The Catholic Church since Vatican II has blundered in attempting to satisfy the modern demand for a more enjoyable and freer life on earth. By decentralizing its administrative structures without proper safeguards, the Church unwittingly gave legitimacy to grassroots activists—within its own institutions—who work against its teaching and way of life. As a result of … Read more
A once faithless and often disobedient American Catholic community was transformed by U.S. bishops during the period 1800-1900 into one of the finest Churches any pope ever saw. It is an accomplishment few particular Churches can claim in so short a period, one admired by all modern popes. Not the least of these is John … Read more
Why don’t we put a moratorium on abstract discussions of the nature of the Catholic college and instead take a good look at what is actually happening on Catholic campuses? Ideas can be debated forever but they have consequences, and Catholicity or its lack can be determined more easily by looking at what happened day-by-day … Read more
No one knows for sure what the Pope has in mind for the Extraordinary Synod. Since all but a small minority of the world’s Catholic bishops concur with him on matters of faith and morals, as they were one with Paul VI in 1964 when he polled the various hierarchies on contraception, it is not … Read more
The critical question raised by Paul VI ten years ago still needs answering: Do we believe what we preach? Few Catholics like to speak of “schism” in connection with the present crisis in the Church, but “the break” with Church teaching and Church authority is real enough. We are not experiencing the benign neglect of … Read more
Msgr. Francis J. Haas, the second of two prominent Right Reverend New Dealers during the presidency of FDR (John A. Ryan was No. 1), once told his Catholic University graduate students that the word “socialism” might well have been taken over by the Catholic Church to describe its political philosophy had the term not been … Read more