Weekly Summary: 1/17/2026
The week in review, from the perspective of a veteran Catholic journalist
• Another busy week began with a comment on the curious crusade of Mary McAleese, the former president of Ireland, who now— armed with a doctorate in canon law and honorary degrees from Catholic universities— inveighs against infant baptism, saying that the practice should be outlawed. At first I expressed astonishment that a political leader who claims to be Catholic would seek to outlaw the administration of a sacrament.
• But today, thanks to a pointer from a friendly prelate, I added that the Council of Trent addressed exactly the argument that McAleese is making, and said that anyone making that argument should be anathema!
• Father Dwight Longenecker had a good review of my novel, Ghost Runner, in The Imaginative Conservative. His criticism was on target, and his final judgment was flattering:
In the midst of endless introspection amongst Catholics about the problems in the contemporary church, and amidst numerous mis-diagnoses and shallow prescriptions for change, Lawler rightly assesses the core problem.
• Pope Leo has begun a new series of catechetical talks for his Wednesday public audiences, examining the text of Vatican II, and beginning the Dei Verbum. That’s an ideal starting point, I remarked, because “Dei Verbum provides a way of appraising other conciliar teachings— or for that matter any claims made about the Catholic faith— and putting them in the proper context.”
• The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments on state laws that bar boys from participating in girls’ sports. The arguments were a bit surreal, with lawyers for the plaintiffs refusing to acknowledge the differences between the sexes. On the CatholicCulture site, I made the blatantly obvious argument: Our professed ignorance about sex is a pretense, and pretense is not a sound basis for law.” Despite the heavy pressure of political correctness, it seems the Court will render the same judgment.
• Another gratifying endorsement of Ghost Runner came from Father Robert McTeigue, who invited me on his Catholic Current show to talk about the book, and said: “Truly good fiction that is also authentically Catholic is rare, and Lawler shows that it can be done.”
• OK, I admit I biased, but I thought the most original reaction to the memo Cardinal Roche submitted to the consistory came from my wife Leila, who compared the cardinal’s cringe-making effort to a memorable line from the movie, Muppet Treasure Island. Don’t miss it. Leila’s post, I mean. Don’t miss the movie, either; it’s terrific. You can safely miss Cardinal Roche’s memo; nothing new there.
• Having promised to round up my discussion of nuclear deterrence in my seminar on just-war theory, I’m afraid I broke that promise this week; I had too much to say. So there will be more coming next week. But this week— having already argued that no one wants to use nuclear weapons, and no one can justify the use of nuclear weapons, I reached the (unoriginal) conclusion that the theory of nuclear deterrence is irrational. But the problem is, what’s the alternative?
• The headlines from Minnesota are worrisome, and there’s little question that the battles between ICE and protestors there are exposing a fault line in American society. On the Home Front, Leila and I discussed an unsettling topic: is our civil society coming unraveled?
