Understanding Attitudes
An attitude is a way of feeling or thinking that has become habitual. People show their attitudes but seldom express [...]
Was America’s Decline Planned?
Rodin's The Thinker Given the increasingly destructive things that have been happening in America in recent decades, it [...]
The Soros Effect
George Soros is a controversial financier accused by conservatives of undermining entire economies and defended by progressives as a misunderstood [...]
Nonsense Is STILL Destroying America
Warning: Nonsense is Destroying America was published thirty years ago, in 1994. I introduced it with these words: "Books warn [...]
What’s Wrong with Bishop Seitz’s “Look at the Border”
In What's Wrong with the World, G. K. Chesterton observed that "In the last analysis most common things will be [...]
Revisiting “Death by a Thousand Slurs”
I published "Death by a Thousand Slurs" on January 10th, 2018. It focused on Trump's performance during his first year [...]
What Trump’s “Bloodbath” Remark Reveals
The U.S. media recently put aside their coverage of important stories at home and around the world to weigh in [...]
How Modern “Truth” Opposes Christianity
In "Revisiting the Idea of Truth" I discussed how Americans' abandonment of the ancient view of truth has destroyed rationality [...]
Revisiting the Idea of Truth
"Truth" has always been one of the most important words in the dictionary. Unfortunately, it is greatly misunderstood today, and [...]
The Issue of Women Deacons, Part 2
Part 1 of this essay explained the continuing controversy over whether the Catholic church should allow women to serve as [...]
The Issue of Women Deacons
The Catholic hierarchy's recent uproar over the idea of women deacons seems as intense as their uproar over blessing gay [...]
Reflections on Lent
Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, when the sign of the cross is made with ashes on our foreheads [...]
How to End America’s Decline
By now most Americans understand that the country is not only in decline, but that the situation is worsening. Economic, [...]
Catholicism’s Unfortunate Embrace of Social Justice
Although the term "justice" has been in use for thousands of years, "social justice" was coined in the late 1800s [...]
American Catholics and Social Justice, Revisited
“Social justice” is at the center of most political activism in contemporary America. It has provided arguments for the expansion [...]
Sermons to Reverse America’s Decline, Part 2
The decline of America has been underway for decades and has dramatically increased in recent years. Signs of it are [...]
Sermons to Reverse America’s Decline
I recently wrote that for many decades politicians have used "Separation of Church and State" to intimidate the clergy to [...]
Can the Church Help Restore America’s Values?
In a recent essay I explained that America's intellectual and moral decline can be reversed by restoring the ideas and [...]
Retracing the Steps in America’s Decline
The decline of America is not a new phenomenon, but in recent years it has become clearer. Though its most [...]
The Workings of the Holy Spirit
Catholics and other Christians know that the Holy Spirit, together with the Father and the Son, constitute the Trinity called [...]
Why Defrocking Is Not the Answer
I have written before concerning Pope Francis' contempt for conservative Catholics. One such example of that contempt was his statement [...]
Trump and Ramaswamy?
Shortly after the third Republican presidential debate, Donald Trump announced that he was considering asking Tucker Carlson to be his [...]
What Do We Really Know?
Many years ago, when I was a college sophomore majoring in Sociology, I took a course in Criminology. The professor [...]
The Catholic Hierarchy and the Mideast Conflict
"The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does [...]
Author Vincent Ryan Ruggiero
Since retiring from teaching, I have continued my work in promoting sound thinking in education and in the general culture. More specifically, I have kept refining my textbooks, four of which have been continuously in print for an average of 33 years. I have also continued to write books for the general public, the latest of which is Corrupted Culture: Rediscovering America’s Enduring Principles, Values, and Common Sense, and I write a weekly column for an online journal.