Capital punishment is analogous to killing in self-defense, we are told. Some have resisted that analogy, because they misunderstand it. The analogy says, not that society can use capital punishment only when necessary to protect individuals in society, but rather, only when necessary to protect society – including justice in a society, the order in society, or any fundamental […]
David Carlin: Why are homosexuals so intimately connected with transgenders? Because both embrace the anti-nature movement. There is something puzzling about the LGBT (lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender) alliance: Why is T connected so intimately with LGB? Why do LGB people rage against injustice when T people are not allowed to use the bathroom of their choice or are not […]
Brad Miner reviews four new books about the Protestant Reformation on the eve of the 500th anniversary of Luther’s rebellion. The choir was still singing “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” when I said to the celebrant, “Why do we sing a hymn by the heretic Luther?” The priest was speechless until I said I was […]
Fr. Mark Pilon: We have failed to maintain discipline about truth. When we are unwilling to defend the truth, truth itself becomes mere opinion. When I was in the seminary in the early 1960s, we were indoctrinated in the notion that the harsh discipline of the Church over the centuries would be a thing of […]
Robert Royal on Europe’s immigration crisis: we cannot allow a proper Christian appreciation of welcoming to value all cultures except our own. In the past week, the Czech Republic elected an anti-establishment billionaire, Andrej Babis, as prime minister. The New York Times called that step a “new threat” to European unity. Accurate, in a way, because there have […]
Christopher Akers on the fallacies of progressive utopianism. We’re not called to leave a better world but to leave the world as better people. It has become a kind of drumbeat in debates concerning moral issues to hear that “it’s the 21st century, get over it!” Or: “it’s 2017, not the Middle Ages!” Those who assert […]
David Carlin: Girls in the Boy Scouts? Another step towards one of the goals of “progressivism”: abolishing the differences between males and females. I see that the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) has decided to allow girls to become members. This, I submit, is a momentous development in the great American culture war, as was the BSA […]
Fr. Gerald E. Murray on more attempts to justify giving Communion to those remarried without annulment: assertions in opposition to Jesus. The claim was widely made during the two Synods on the Family that the innovation of allowing persons living in adulterous second unions to receive Holy Communion, as proposed by Cardinal Kasper and others, was […]
Robert Royal writes that the reputation of the founder of psychoanalysis is waning, as it should, being so far from truth. My friends and family sometimes berate me (gently) for my longstanding habit – since my teen years – of reading the New York Review of Books. And, true, many other things might lay greater claim to […]
Clemente Lisi: Diversity of thought would go a long way in improving newsrooms and the stories they produce, especially about religion. In an era of fake “news,” readers are bombarded each day with stories – most of them legitimate, but sometimes totally made up – and fueled by social media. The newsgathering process, the method […]
Robert Royal celebrates the 100th edition of the personalist journal Prospettiva Persona, an essential initiative in the struggle to save the West. People sometimes write me to complain that much online commentary is too negative. That TCT and other sites do not pay enough attention to the many good things happening and to Christian joy. You can’t […]
David Carlin writes that liberal Catholics seem intent upon following the “reforming” path of liberal Protestants, and it’s the road to ruin. May I respectfully recommend a study of the history of liberal Protestantism in the USA? You will soon see that today’s liberal Catholics are traveling down the same road that liberal Protestants traveled down earlier […]
Brad Miner notes that Islamist rage about the Crusades is a Muslim fantasy that actually comes from Christian liberals. Sixteen years after the attacks of September 11, it’s probably the case that the “excuse” of the Crusades as a motivating factor behind the violence of al-Qaeda and other Islamic terrorist groups has somewhat diminished in plausibility. […]
Casey Chalk on an 1872 image of Jesus that serves as a reminder that “Happy Jesus” isn’t always what we need in dealing with our sins. There is an old image of Jesus, solely of his face. His features are pale, worn, and haunting, with dark, penetrating eyes that sear into a man’s soul. Though once […]
William Kilpatrick writes that the Church, because of its endorsement of unlimited immigration, is complicit in the rise of Muslim sex abuse in Europe. In a recent article, Fr. James Schall, S.J. argues that “The only real way to eliminate the historic aggressiveness of Islam is to convert its believers.” Yet if you had to bet, […]