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 […]
James V. Schall, S.J.: In our brief lives, we decide to accept or reject God’s reason for creating us: to welcome us into the friendship of the Trinity. Scripture and Mass Canon No. 4 speak of a divine plan for Creation, Redemption, and bringing all things to an End Time. Then any pending issues between God, […]
David Carlin writes that, to end confusion in the Church, it would be good if the pope were to restate Catholicism’s immemorial opposition to homosexual activity. Apart from the grace of God, our most urgent need at the moment is a papal encyclical on homosexuality. Failing that, the American Catholic bishops should issue a collective pastoral letter […]
Daniel J. Mahoney on a freedom fighter, soon to be made Venerable, who suffered under Nazis and communists and faithfully triumphed over all. There is not much good news coming out of Rome today. The “Franciscan” Church is marked by immense moral and theological confusion (some of it deliberately sown by the present pontiff) and a […]
Stephen P. White notes a shift away from denying a link between homosexuality and the abuse crisis and towards an attempt to normalize homosexual clergy. Last week’s summit in Rome did not address the problem of clergy harassing and abusing adults. It did not address the issue, which Pope Francis has acknowledged, of gay subcultures among […]
Fr. Carter Griffin: Like bloodletting by medieval doctors, those who would “cure” priest sex abuse by eliminating celibacy deprive grace from holy orders. Many Catholics, even the most faithful, seem to have given up on priestly celibacy. In our post-sexual revolutionary age, many view celibacy as an unhealthy repression of sexual drives, fostering the epidemic […]
Anthony Esolen: We are suffering from cultural dementia, muddied and dulled by the strokes of the modern. It is time, little by little, for recovery. The other day at Thomas More College I had an experience I’d never had, in my thirty-four years of teaching college students. I had stayed in the room after class, […]
Robert Royal: People are happy that McCarrick has finally been defrocked, but now we need to deal with other abusers and enablers. February is not high tourist season in Rome. Skies are gray and temperatures low. St. Peter’s Square is relatively empty. But journalists filled the nearby Press Office earlier this week – more, according […]
Randall Smith: If we want adult men, then we need boys to spend time with responsible, mature adult men, probably working. Those who study “inflected” languages such as Latin soon confront the problem of modifiers. Once you realize that the genitive “Marius” is modifying the nominative “book” (“the book of Marius”) then you must ask whether the […]
NOTE: The pope’s appointment of controversial Cardinal Kevin Farrell as the new camerlengo – the man responsible for administering the Vatican in the event of the pope’s death or resignation – raises questions about the future of the Church once Francis is no longer pope. The following article discusses some of the possibilities. William Kilpatrick: […]
Anthony Esolen on equality: If I am admitted into the kingdom of God, far be it from me to demand equality with Peter and Paul. Egalitarianism is the radical error of our time. If we do not attack it at the root, we will find we have nothing of cultural or spiritual value left to conserve. […]
Note: There’s so much happening in the Church and the nation on abortion that we thought it right to run two columns today. Michael Pakaluk argues that the brazenness of the New York State law may actually make overturning Roe v. Wade more likely as people come to see how extreme abortion supporters have become. Anthony Francois, who has worked on related […]
David Warren: Christ Militant defeats the strategies of Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, etc. Christianity has always been dismissed but has always triumphed. At this moment, I write next to a large window, against which winds are crashing, moaning and howling through every crack they find. It is a fine midwinter scene, up here in the Great […]