Back in my New York days, when I was the greenest of greenhorns, I used to watch the three card monte players around Times Square. These are the guys who flip three playing cards around on an upturned box and goad the audience to “pick the red, pick the red, pick the red.” And they … Read more
“The Catholic apologist,” says Arnold Lunn, in Now I See, an account of his intellectual and personal conversion to the faith, “bases his argument on the appeal to external facts.” The apologist’s opponents, then (1938) as now, “agree only in their appeal from objective truth to subjective prejudice, from external facts to personal intuition.” Yet we … Read more
Catholics and pro-lifers who were shocked at the “knighthood” of Dutch politician and abortion activist Lilianne Ploumen into the Vatican’s Order of St. Gregory the Great by Pope Francis, shouldn’t have been. True, Ploumen’s militant support of abortion and homosexual rights (which includes raising $400 million for a “reproductive health” NGO she helped launch) is … Read more
Last month, the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons published the qualitative results of a survey that sought to increase understanding of the emotional toll of abortion. The survey was lead by Dr. Priscilla Coleman, one of the world’s foremost researchers on post-abortion sequelae, and included responses from almost one thousand women. The survey was … Read more
“Sticks and stones may break my bones / but names will never hurt me.” So goes the old children’s nursery rhyme. We know, of course, that the claim is not exactly true: CBS produced a documentary in 2011 about the effects of bullying in a digital age, “Words Can Kill.” What is less talked about … Read more
“There are no statistics!” cried a critic of an article I wrote for Crisis a couple of weeks ago. I had asked a prominent Jesuit to open his eyes and look at the vast human misery caused by the breakdown of sexual mores in the West. Had I laced the piece with statistics, people would … Read more
Probably each of us has had an experience that awakened our conscience, one that changed the way we looked at the world and ourselves, a moment of moral clarity that made us reflect, “I was blind, but now I see.” As a young boy growing up in the rural south, water fountains labeled “White” and … Read more
It seems that pro-lifers are not-so pro-life. According to a recent Gallup poll, 46 percent of Americans identify as pro-life, but only 18 percent say that abortion should be “illegal in all” circumstances. So what accounts for this moral confusion? For one thing, the ease with which we rationalize morality down. It goes something like … Read more
At first sight, we all know what happened in Las Vegas. A man by the name of Paddock locked himself in a room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. Below, in the courtyard, country/western musicians were performing in concert before thousands of music fans. The man had been into real … Read more
What would the pro-life movement be without its perennial infighting? From the absolutists vs. the incrementalists to the Seamless Garment vs. everyone else, it is a feature of our movement that just never goes away. The latest controversy over something mislabeled as “new” is evidence that there is nothing new about these internecine fights. Rebecca … Read more
Something has been terribly lost in the story of Maddi Runkles, the 18-year-old who became pregnant and was punished by her Evangelical school for breaking the morality clause she signed when becoming a student. To begin, I believe it has been a tad unseemly that she has taken to the national airwaves to air her … Read more
More on arguments. “It’s only a clump of cells,” says my interlocutor. I’ll call him Mike. “I’m not aware of the scientific meaning of the word clump.” In all arguments regarding abortion, sex, marriage, and the raising of children, we may well steal a march on our opponents by appealing to biological or anthropological facts, … Read more
Father, I must confess: I have made comments on social media. There is at least one thing that social media illuminate, and that is the unwillingness or the incapacity of people to reason. I attribute it in part to “critical thinking,” which turns otherwise intelligent people into perpetual sophomores, ready to play what they think … Read more
The name Kermit Gosnell is now relatively well known. It should, of course, be better known. He is after all one of the worst serial killers in the history of the United States. He was an abortionist and it is alleged that this fact alone has contributed to the media committing an astonishing act of … Read more
Vecuronium bromide is a drug that relaxes skeletal muscles and can be used in conjunction with surgical anesthesia. That is its usual medical application. Some states also use it in connection with capital punishment: it is one of several drugs used together to execute prisoners. Vecuronium bromide paralyzes the prisoner’s breathing. Potassium chloride is then … Read more
Recently in Ireland a body called the Irish Citizens’ Assembly took steps long feared by supporters of the right to life. The assembly is not a regular constitutional component of the Irish government. Rather it is a body called into being by the government to make suggestions as to potential constitutional amendments for the legislature … Read more
“The entire population of the region of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them because they were seized with great fear. So he got into a boat and returned.” (Luke 8:37) It is amazing. Our Lord has just freed a man from a legion of demons, a man that presumably these folks had, at one … Read more
In February, a group of pro-abortion doctors penned a commentary for the New England Journal of Medicine explaining why the drug Mifepristone should be available in pharmacies, citing safety and convenience. This group was spearheaded by Dr. Daniel Grossman of the ANSIRH program at the University of California, San Francisco, the same program that produced … Read more
Last week, California brought fifteen criminal counts against our client David Daleiden. Counts one through eight deal with the 2014 National Abortion Federation Annual Meeting. Counts nine through eleven deal with the two restaurant visits with Planned Parenthood personnel in the Los Angeles area (the videos that reveal “crush above, crush below,” and “I want … Read more
France, the land of the French Revolution, of liberty, fraternity, and equality, is displaying few of these qualities these days. Not that the French revolutionaries ever did in their time. They guillotined those who belonged to the wrong class, the wrong (i.e. losing) political party, those adhering to Church and King and ultimately each other. … Read more
