I almost made it to Eagle Scout status, in a Boy Scouts troop based at the Southern Baptist congregation led by my late father, the Rev. Bert Mattingly. The church had a Royal Ambassadors missions chapter as well, of course. It was normal to be a Boy Scout, even for a sports challenged (except for golf) teen addicted to books and classical choral music. Well, I also liked to set up stage equipment for local rock bands (even those ZZTop guys from Houston). But if you have followed the sad headlines in recent decades, you know that the Boy Scouts have evolved into a gender-neutral collective called “Scouting America.” For a progressive, LGBTQ+ culture take on that, check out this Advocate feature: “Why the Boy Scouts of America is changing its name and embracing everyone.” In the World magaz...

Robin Hood’s legend lives on as a model for all who try to serve God when government, the rich, and, all too often, those vowed to God’s service explicitly are fighting against us. The Adventures of Robin Hood by Roger Lancelyn Green, illustrations by Arthur Hall (Puffin Books, 2010, 294 pages) The most difficult conflicts are often with those with whom one agrees on the general lay of the land. That was apparent to me many years ago when my wife and I started publishing positive articles on the Harry Potter series. In contrast to those who assumed that this was a series leading readers to actual witchcraft, we had read the books and found them to be wonderful tales animated by a concern for virtue and character. What we determined was that most of the opponents of the series had not actua...

COMMENTARY: Cases can be made for three eras by considering their paradigmatic greats. Amidst a presidential campaign in which many of our countrymen deplore the choices we face in November, let’s take a break, follow the counsel of Ecclesiastes 3:1 (“For everything there is a season …”), and turn our attention to a question of major — even transcendental — import: Are we in the Golden Age of baseball? Or was that the 1920s-1930s? Perhaps the 1950s-1960s?   Cases can be made for each by considering their paradigmatic greats.    The argument for a 1920s-1930s Golden Age is built around the epic career of one George Herman Ruth, my fellow ex-Baltimorean, who learned the game through the disciplinary and athletic ministrations of Xaverian Brother Matthias at St. Mary’s Industri...

3 days ago 3 days ago “It’s like the more we worship ourselves, and we certainly see this on social media, the less we worship God,” says Patrick O’Hearn, a devout Catholic, husband and father. “Most of the time I’m just telling Jesus what I think, even complaining to him. How often do I say to the Lord “What do you want from me? What do you need from me?” In his new new article in Catholic Exchange, How the Eucharist is Not Loved, Patrick confronts the reality that most Catholics fail to spend enough time adoring and revering our Lord. Patrick is an author, literary consultant, speaker and a freelance editor, previously serving as TAN Books’ acquisitions editor for two years. He grew up in the Midwest and spent close to three years in a Benedictin...

COMMENTARY: The Vatican’s apparent openness to forgo some of its longstanding institutional privileges risks reducing the Church to the status of being merely another secular organization. On Aug. 8, Pope Francis received José-Lluis Serrano Pentalant, coadjutor bishop of Urgell, in audience. On paper, it looked like just another visit with one of the many newly elected bishops in the world. But there was something more interesting about this meeting.  The bishop of Urgell is, with the president of the French Republic, also co-prince of the tiny state of Andorra, a small enclave between France and Spain in the Pyrenees.  Bishop Serrano, coming from the ranks of the Secretariat of State, is Catalan, an essential precondition for genuinely understanding the Diocese of Urgell and the...

This spring saw the publication of two books arguing forcefully that our children are struggling and the adults are to blame. One of the books met with nodding heads all around and generated real enthusiasm for curbing the pernicious effects of technology on adolescent mental health. The other, Abigail Shrier’s Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up, met with a much chillier reception, but it confronts parents and teachers of adolescents with questions that are both challenging and important. To understand the controversy regarding Bad Therapy, it is helpful to consider it as the second part of a one-two punch to parents and educators. Contexts and Comparisons In The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, also published last s...