage, and the human family had better be prepared to meet the challenging questions coming his or her way. Why not pornography and masturbation as an alternative outlet to rape? Why not some pre-marital sex and cohabitation as a means of better getting to know one another, to see if you can live together before the wedding vows, to see if you're sexually compatible before the wedding night? And even if not as preparation for marriage, why not hook-up just as a sign of temporary affection, and, well, because it's fun, enjoyable, pleasurable?

Yet it's not just the hook-up culture. If you think men and women are equal in dignity yet distinct and complementary, bringing unique and special gifts to bear on all aspects of life, expect to be called a sexist. If you think mothering and fathering are different, "parenting" in the abstract doesn't exist as such, expect to be met with hostility. And if you're at an Ivy League University and intend on being a mom first and foremost, expect to be told that you're going to waste your education.

But the worst of all university dogmas to reject is the goodness and worth of the homosexual lifestyle. You think two men or two women can't legitimately enter into a loving and committed relationship? Well, you're no better than the bigots who opposed interracial marriage. You think a homosexual orientation is intrinsically disordered and homosexual acts are objectively immoral? Can you say "homophobia"? And good luck if you're someone who experiences same-sex attractions but doesn't desire to be gay. You will be labeled as self-loathing.

From liberal dogmas on homosexuality to liberationist agendas on sex, feminism and marriage, from the social pressures put on guys and girls to be sexually active to the resulting pornography, masturbation, alcohol, and body-image problems -- college campuses aren't a pretty sight.

After my own four years as an undergraduate at Princeton, the problem was readily apparent to me, and a potential remedy seemed worth trying: rather than cowering away from the liberal orthodoxy on human sexuality, why don't we subject it to intense, critical, rational scrutiny, expose it as intellectually wanting, and build a social network to oppose it?

February 2005 saw the launch of a new student group at Princeton, the Elizabeth Anscombe Society, named for the famed Cambridge philosophy professor, star student and successor of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and intellectual defender of traditional sexual ethics. The Anscombe Society set for itself a lofty mission:

We aim to foster an atmosphere where sex is dignified, respectful, and beautiful; where human relationships are affirming and supportive; where motherhood is not put at odds with feminism; and where no one is objectified, instrumentalized, or demeaned. We aim to increase the level of respect among members of the university community who disagree on these issues as we explore our common understandings as well as our differences. Lastly, we hope to provide those students who strive to understand, live, and love their commitment to chastity and 'traditional' sexual and familial ethics with the support they need to make their time at Princeton the best it can be.

The students who formed the Anscombe Society were tired of being subjected to a dehumanizing campus culture and hoped to point to an alternative, more excellent way. They were tired of the one-sided presentation of academic arguments related to marriage and family life -- biased syllabi inside the classroom and monolithic student groups outside the classroom -- and so they hoped to balance the intellectual conversation. Lastly, they were tired of an administration that absurdly claimed to be morally neutral when it came to matters of sexuality while consistently promoting liberal and liberationist sexual policies. They were determined to hold the administration accountable and seek change.

To achieve these ends, the Anscombe Society followed a three-pronged approach.

First and foremost, as a group at an academic institution and as heirs of Anscombe's legacy, the Anscombe Society was about ideas -- the give and take of reasons, the making and countering of arguments. Too often the academy has its own orthodoxy on issues of sexuality, and the prevailing orthodoxies are treated as immune from challenge. In classrooms, administrative offices, student groups, and student publications, an unquestionable dogma had been established. The Anscombe Society, through guest lecturers, newspaper op-eds, and discussion groups, provided serious and respectful academic responses and counter-arguments. The scholars they brought to campus to give public lectures made the intellectual case for a traditional conception of human sexuality and the human family from a multi- and inter-disciplinary perspective that drew on outstanding scholarly works of philosophy, theology, ethics, biology, medicine, psychiatry, psychology, economics, and sociology. They created an academic database on their website with the best articles from these same disciplines.

Now, the practical reality on most college campuses is that the main attacks on traditional sexual morality come from the constant onslaught of same-sex marriage advocates and feminists. Just from the need to play defense, these became central issues of response. For a student arriving on campus with basically sound intuitions about these issues -- that there's something to the fact that we come as male and female, something about our sexual differentiation that matters, and something about male and female forming husbands and wives to become fathers and mothers that mattered -- but who couldn't articulate a robust response to the campus LGBT and feminist groups or their ethics and politics professors, the Anscombe Society offered much-needed intellectual support. These students aren't bigots. These students aren't misogynists. But those are the charges you'd get if you voiced traditional thoughts on these issues on many elite secular college campuses today.
As the defense of traditional marriage was made, it quickly became apparent that the argument only runs as a conclusion from the underlying principle -- virtue -- of chastity. And so the Anscombe Society quickly began shifting from just a response to same-sex marriage and anti-feminine feminism to a whole-hearted proposal of chaste relationships as the most fulfilling. The Anscombe Society was committed to presenting the fullness of truth when it came to the intellectual case for the human family. (With one notable exception, the group abstained from taking a position on the issue of contraception.) Intellectual arguments -- that was the first prong.

