A day after the New York Times reported that a group of more than 100 Catholic scholars had asked the nation’s Catholic bishops to repudiate the Common Core guidelines, the Cardinal Newman Society reported that the National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA)—a Washington, DC lobbying group for Catholic education—had accepted more than $100,000 from the Bill … Read more
Writing in the early 1900s, sociologist Max Weber depicted the coming modern world as an “iron cage” in which a caste of functionaries and civil servants monopolize power over the lives of citizens. He warned that the emerging bureaucracies would concentrate large amounts of power in a small number of people—creating a technically ordered, rigid, … Read more
As teachers throughout the country introduced the new Common Core curriculum—the federal standards for mathematics and English Language Arts—in their classrooms this fall, most parents had no idea this radical change in their children’s education was coming. Some might have noticed over the past month that there were dramatic changes in the textbooks and tests that their … Read more
A few weeks ago, readers of the New York Post were confronted with a story whose sensational title was characteristic of the tabloid: “I’m a Guy Again! ABC newsman who switched genders wants to switch back.” Replete with pictures of Don Ennis both as a woman and a man, the article informed readers that the … Read more
St. John’s University is back in the news following an investigation into possible financial improprieties involving the former president of the university and another administrator with ties to Cecilia Chang, a dean who was accused of fraud. A statement released by the University on August 24th, concluded that although “there were errors in judgment” by … Read more
Standing in front of a famous 1964 photo of Father Theodore Hesburgh locking arms with the Rev. Martin Luther King, Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, honored Father Hesburgh at a party on Capitol Hill celebrating the retired president of the University of Notre Dame’s 96th birthday in late May. During her celebratory remarks, Pelosi … Read more
During the same month that U. S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy was issuing his opinion that the Defense of Marriage Act “humiliated tens of thousands of children now being raised by same-sex couples,” Russia’s House of Parliament voted unanimously to ban the adoption of Russian children by same-sex couples from abroad. The House also … Read more
Now that the verdict is in on Kermit Gosnell, the Philadelphia abortionist convicted of delivering live babies—most of them African American—and killing them, perhaps President Obama might finally be willing to respond to the horrific crime. Silent on the facts of the case, it is curious why neither the President nor the First Lady have … Read more
Barraged by headlines like the New York Post’s “St. John’s Dean of Mean, Cecilia Chang, Commits Suicide,” most New Yorkers remain bewildered by the facts surrounding a sordid story of money, power and status seeking at St. John’s University. Last October, The New York Times reported that Dr. Chang, a longtime Dean of the Institute … Read more
Continuing their commitment to controlling global population growth through artificial contraception, sterilization, and abortion initiatives, Microsoft founder and philanthropist, Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda, a self-described “practicing” Catholic, are now attempting to control the curriculum of the nation’s public schools. Subsidizing the Common Core State Standards in English language arts and mathematics, the Bill … Read more
In 1990, Pope John Paul II released Ex Corde Ecclesiae, the papal document defining the centrality of Catholic higher education. Its title translated as “from the heart of the Church,” the document called for Catholic colleges to be faithful to their Catholic mission and accountable to their local bishops. Fiercely resisted by many Catholic college … Read more
In 1930, Margaret Sanger’s Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau allied with the Urban League to bring birth control services to the women of Harlem. By 1939, Sanger had raised thousands of dollars to support an expansion of the initiative she named “The Negro Project.” Targeted toward reducing an African-American population described in Sanger’s June, 1932 … Read more
In an ideal Catholic world, if a Catholic theologian promoted a woman’s right to choose abortion and encouraged access to same-sex marriage, while also comparing the sacrifice of the Mass to an act of homosexual intercourse, the work of that theologian would be marginalized. But, in the upside-down world of Catholic higher education in 2012, … Read more
The success that the gay community has achieved in shedding the “deviant” label has relied upon convincing the heterosexual world that homosexual behavior is perfectly normal. The recent uproar over a social work course titled “Deviant Behavior” at Franciscan University of Steubenville—which lists homosexuality as a form of deviant behavior—demonstrates just how vigilant the gay … Read more
After 25 years of faithful service, John Carr, executive director of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Department of Justice, Peace, and Human Development, retired last month. In a personal note circulated among his colleagues—which was later posted online—Carr wrote that he was “leaving the USCCB, not to end my service to the Church, … Read more
While faithful Catholics concluded their celebration of the Year of the Priest only last spring, a coalition of dissident organizations like Call to Action, Voice of the Faithful, and the Women’s Ordination Conference have issued a “universal call to ministry” to help build a “non-clerical Catholic Church in which the laity reclaims their baptismal priesthood.” … Read more
This year’s election season promises ever greater challenges to the fake Catholic political groups. Catholics United and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good seem to be running out of ideas for how to convince Catholics to vote for the same Democratic candidates who had promised in 2008 to support Catholic teachings on life issues, … Read more
The latest revelations that yet another Connecticut Catholic priest has stolen yet another million dollars from his own parishioners to support a flamboyant gay lifestyle in New York City are especially disappointing to those of us who thought Connecticut’s religious leaders had learned a lesson the first time this happened in 2009. Many of us … Read more
The unanimous vote by St. Thomas University’s Board of Trustees to sever ties with the St. Paul-Minneapolis Archdiocese is just the most recent attempt by a Catholic university to limit the influence of orthodox Catholic leaders on its campus. Voting to change the university’s bylaw that maintained the sitting archbishop of St. Paul-Minneapolis as the … Read more