Trump recently took $60 million away from Planned Parenthood, the first president ever to do so. This and other unique pro-life initiatives of President Trump turned my mind to certain claims made by the pro-life Smart Set back in those crazy days of the 2016 campaign. In March 2016, a group of old and very … Read more
Good friends came over the other night with their six kids to watch School of Rock, the story of never-was rocker Dewey Finn who pretends to be a substitute teacher at a swank middle school. Rather than teach the usual curriculum, he teaches them rock ‘n’ roll so they can win a Battle of the … Read more
Julia Beck was booted from the Baltimore LGBTQ Commission because she referred to a male rapist as male even though he says he’s female. They placed this male rapist in a woman’s prison where he proceeded to rape more women. Beck is both a lesbian and a self-confessed “radical feminist” who told her story on … Read more
What message is being sent to victims of priest sex abuse that Cardinal Roger Mahony will be a featured speaker at the upcoming Los Angeles Archdiocesan Education Conference, the largest Catholic gathering in the country? Exactly five years ago, Archbishop Jose Gomez stripped Mahony of all administrative and public church duties. Why? Gomez was nice … Read more
It is hard to believe that Franciscan University at Steubenville demoted Stephen Lewis from his English Department chairmanship over a single porny book about the Blessed Mother that he assigned to students. You might suspect there was more to it than that, and so your mind turns to Lewis’s judgment over time and from there to … Read more
Pope Francis gave his annual talk to the Vatican diplomatic corps this week. Once more he denounced “nationalism” and promoted multilateralism and international institutions. Like many others, the pope seems to have a fundamental misunderstanding of both nationalism and globalism. But let’s take this seriously for a moment and consider that we live in a … Read more
Just a few years ago, I was arguing in the comment boxes of a gay blog called Slowly Boiled Frog, a site that had gone after me hammer and tongs for years. I joined the combox conversation under my own name. I did it for fun, to sharpen my arguments, and, strange as it may … Read more
We are told repeatedly that we must believe “the woman” whenever she makes a claim of sexual assault. Disbelieving her or even asking for evidence other than just her word makes you a rape apologist. Just how bankrupt is this charge was borne out in the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. We were supposed to believe “the … Read more
Father Arne Panula died quite publicly and for a very long time. We kept hearing the end was near, but he kept on going and going. Besides in his coffin, the last time I saw him was when he took the podium at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast and offered a prayer. This movie-star-handsome man … Read more
Catholic Church employee Aaron Bianco says he has “endured physical and emotional violence” at the hands of Catholic laymen, watchdog groups, and media outlets. Specifically, he charges Church Militant and LifeSite News with slashing the tires of his car, making death threats, and physically attacking him outside of Mass. Announcing his resignation after what he … Read more
It took a while, but writers Melinda Selmys and Damon Linker have finally owned up to the thing gnawing at their consciences for years; they no longer believe the claims of the Catholic Church and have left. Selmys is a blogger at Patheos who calls herself “queer.” Linker is a columnist at The Week noted … Read more
Riding his bicycle on a country road in Northern Virginia, a man named Matt met Jesus unexpectedly this week. Strangers found the 53-year-old man lying in a ditch with his toes still clipped into his pedals. Matt’s wife had gone up ahead, but when he did not catch up, she turned around and pedaled back … Read more
I am now three days into a wild and woolly debate, of sorts, on Twitter about the creation of homosexuality as a new category of being. When last I checked, there are almost 1,000 comments, many of them vulgar, some of them threatening, and hardly any demonstrating real knowledge about the issue, only Tourette’s-like grunts, … Read more
When Theodore McCarrick was spooning and fondling seminarians, quite obviously he did not consider how far his enormities would reverberate. At the General Judgement, he will be shown how far his despicable actions have reverberated through society and how they harmed the lives of people he has never met. At the General Judgement, he will … Read more
I became casual friends with Rod Dreher when he lived in Brooklyn with the beautiful Julie, and I lived in Manhattan alone. Newly married and not yet a father, he was writing movie reviews for the New York Post; this was before his move to National Review and ever-increasing fame. We talked back then about … Read more
The gaying of the Church is perhaps the most diabolical attack the Devil has ever launched against the Catholic Faith. First, there is the massive damage done to the Church: the thousands of victims, the hundreds of millions in payouts, the bankruptcy of dioceses, and the cratering of ecclesial credibility. And yet, in our society … Read more
There is a man named David Hart who runs what I once called “a smelly little blog” called Slowly Boiled Frog that lays waste to Christians who take public and aggressive stands against the gay agenda. He has come after me more than twenty times in recent years. This is how David introduced me to … Read more
Just a few days ago, James Martin, S.J. tweeted: “Jesus says, ‘Stop judging.’… Not ‘Judge if people are sinning.’ Not ‘Judge people to correct them.’… Jesus judged others, but he was the Sinless Son of God. Unless you are, too, ‘Stop judging.’” Who is Martin fingering, and about what? Fairfax County School Board member Pat … Read more
It was a shocking photo. There was Jesuit James Martin with his arm around Professor Robert George of Princeton, both of them grinning ear to ear. Professor George published the photo on his Twitter feed and it appeared this beacon of orthodoxy had given his imprimatur to the heterodoxy of James Martin, who has quite … Read more
I argue that a large part of the motivation for the recent attacks on Franciscan University of Steubenville and Christendom College is an intense dislike of anything that smacks of theological or political conservatism. Recall that Simcha Fisher and Jenn Morson recently published articles setting out complaints by various former students that their claims of … Read more