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
Doctors of America need your help to defund Planned Parenthood and a unique opportunity is coming for Catholics to help them. A rare debate will occur at the American Medical Association (AMA) meeting in Atlanta from November 14-17. As a member of the AMA “House of Delegates” (HOD), I have attended meetings nearly twice a … Read more
Once it became clear that I was returning to the Church (a story for another time), I set out to study the Catechism, along with as much Catholic theology and philosophy as I could get. For the past few years I have been studying the work of Msgr. Robert Sokolowski, of Catholic University—as fine a … Read more
One way that dissidents (including various episcopal conferences that had been derelict in teaching Catholic marital morality in the immediate periods before and after Humanae vitae) sought to dilute the clear Magisterial teaching the encyclical provided them was to reduce its vision of married sexual life to an “aspirational norm.” In other words, the idea … Read more
A great bonfire was established on the lower end of the main street… Soon after dark, a rude stage … placed on wheels and drawn by horses, made its appearance, on which was seated … an effigy of the pope, hideously painted, and behind him stood another representing the Devil. Two men with masks on … Read more
For months, the news has been flooded with stories about waves of “migrants” descending on Europe from war-ravaged Syria and elsewhere in the Mideast. We also hear about repeated attempts by lesser numbers of people to slip into Europe by sea, usually with the aid of smugglers, from North Africa. This is against the backdrop … Read more
The Archdiocese of Milan is one of the most ancient and honored in the Latin Christian world. Named the Ambrosian See, it was the seat of St. Ambrose, and possessor of an ancient and venerable western liturgical rite of its own. Milan, the mighty city on the Lombard plain, has ever been at the crossroads … Read more
In recent decades the Church has softened her public witness for the truth of the Catholic vision of things. That tendency became much stronger after the Second Vatican Council, and can even claim some support from statements such as the address of Bl. Paul VI at the Council’s close. The change has corresponded to a … Read more
The fact that more than sixty percent of the Irish electorate supported an amendment to the nation’s constitution recognizing same-sex “marriage” caught many people by surprise last spring. They may have been clinging to an outdated image of Ireland as a bastion of devout Catholicism. Unfortunately there further disturbing changes that are being advanced. One … Read more
Few things are certain in this world, but this I believe with untroubled confidence: liberal Catholics are on the wrong side of history. Our Lord has already assured us that the Church will stand the test of time, and “the gates of Hell will not prevail” against it. Ours isn’t the first era in which … Read more
Among the entitlements that apply to every Catholic, there is one whose violation in recent years has become all too frequent, and that is the right to remain secure in the faith we received in baptism. How else are we to confront our persecutors? Unless we are made to feel, on the strength of a … Read more
Many of O’Connor’s stories portray the ineptness of men to uphold traditional ideals of manhood. The men show no leadership, they do not protect or care for their family members, they lack all manner of chivalry, and they lose a sense of priority as they commit to careers and professions or social and political agendas … Read more
Recently, there was a positive development during an interview with Bishop Borys Gudziak (President of the Ukrainian Catholic University—UCU) by Crux regarding the issue of “decentralization,” which was proposed in a favorable light by the Holy Father during the recent Synod on the Family. Bishop Gudziak echoed the position of the Head of the Ukrainian … Read more
The Canadian painter Alex Colville (1920-2013) was that most curious of artistic hybrids, both a realist and a modernist. Art critic Jeffrey Myers, in an article entitled “Dangerously Real,” called Colville “one of the greatest modern realist painters.” Colville’s paintings reproduce ordinary objects, people, scenes—indeed the more ordinary, the better—with near-photographic realism. Each of his … Read more
“The essential architecture, if you will, of the struggle between good and evil in our times has grown ever more intense, and the warnings I sought to convey through the novel remain no less urgent.” ∼ Michael O’Brien, Preface, Elijah in Jerusalem “Do you remember what happened to Elijah?… On Horeb, he (Elijah) would get … Read more
International migration occurs in varied settings and raises a variety of issues, so much so that sorting them out would be difficult even if some of them weren’t so inflammatory. The issues are basic as well as numerous, and go to the nature of the common good, the nature and purpose of national societies, and … Read more
Twenty-five years ago, a small group of activists charged the New York City Saint Patrick’s Day Parade with being a public gesture of pure homophobia. They built their case around the allegedly bigoted “Catholic character.” The trial was held before the judges of the left-leaning secular media. A jury composed of the general public yawned, … Read more
Never in the 50-year history of the Synod of Bishops was there so conflictual and raucous a session. The 14th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on “the vocation and mission of the family in the Church and the contemporary world” began under the shadow of a shocking announcement by Polish Msgr. Charamsa. This … Read more
By the time Chris Harper-Mercer killed himself on October 1, he had already killed and wounded a number of people at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, and sent the rest of the nation reeling in shock after yet another shooting spree. I will never forget the first time I ever heard of a public … Read more
“The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.” ∼ G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy What good will another hatchet job do? It’s easy, I’ve discovered, to invite criticisms ranging from the condescending (“Are you a bad writer, or just poorly educated?”) to the … Read more