It is a week for mourning certainly. We mourn the loss of an important Supreme Court case that would have protected women in abortion clinics. We mourn the inevitable loss of life that will be the direct result of this decision, the lives of unborn children but also women who would have otherwise had at … Read more
Mary Eberstadt is a master of analogy. In her masterful work Adam and Eve After the Pill, she compared the Sexual Revolution to communism, an ideology that hasn’t so much as failed, don’t you know, as one that simply needs one more good try. Neither empirical evidence, nor high body count, will convince true believers … Read more
A few weeks ago I gave a talk in Omaha called “No Finer Time to be a Faithful Catholic.” In the talk I argue that it is the finest time to be a faithful Catholic not in spite of all manifold and manifest troubles we face today, but precisely because of them. I argue it … Read more
It is quite remarkable that we are fighting the same battle from before the French Revolution, the fight between sexual license and sexual morality. The fight has been non-stop. Sometimes we are winning, other times, like now, we are losing. On the one side are the radicals who genuinely believe traditional morality as espoused by … Read more
By the deafening silence, one can assume the “Spiritual Friends” are disappointed by the Holy Father’s apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, at least as related to their favorite topic, same-sex attraction. No doubt their hopes were high when the controversial interim report was produced at the Extraordinary Synod in the Fall of 2014. It was as … Read more
Donald Trump is driving everyone a bit batty. His foes and even his friends are all getting weary thinking about him and certainly talking about him. And his presence in this campaign has brought out the worst in us, even among those who are our best and most thoughtful. I do not include myself among … Read more
I may be something a bit rare in Catholic circles, both a convert and a revert. Between my conversion in 1985 and my reversion in 1993, I lived the life of a non-practicing orthodox Catholic. There really is such a thing; someone who for various reasons is not practicing but who does not question any … Read more
Without a doubt Obergefell was crammed down our throats, as were all the lower court decisions that overturned 34 state laws and constitutional changes voted upon by citizens. But, it is hard to see that Obergefell would ever have happened if the ground had not been prepared, if those five Supreme Court justices could not … Read more
A boxer who strikes a painful blow knows quite well to keep pounding the delicate spot. He knows when his opponent is hurt and he strikes the same spot over and over again. If there is a tiny cut above the eye, he keeps pounding the cut so that the bloody trickle becomes a torrent. … Read more
One year ago, Salon ran a rather breathless piece by an anti-Catholic writer named Patricia Miller who danced on the graves of Cardinal Raymond Burke, Father Frank Pavone, the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue, and me. Miller was thrilled to her toes that each of us had in some way become “discredited” and were doomed. So, … Read more
It is clear from their relatively tiny numbers—only a few million in a total population of 318,000,000—that men who have sex with men (MSM)* are not “everywhere” as MSM insist they are. It is also clear from their sexual activities, particularly related to anal sex, that their sexual practices also set them apart from the … Read more
Two of the great propaganda achievements of the radical homosexual movement are the now internalized beliefs that they are everywhere and they are just like us. Many propositions laid the ground work for the change in public opinion from the time homosexuality was openly mocked to today when you can get fired even for poking … Read more
Today I picked up my Mossberg 500 Tactical 12-gauge shotgun with a pistol grip and a short barrel. It is not for game. I hate hunting. There is much blather about guns these days, and not just from the left. Last year one of the deep thinkers at Patheos grunted this very fine argument about … Read more
“Jazz” Jennings is a deeply troubled 15-year-old boy who thinks he’s a girl and has been raised as a girl since an early age. Jennings has become a breakout star in the transsexual firmament, starting with self-made YouTube videos that drew an immediate audience. When he was seven years old his parents actually let him … Read more
I had thought Jennifer Roback Morse was getting to the heart of the matter when she pivoted to a focus on the victims of the Sexual Revolution. Her undoubtedly correct view is that gay so-called “marriage” did not start with the gays; rather, the Sexual Revolution prepared the ground beginning in the 1960s. In The … Read more
A debate about—of all things—Abraham Lincoln has broken out in the context of the Supreme Court’s calamitous and ridiculous Obergefell decision that imposed faux marriage on the whole country. More than 60 legal scholars invoked Abraham Lincoln in a recent document urging both private citizens and officials at all levels of government to view the … Read more
Kim Davis is an innocent victim both of cowardice of churchmen and the smug eagerness of certain priests to put her in her place. First, a few largely uncontested facts: it was Vatican personnel who invited Davis to meet the pope in Washington DC. Neither Kim Davis nor anyone connected to her requested the meeting. … Read more
Besides doing something about certain lawless decisions made by our black-robed masters, something must also be done about how we came to such a place where they can cast their gaze across the fruited plain and whatever catches their fancy becomes the law of the land, indeed higher than the Constitution. Roe was bad enough, … Read more
I understand spin. Spin is not lying. It is capturing the narrative. If your side does not capture the narrative, the other side will. The other side most likely will have the media on their side so capturing the narrative is so much easier for them. Still, you must try. Therefore, I fully understand the … Read more
Two years ago I began to notice regular columns in First Things from those who identified as homosexual, chaste and supportive of Church teaching on marriage and human sexuality. It became immediately clear there was a movement afoot, one that I hadn’t noticed nor had anyone else outside of a small bubble, but that it … Read more