John Tuttle

Regardless of where one stands on religious ideologies, it is hard to refute the significant social and cultural influences Christianity has had on the world for nearly two millennia.
It has produced great writers like C.S. Lewis, Sigrid Undset, and Sir Thomas More. It has bestowed on us philosophers such as Aquinas, whose works continue to be applied in modern academia. It has instilled wonder in scientific-minded people like Fr. Georges Lemaître, who gave us the Big Bang theory.

‘Antiracism’ hinders investigations, but he implies it also causes discrimination
When Kenneth Marcus joined the Department of Education as director of its Office for Civil Rights, he frowned upon the Obama administration’s “systemic” approach to investigating discrimination.
He said his staff were “not advocates or social-justice people,” and they would only enforce the laws as written by Congress.
Marcus resigned last month after two years leading OCR, and he wanted to highlight some tangib...

These two men respected each other, despite their clashing dispositions, and were able to communicate on polite terms, something modern debaters could take a cue from. They were the well-revered H.G. Wells and G.K. Chesterton.

A plate garnished and well seasoned, a garden bed of blooming flora, the yawning archways of a grand cathedral, and the eyes of a lover: all have the shared attribute of beauty. Yet the essence of beauty can neither be limited to a single creative outlet, nor can it be defined by the whims of personal taste.

Steven Spielberg’s film adaptation of Jurassic Park has gone down in celebratory film history as have its Velociraptors in infamy.
Behind Spielberg’s cinematic success is a novel that’s just as riveting and meaningful. Conceptualized and penned by Michael Crichton, a medical doctor who graduated from Harvard, Jurassic Park is an engrossing, fast-paced read with several themes running throughout it.
One of the main elements expressed throughout Crichton’s book, as well as the film, is the noti...

Journal retracts paper because Pitt said it lacks ‘scientific validity’
A University of Pittsburgh professor of medicine has lost his administrative position at its affiliated hospital for penning an academic paper that argues affirmative action has harmed “the medical academy”- a move that First Amendment scholars believe is unconstitutional.
The Journal of the American Heart Association also retracted Norman Wang’s paper, calling it harmful to diversity and inclusion but passing the buck to...

When philosophical inquiry was being experimented with in ancient Greece, philosophers often did not make distinctions between the sciences and the other fields of thought which they debated. Some of the same thinkers pondering atomic structure were also formulating a moralistic code.
To the Greeks, all knowledge was attractive. These were minds interested in both the natural world and in deeper questions pertaining to the reason for existence itself. They sought above all else an understandi...

The 21st century is rife with a rash mentality of judgment. It calls for political correctness, an inefficient substitute to respectful politeness. Yet, simultaneously, it stirs up an outcry against any form of ridicule it deems as misplaced.
The cancel culture climate is part of this common public movement, but as it turns out, many people initially have difficulty defining just what it is.
Ben Wizner, the director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, states cancel culture “m...

‘This is another attempt at MSU pushing their anti-American rhetoric’
As Michigan State University considers renaming its James Madison College, citing the founding father’s ownership of slaves, students and alumni are pushing back.
The Keep James Madison Coalition created a petition urging the university and leaders of the public affairs-focused residential college to keep the name, arguing that Madison “should be remembered for the good and just things he said, fought for, and achieved.”
Sp...

The influential Jewish scientist, who would have been 92 today, now has an observatory named after her.

As in the 1960s, our society is witnessing a revitalization of an international space race. There has lately been a renewed interest in interplanetary exploration with talks of establishing a station on the Earth’s moon and eventually making our way to Mars.
The race looks different than it did half a century ago – not just in technology but also in its longterm goals and the way that missions are funded and strategized. Since the 2000s, there’s been an upsurge in monetary backing and spacecr...

by John Tuttle, Benedictine College
The following opinion does not represent those of the Clarifying Catholicism writing staff. We welcome respectful responses and rebuttals in the comments below.
Racism is an unfortunate reality of the fallen human condition, spanning continents and ages – from the Israelite bondage in Egypt to the brutal enslavement of Africans by European trade and beyond.
The subject of current conjecture and criticism is the killing of a black man, George Floyd, at the h...

HBO‘s acclaimed “Room 104” series will soon have no more vacancy. Created by Mark and Jay Duplass (HBO’s “Animals.” and “Togetherness”), the late-night, half-hour anthology series, which began back in 2017, is winding things down with a final season that begins in July. Known for its versatility in genre and form—anthology series akin to Netflix’s “Black Mirror” and “The Twilight Zone” from CBS, “Room 104”— by its very premise, “Room 104” has given itself a lot of flexibility in the area of s...