Anyplace but Home for the Holidays
Our Elites tell us that we should be grateful that COVID has broken our imposed familial bonds at the holidays. But our Faith reminds of how important being together with family is.
’Tis the Season to Be Guilty
British polemicist Thomas Macaulay said, in criticism of the Puritans, that they “hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.” The Puritans were practically a comedy club next to any contemporary “Progressive.” As we enter the season of “winter holidays” (can’t say “Thanksgiving” and especially … Read more
Cremation: The Denial of Human Bodily Integrity
Damien Le Guay is a contemporary Catholic French thinker and author of two important, but unfortunately untranslated, books. Qu’avons-nous perdu en perdant la mort? (What Have We Lost in Losing Death?) questions how today’s funerary customs have erased death from human consciousness. La mort en cendres: la crémation aujourd’hui, que faut-il en penser? (Death in … Read more
The Theological Error in Many Modern Catholic Hymns
In September 2020, the USCCB Committee on Doctrine published “Catholic Hymnody at the Service of the Church: An Aid for Evaluating Hymn Lyrics.” Initial promise notwithstanding, there has not appeared to be too public a follow-up to the document. Coming out in September last year, its impact was likely limited, as the big pew missalette … Read more
The Ten-Minute Homily
According to the Western press, the main takeaway from Pope Francis’ address to the bishops of Slovakia was: limit your homilies to ten minutes! We know that the advice’s “theological note” (the degree of how authoritatively binding a teaching is) is de fide definita because (a) he’s said it before and (b) it was accompanied … Read more
The Ascension is Not a Pastoral Burden
Let’s admit it: the Solemnity of the Ascension is a practically marginal feast for Western Catholics. In many Western countries and much of the United States, it’s even been rendered ahistorical, shunted off from the fortieth day of Easter to the nearest Sunday. The dirty little secret is that the feast is so irrelevant to … Read more
The Disappearing Babies
On February 3, the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) reported research regarding American birth rates in the decade 2009-19. The results are not good. Even if we take 2008 as a baseline, the ensuing decade showed an implosion in birth rates. If birth rates had only stayed where they were in 2008 (remember, birth rates … Read more
We’ve Rendered Unto Caesar. Now Let Us Render Unto God
Attacking the four dissenters in the July 24 Supreme Court decision refusing relief to the chapel that sued Nevada for imposing more restrictive indoors assembly numbers on churches than on casinos, New York Times reporter Linda Greenhouse accused them of pursuing a religious “crusade.” We all know that crusades are led by sectarian ignoramuses whose … Read more
Putting the ‘Loco’ In Loco Parentis
In loco parentis means “in the place of the parents.” It is an old legal concept that once had a venerable place in Western law. The doctrine of in loco parentis was invoked when people or institutions had to act in the place of parents. Schools, for example, were deemed to share in a parent’s … Read more
Transfiguration is the Christian’s Posture
The Feast of the Transfiguration on August 6th tends to be overlooked: stuck in the middle of summer, not a holy day of obligation, with a Gospel reading generally co-opted by the Second Sunday of Lent. But that’s no reason to overlook it, because transfiguration is not just a one-time event in Jesus’s life. Transfiguration … Read more
What Is the Purpose of Our Planet?
Pop star Miley Cyrus told Elle magazine that she and her husband Liam Hemsworth did not intend to have children. Like many millennials, “We don’t want to reproduce because we know the earth can’t handle it.” Cyrus, who declares she’s “such an over-thinker,” doesn’t want to bring children into the world because “[w]e’re getting handed … Read more
The Privatization of Marriage
Last year in this forum, I wrote “Where Should a Catholic Get Married,” responding to the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s accommodationist approach in allowing Catholics to marry outside of churches and chapels. I criticized Baltimore’s policy and urged other bishops to avoid it because it institutionalizes a lax approach to the sacramental meaning of marriage, which … Read more
Abortion: A Choice Like No Other
The June 21 decision by an English Court of Protection judge to order a Nigerian woman, in the fifth month of pregnancy, to have an abortion against her own and her family’s wills, stirred criticism. A three-judge Court of Appeal overturned the decision June 24. Apart from the barbarism of forced abortion—hitherto the preference of totalitarian … Read more
Ginsburg’s “Neutrality” over Religious Liberty
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (joined by Justice Sotomayor) wrote the dissenting opinion in last week’s Supreme Court decision upholding the presence of Bladensburg’s Peace Cross on public land. The Court, fractured about the basis for its ruling, nevertheless managed to cobble together a 7-2 split (with Justices Breyer and Kagan as part of … Read more
Bishop Paprocki Calls on Catholic Politicians to Take Sides
Thomas Paprocki, the bishop of Springfield (the state capital of Illinois), has issued a decree barring the Illinois State Senate President and House Speaker—both ostensibly Catholics—from receiving Communion in the diocese. The June 2 decision took place in response to enactment of abortion legislation codifying in state law an unlimited abortion liberty through birth, in … Read more
Dust or Humus? The Advent of Human Composting
Christians have just completed Lent, which begins on Ash Wednesday with the tracing of ashen crosses on foreheads and the formula “Remember, man, that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” Lent leads to Easter, where Christians are reminded they are more than dust—their mortal shells formed from “the dust of the earth” … Read more
Rethinking Baptismal Preparation
Baptism is often relegated to the back of our thoughts. For most Catholics, it occurred in infancy and is, therefore, not a personal memory. For still too many parishes, baptism remains a quasi-private event sequestered someplace after Mass on the occasional Sunday, rather than an integral part of the regular Sunday Mass. The truth is … Read more
ERA: A Sex or Gender Amendment?
I’ve started calling the proposed federal Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) the “Zombie” Amendment because, no matter how many deadlines one sets for its expiration, we always seem to be in the middle of “Night of the Living Dead.” The latest attempt to resurrect it was made on January 9 in the 2019 session of the … Read more
Anglican Bishops Approve Transgender “Baptism”
Last spring, I wrote about a new book, put out by British publisher Darton, Longman, and Todd: Transfaith. The book is a collection of seven experimental liturgies for “transgender” use composed by a Church of England priestess and a former Metropolitan Community Church minister who “retrained” for ministry in the United Reformed Church. The story … Read more
On Bryant’s “To A Waterfowl”
In December 1815, freshly admitted to the bar, the American poet William Cullen Bryant was walking to Plainfield, Massachusetts, when he observed a bird—probably a duck—flying across the horizon at sunset. That vision gave birth to what has been called the best short poem in any language and even by one “the most beautiful poem … Read more