Second, but equally important given the social realities on college campuses, the Anscombe Society set out to form a supportive community. If you're one of the few who is personally committed to living a chaste life, you can often feel quite alone on a college campus. Don't get me wrong; it's not as if everyone is having sex all the time. But it changes the way you approach considering even the possibility of dating at college if you think that all of your potential suitors will eventually get to the point where they're expecting sexual favors from you. As a result, many chaste students just withdraw. Part of it is that they simply don't know who the other like-minded students are; part of it is that they think their ideals are outdated on campus, so they never speak up about them -- and other like-minded students do the same. And so they never know how many of them are really out there.

The Anscombe Society wanted to bring this closeted community out into the open -- to get people to meet and know each other, and to provide alternative social activities for those students who didn't quite enjoy the usual weekend scene of drunken debauchery. One of the best ideas they had was holding a reception for students sponsored by the faculty who affirmed the virtue of chastity and traditional marriage. Robert George, a professor in Princeton's Politics department, took the lead in hosting the event. The first year there were eight faculty co-hosts. This past year, just four years later, there were just under twenty -- even among the professoriate they don't know how many of them are out there.

The third task was to provide assistance to those students who needed help in meeting the ethical goals they had set for themselves. This proved to be too ambitious, demanding, and technical for a mere student group. Addictions to pornography, body-image problems, same-sex attractions, usually require professional assistance. Not surprisingly, that's why Princeton has an LGBT Center, a Women's Center, and various other special centers with full-time staff people to meet the needs of students. Nothing like that exists for students taking the other side of the moral divide on these questions. At Princeton, the Anscombe Society is negotiating to establish such a center right now.

Predictably, a group like this starting at an Ivy League university made waves. At first it was treated as a novelty. Then some people were threatened by the existence of the group; others were shocked that Princeton would allow a group that held "homophobic" and "anti-woman" views. But within the first couple of months the media started paying attention. Reports began to run in the New York Times, on Jay Leno, and in various social conservative publications and TV shows. The most unusual thing reporters noted about the group was that it wasn't religious -- the students thought reason was on their side.

Along with the media attention came interest from students at other campuses who wanted to start up similar groups. We readily assisted them. Over time it became clear that this assistance couldn't continue on an informal level, and we organized a 501c3 non-profit group to help provide material support for the groups, and two years ago we hired a full-time employee to launch a national organization called the Love and Fidelity Network that would begin planting similar groups on university campuses in order to create a national network. This fall the Love and Fidelity Network held their first annual conference. A hundred students from twenty schools -- including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, Dartmouth, Columbia, and Cornell -- attended. America's leading scholars on these issues made presentations.
All of that said, there are important lessons to be learned about starting an Anscombe Society. There are pitfalls and mistakes to avoid, based on how similar groups at other campuses have been launched or what a previous model looked like prior to the advent of Anscombe at Princeton.

1. Avoid anything that is too touchy-feely, too cutsey, too first-person personal, confessional, or self-referential. This is to be a serious group of serious ideas.

2. Avoid anything resembling chastity pledges, vows, or rings.

3. Do not sacrifice integrity to numbers. Softening your positions on various controversial issues in an attempt to drive up membership numbers defeats the entire purpose of a group like this. The goal isn't to be popular; the goal is to provide a robust account of the more excellent way.

4. Be religion-friendly but do not be founded on religious premises or arguments. The purpose of a group like the Anscombe Society is to explain how traditional conceptions of the family and the role of sex within the family are more humanly fulfilling. Focusing on the human sciences -- philosophy, sociology, psychology, medicine, biology, law, economics, political theory, etc. -- should suffice.

5. Remember the doctrine of the mean: the virtuous positions lies between two vices on either extreme. As such, don't overreact. Don't respond to campus culture by going too far in the other direction and returning us to aspects of a previous age that have rightly been left behind. Consider three example.

a. Sticking with the above: you don't need to be secularist or anti-religion. There are good theological reasons for the traditional family -- and you can include theological reasons as one among many. For example, a panel on religious reasons from across the traditions (Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, etc.) would be effective.

b. Speaking truth in love on the issue of homosexuality is very difficult. There is the temptation to water-down the truth or to express it in a non-loving way. Anti-gay bigotry is real. It is to be avoided.

c. Forcing women back into the home, barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen is not the proper response to the Ivy League professor who looks at you incredulously when you tell her that the most important thing in your life is the desire to be a good mom. Finding creative ways to merge your vocation as mother and vocation as scholar, lawyer, doctor, etc. is the way to go. Modern work schedules and professional life were largely formed around gender arrangements from a time long-ago, and they need not be retained. This is the work for the new feminism.

6. Preaching to the choir is not the same as intellectual engagement with campus culture. There is a time and a place for building up the base and equipping the students with basically sound dispositions with solid argumentation. There is also a need to be provocative and shake other students out of their complacent acceptance of liberal dogma. Finding ways to do this and to meet people where they are is key. The goal is securing intellectual and moral conversion.

