My parents were committed Catholics. I was one of four children, and we were raised to take our faith seriously. Which I did, with the brief exception of four drugged-out years at Notre Dame in the late 1960s. I’ve been happily married, to the same woman, for 52 years. We have four children—one with Down syndrome, another who’s adopted—and 11 grandchildren, three of them with serious disabilities. These experiences obviously shape my views about the nature of marriage and the family, sex, abortion, transgenderism, and related issues.

As for economic, foreign policy, judicial, and other matters: They’re clearly important. I’m grateful to my fellow scholars for addressing them. But they’ve never been my main focus. I believe, with Christopher Dawson, that religion is the soul of every civilization. Protecting religious belief and practice is therefore my priority, with an attached interest that I’ll explain in a few moments, in tech and scientific issues.

Fran Maier is right that we are now at a hinge in history—the end of an age and the beginning of something new. Anyone who thinks he or she knows exactly what will emerge next is probably wrong. Whatever is coming next, it will be a very different world from the one we’ve inhabited since World War II. I am quite certain that many things will get worse before they get better. Our societal institutions—governmental, educational, communications, media, medical, public health, etc.—have failed us. The degree of rot in these institutions makes reform or repair, in the short term at least, impractical.