In recent years we have witnessed the rise of two national political leaders—Joseph Biden and Nancy Pelosi—who claim to be devout Catholics while actively promoting radical pro-abortion and pro-LGBT agendas. This has brought into sharp relief the growing disparity between two thousand years of unvarying Church teaching on these issues against the opinions of large … Read more
An error regarding vocations has become common among Catholics. Specifically, people have begun claiming there exists a call to the single life apart from a religious vocation. While there is no evidence of this “new” vocation in the Magisterium of the Church, it has persisted in its growth and usage due to the increasing number … Read more
“I think I can use my own judgment on that.” That was the assessment of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a longtime “pro-choice” Catholic, when asked her reaction to U.S. bishops and the Vatican considering the question of whether abortion-advocating Catholic politicians should be denied the Eucharist. The reporter acknowledged the Church’s position that … Read more
The ongoing sexual abuse crisis in the Church has left many good Catholics shaken, and like many I have tried to understand how this has happened. Obviously, homosexuality in the clergy plays a role, and the all-male nature of the priesthood provides opportunities for such abuse. But here I want to explore the larger historical … Read more
Nearly 100 years ago my great-great grandfather, T.T. Martin, descended upon Dayton, Tennessee, in the heat of July. Typically, his evangelical fame would have been enough to draw crowds in any Southern town he may have visited, but in this particular case, he was following the crowd. They needed his perspective, his vision, his truth, … Read more
In his classic Aphorisms, Hippocrates once declared, “For extreme diseases, extreme methods of cure, as to restriction, are most suitable.” Today, we say, “Desperate times call for desperate measures.” But do desperate measures justify perceived desperate times? Last year, we saw firsthand how “extreme methods of cure” were unnecessarily imposed on our world and Church, … Read more
As anyone who has fought in the culture wars (that is, fighting over moral values, life, and rights) can attest, debating with the progressive Left has become nearly impossible. Regardless of how well conservatives support their argument or how clear they are in their logic, they will inevitably be labeled an ignorant bigot. Their argument … Read more
We’re all familiar with the term “conspiracy theory.” For some, it’s used as a pejorative—a way to discredit information or something useful to calumniate someone who is not like-minded. For others, it’s an annoying word that they’re sick of hearing from those who never give them the benefit of the doubt. However you have heard … Read more
Their attitude is really this: that the man must stop thinking, if he is to go on living. Their counsel is one on intellectual amputation. If thy head offend thee, cut it off; for it is better, not merely to enter the Kingdom of Heaven as a child, but to enter it as an imbecile, … Read more
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
Few boys enjoy the benefit of being raised by the kind of man’s man who was my father. He was a veteran who served as a U.S. Army medic; a second-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do; and an exemplary athlete with trophies from baseball, softball, tennis, and billiards. He was tough as nails: he … Read more
In his America Magazine essay, San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy addresses the question raised by many in the Church who call for the denial of Holy Communion to professed Catholic politicians who advocate laws that promote moral evils such as abortion, euthanasia, etc., especially President Biden. The foundational shortcoming in the essay is that it … Read more
Supremacist movements are evil. This statement is obvious to our modern Western minds when we are speaking of racial supremacy, but ideological supremacy is just as bad, if not worse. To be clear, when I write of ideological supremacists, I do not mean that believing in the supremacy of certain ideologies is evil. That would … Read more
Recently Fox News ran an article entitled ‘God’ left out of Biden’s National Day of Prayer proclamation. Not that I questioned the veracity of the report, given President Joe Biden’s campaign to eradicate natural law from society as per his pro-LGBTQI policies, I was, nevertheless, compelled by curiosity to read exactly what the proclamation stated. … Read more
More than a half century has elapsed since the murder of Martin Luther King. How did the nation react to his killing? The answer is easy. There was an immediate outpouring of near universal grief and outrage. And it was not limited to any particular race or political persuasion. Americans everywhere were horrified by what … Read more
Critical Race Theory (CRT) is sweeping through many organizations, schools, and even religious organizations today. However, CRT—its origins, its fruits, and its effects—is contrary to love. As Catholics, we must be critical of Critical Race Theory, as it is contrary to Catholicism and common sense. Britannica tells us the origins of Critical Race Theory: Critical … Read more
Last month Judicial Watch released an extensive report detailing the Food and Drug Administration’s program for buying the body parts of dead unborn babies for use in mice “humanization” projects. If the outrage from David Daleiden’s 2015 revelations that taxpayer-funded Planned Parenthood sells unborn babies’ body parts wasn’t enough to change anything, maybe this is. … Read more
During the shutdown last spring, one of the unexpected blessings of quarantine was reconnecting with college friends on Zoom. We all had nowhere to be, so a group of us would meet about once a week to catch up. All of us were English or Classics graduates, so literature naturally came up as a topic … Read more
As we saw in the previous essay in this series, Oedipus Rex presents the riddle of man without offering any solution. It seems to beg innumerable questions on the nature of man and on the mystery of suffering without giving any answers. It would, however, be a gross and grotesque error to conclude from the … Read more
We do not live in a secular society. Most of us think we do. It is a truism of our time. Folks are flooding out of the Church and embracing the sunny uplands of rationalism, scientism, and freedom from the shackles of dusty, old, and even dangerous dogmas. They are becoming nones, glorious nones, at … Read more