Book Review: On the Matter of Young Adults, by Francis X. Maier

Francis X. Maier is a senior fellow in Catholic studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is the author of True Confessions: Voices of Faith from a Life in the Church.

In the late 1960s, the University of Notre Dame was still an all-male institution.  The Vietnam War was in full swing.  So were the campus protests.  The draft still applied.  Illegal drugs were just starting to make an appearance.  And South Bend winters had all the charm of a Soviet gulag camp in the Arctic.

Into the bleak wasteland of February 1969 – my junior year – came a ray of implausibly weird light: a hardcore ND pornography conference.  Somehow it had managed to get organized without being killed by the school’s administration.  For thousands of desperate, women-deprived male students (including me at the time), it had the magnetic pull of a Star Trek tractor beam.

Not for long, though.  It was raided by police with pepper spray.  Then it was canceled.

Over the next few decades, I married, had kids, and found a good job.  …

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