7. The focus should be on marriage, not chastity. If people ask, "what's the Anscombe Society all about," the answer they should get is: "promoting stable and healthy marriages." Chastity is the virtue that fosters this -- both before and during, both inside and outside of marriage. Emphasize the end goal -- the good -- that you seek to promote.

But meeting this challenge will not be easy. Survey data on the next generation shows views on the family and sexuality that are quite at odds with the vision of Elizabeth Anscombe. To persuade this generation of the truths Anscombe defended, we'll need a new generation of scholars, from all the academic disciplines, willing to turn their scholarship toward defending the human family and the principles of morality that protect it and the virtues that sustain it. Given our academic setting, it's fair to encourage all students, especially graduate students, to consider devoting their research to these issues. And professors shouldn't be afraid to speak out. Elizabeth Anscombe certainly wasn't.

About the Author

Ryan T. Anderson is editor of Public Discourse: Ethics, Law, and the Common Good. This essay is adapted from a paper presented at the annual conference of the Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame. Published originally in © 2009 The Public Discourse, February 3, 2009.

Candlemas

David Warren

Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word. For mine eyes have seen thy salvation. Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people: A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.

The preceding is one of the canticles, or psalm-like hymns, embedded in the text of the Gospel of Luke. It is called the Nunc Dimittis, after the words with which it opens in the Latin Vulgate Bible: "Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine." It is also called the Song of Simeon, after the old man to whose mouth St. Luke assigns it; the song Christians sing with a special significance, tomorrow, the 40th day of Christmas.

By the Law of Moses, the child Jesus was taken to the Temple in Jerusalem, by Mary and Joseph, on his 40th day, to mark the completion of Mary's purification after childbirth, and to redeem the obligation of her firstborn son to serve in the Temple. (To this day, as I understand, many Jews observe this ritual, called pidyon ha-ben.)

That is where we encounter Simeon, a very old man, "just and devout." We are told the Holy Spirit had revealed to him that he would not die before he had seen the Messiah. Thus inspired, he came to the Temple, and there he recognized the Christ, in Mary's arms. And so, also, an old lady, Anna, a prophetess, recognized the child. And Simeon prophesied, with an aside to Mary, in these riveting words: "Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul, also."

This is an important feast, for Christians, bringing an end to the seasons of Christmas and the Epiphany, and looking forward towards Lent and Easter. It is celebrated with august dignity in the Byzantine rite of the Eastern Church, and alike in the "western" or Catholic Church. Anglicans and Lutherans and some other Protestants inherited the Catholic practice.

"Candlemas," our western name for the feast, comes from the liturgy in the Roman Missal. Candles are blessed by the celebrant in the sanctuary, then distributed through the church, while the choir sings the Nunc Dimittis, repeating the "chorus" or antiphon: "Lumen ad revelationem gentium ..."

"A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel."

In purely historical terms, we are remembering a moment when the extraordinary spiritual heritage of the ancient Hebrews -- chosen and instructed by God, as I solemnly believe, but the history is the same whether or not I believe it -- is beginning to explode, and will be carried to the ends of the earth.

Whether or not one is Jewish, one is compelled to acknowledge by any candid review of the facts that the heritage presented in the Old Testament, of an entire people called to a divine mission, is different in quality and kind and duration from anything we know in the ancient world. And whether or not one is Christian, a spiritual, cultural, and even material transformation, on a truly planetary scale, follows from events narrated in the New Testament.

This is history, not faith. But it is unquestionably a history made by faith -- by millions, indeed billions over so many centuries, carrying what they have earnestly believed to be the light of Christ in their hearts.

And yes, many tragedies, too, when the light of that moral guidance has flickered and guttered, when charity failed and horrible things were done in Christ's name. There is shame to go round in every human endeavour, in every religious and national and cultural tradition. But the more interesting question is, what did this tradition positively achieve? What did it accomplish to redeem the usual sins to which flesh is heir, and the characteristic sins of its followers?

But we know very little about Christian history today -- which is the history of our own civilization -- because it is seldom taught in our schools. When anything at all is taught, the emphasis is generally on slandering the faith, especially of the more sincere Catholics and Evangelicals. The whole history of the Church is reduced to a few malicious slogans about "the Spanish Inquisition" or "the trial of Galileo" or "the Crusades." All historical context is removed from such events, in order to blacken the sins of Christians as much as possible.

The liberal media recklessly oversimplify contemporary stories, so as to give the impression something done by the Church for a reasonable motive was done for a wicked motive instead. (There was a striking example of this, last week, in the systematic misreporting of the Pope's withdrawal of several excommunications against members of a breakaway traditionalist sect. It was the usual formula: things that have nothing to do with one another are wantonly juxtaposed in the headlines and leads, in this case for the purpose of tarring the Vatican with anti-Semitism, and stirring trouble between Catholics and Jews.)

It is especially in these times of spreading darkness that we must reach confidently for the light. And, "Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul, also."