Note: Many people think that the Church in America is in crisis because of sexual abuse by priests and bishops going back decades. That’s true, but after the bishops’ meeting in Baltimore this week, at least beginning to be resolved. A deeper and perhaps more long-lasting crisis is the Church’s weakness in proclaiming Catholic faith and […]
Brad Miner: If we take awe and reverence and the quest for holiness and heaven out of religion, faith becomes little more than a campaign for votes. An Italian priest visits our parish a few times a year to say Sunday Mass. He’s remarkable: tall, ascetic, and very serious. When he elevates the host and […]
While I was recently reading The Tale of Troy with my fifth-grade class, a hand shot up from the back of the classroom. The student wanted, desperately, to know, “Who are the good guys?” The thread of good and evil, right and wrong, had been lost in confusion and machination, in plots and treachery, and in […]
David Carlin: A gender-bending law, passed by the House, allows the weirdest members of society to inflict their delusions on others, especially our kids. On May 17, the U.S. House of Representatives passed, by vote of 236 to 173, a bill titled the Equality Act – one of the worst bills (in my humble opinion) […]
James Matthew Wilson: It is not merely sentimental concern for historical preservation to insist that Notre Dame be restored just as it was. As the world watched Notre Dame burn, everyone wondered what else was on fire. Of what was the partial immolation of this, one of France’s finest Gothic cathedrals, a symbol? The extinction […]
Robert Royal: Pro-life opportunities abound, and Church leaders and laity must seize them, if we don’t want history to say that we did nothing. Something out of the ordinary happened this past week. On Saturday, over 10,000 people walked the streets of Rome in defense of children in the womb. Italian lay people have organized […]
David Carlin: The former Veep is a liberal Catholic. It will be interesting to see how many bishops will offer corrections to his non-Catholic positions. Joe Biden, a Democrat who happens to be a Catholic, is now officially running for President of the United States. And he’s doing so in an effort to save what […]
Matthew Hanley: Transgender activists are unafraid to make menacing displays of power, to which appeals to basic reason count for nothing. What if I were to tell you that defining gender by objective reference to genetics, anatomy, and genitalia “has no basis in science”? Would you consider that persuasive – or unhinged? That, alas, is […]
Note: Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s brief letter to German priests, which was released last week, has generated a flood of commentary, both because it was unexpected from a figure who has maintained almost total silence since his resignation, and because it presented sharp observations about developments inside and outside the Church that led to the steep […]
David Carlin: What factors divide pro-life from pro-choice Americans? Mostly, it’s the difference between humility and arrogance. This column is about abortion, but it will take a moment or two to get to the point. Please bear with me. If ever there was an obvious example of fallacious reasoning, it’s this: “I am rich, and […]
Brad Miner on a remarkable, if uneven, pro-life movie that makes clear why abortion is “wetwork,” a loan word from the Russian mokroye delo: meaning murder. My anti-abortion views solidified in 1976 when I bought a copy of Esquire magazine. There was something in it by or about George Plimpton that I wanted to read, but thumbing through the […]
David Warren: Religion is what separates America’s political parties. Some on both sides will claim to be devout, but their priorities prove otherwise. Well, if the Trump administration was not in collusion with Russia, with whom WERE they in collusion? My own guess is the voters in the Red States, but I’ve already heard other theories. […]
Randall Smith visited Cuba, a nation with lively nightlife in which daily the people awaken to the dull realities of a failed socialist worker’s “paradise.” I had the privilege of visiting Havana, Cuba, recently. I probably won’t be allowed back anytime soon for reasons that will shortly become clear. While I was there, someone emailed to […]
Fr. Gerald E. Murray: With more work needed, accountability and transparency about sexual offenses by bishops seem to be the new order of the day. The Archdiocese of Baltimore recently announced the finding of credible accusations of sexual abuse of adults committed by two bishops: Michael Bransfield, former bishop of Wheeling-Charleston, WV; and Gordon D. Bennett, retired bishop of […]
Brad Miner on a book by a French author claiming the Vatican is 80% “gay” and asserting the pope needs to change theology because of it. Nonsense. Although there’s nothing in it about Roman weather or the various sites you might like to visit on a trip to the Vatican, French journalist Frédéric Martel’s In the Closet […]