We know now that the FBI’s infamous Richmond Memo, targeting traditional Catholics as potential terrorists and comparing them with Islamists, was not merely the product of a few rogues in a single field office, as the agency had claimed.  Multiple offices were involved in drafting it, and it was distributed to over a thousand employees.

The word “philosophy” comes from the Greek words for love of wisdom.  Often, though, what we call philosophy isn’t really love of wisdom, but merely love of unsettling received opinions.  This love is often connected with contempt for any beliefs we can’t give reasons for.

“The science is finally settled on this one,” reads this magnificent specimen of reasoning: “people who consistently make good decisions enjoy an undeniable and unfair advantage in life.”  No, it is not a satire.

Ismism – four syllables, “izzum izzum” -- is the bad mental habit of criticizing a proposition not on its own terms, but in terms of the “ism” which one takes it to express.

This is one of the articles I’ve promised to recover, originally published in an Evangelical Protestant magazine for students called Boundless, to which I was a monthly contributor before being received into the Catholic Church.  You may notice a few distinctively Catholic notes.