David Carlin: Is “systemic racism” real? Or is it an abuse of language, stretching the meaning of the word “racism” beyond its legitimate bounds? The issue of equality is almost always on the American national agenda. It was so from the day the Declaration of Independence was signed; it’s been so again and again in […]
James F. Keating: Today’s racial “illuminati” see only guilt (whites) and innocence (blacks). Redemption and reconciliation through forgiveness are missing. Sixty years after the Civil Rights Movement and ten years after the triumphant election of the first African-American president, the question of race has returned with urgency and fury. There is, alas, a group of Catholic intellectuals who […]
David Carlin: Catholic young people have generally abandoned the ancient teaching of their religion as to the sinfulness of homosexual practice. A few weeks ago my wife and I spent an afternoon with some old friends, a retired couple who had just come back from their winter home in Florida. The wife of this couple told […]
Robert Royal: If a civil public square is to exist for us, especially now, it will take a rediscovered gratitude for the foundations that made American life exceptional in human history. On the Fourth of July (even “as celebrated” on the 5th, as today), we all ought to be grateful for the freedoms of our American […]
Randall Smith: If we turn a blind eye on abortion, can we really face the God who made both them and us? More is at stake than Republican vs. Democrat. There were several especially interesting readings for the recent Solemnity of St. John the Baptist. One set begins with this text from Jeremiah 1:5: Before I formed […]
Robert Royal: Many of our social problems – notoriously including easy abortion – stem from the breakdown of the family, which became supercharged with the advent of the sexual revolution. The Pew Research Center, a reliable source on American attitudes about religion, found in 2019 that 43 percent of American Catholics were “unaware” of Church teaching […]
Brad Miner: We remember those who gave their lives in battle. As President Lincoln said in 1863, “It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.” The Catholic Thing was founded the week after Memorial Day in 2008, but in eight of the following dozen years, we’ve published a column, either by Robert Royal […]
John M. Grondelski: One lesson of the pandemic lockdowns is that threats to religious freedom are proliferating, and that every state in the Union should act to stop it. I have previously written about the imperative for the Church to restore the obligation to participate in Sunday Mass as part of the way back to normal in […]
Fr. Gerald E. Murray on Biden and abortion: He needs to be told that his objectively sinful behavior constitutes a culpable offense for which he needs to seek pardon after repenting. Should President Joseph Biden be admitted to Holy Communion when he attends Mass? The simple answer is, “No,” owing to his public and unwavering support […]
Taynia-Renee LaFramboise reviews a new edition of the book by TCT’s senior editor. A book for men it is, but men and women rise and fall together. We are verbose creatures. Humanity’s gift of language includes our gift of creating languages. But despite a surfeit of vocabulary, our terms often fail to adequately describe what we mean. Definitions slip. […]
Brad Miner reviews the new film about the case that legalized abortion and concludes you’d be better off watching “Gosnell” or “Unplanned”. In a 1989 TV movie, Roe vs. Wade, Holly Hunter played “Ellen Russell” and Amy Madigan was Sarah Weddington, the plaintiff’s attorney who argued the infamous 1973 abortion case before SCOTUS. “Ellen Russell” stood […]
Joseph R. Wood: We need shepherds to lead us from godless illusions about equality to the lost truths of dogma. In the early 19th century, Alexis de Tocqueville traveled the United States while the country was still spiritually and philosophically close to the founding, but changing and expanding rapidly. The Frenchman compiled his observations in Democracy […]
Russell Shaw: Mass attendance is one area of Catholic decline. Another is that two out of five “cradle Catholics” no longer identify with the Church. Time to do something. As Holy Week got underway this year, many people were surprised to learn of a new Gallup survey showing fewer than half of all Americans now identify […]
Anthony Esolen: Sin makes the sinner a cripple. The principles of sin do more: they cripple a whole people. They cramp the spirit. Pictures come to mind when I think of the Lonely Revolution – that deterioration of the principles governing sexual behavior in the ruins of the Christian West. One is of my father and my mother, before they […]
Anthony Esolen: It’s not necessary to point at individuals, but that “rainbow” flag, which stands for the whole sexual revolution, must go. The Vatican recently declined to permit Catholic clergy to bless same-sex unions, averting an immediate and world-wide schism. No one should be surprised; relieved, perhaps, but not surprised. The Vatican has declined to overturn […]