A Plea to Good Bishops
The wickedness of a previous generation of bishops, not wholly leached away, has robbed good bishops of the honor they deserve.
The wickedness of a previous generation of bishops, not wholly leached away, has robbed good bishops of the honor they deserve.
During the dark spring of 2020, it seemed that so many of our spiritual fathers checked out. We were denied the Sacraments and other spiritual aids at a time we needed it most. But there were exceptions: priests who heroically ministered to their people in spite of the darkness.
After years of episcopal silence in the face of heresy, corruption, and scandal, we’re starting to see some successors to the apostles boldly standing up for the Faith.
While conservative Muslims and evangelical Christians have publicly fought against gender theory indoctrination, Catholics bishops have largely been silent.
Our bishops cannot ignore the percolating civil war brewing in America over trans ideology.
The often uneasy relationship between bishops and the Vatican has come to the forefront in recent years, as increasingly unpastoral directives are being issued by Rome.
When Covid hit almost three years ago, most Catholic bishops & priests went along with the (now-discredited) draconian government response. Why did so many blindly follow the narrative, even to the harm of souls?
In times past, it was everywhere understood that care of the soul was the principal function of the bishop’s office. Alas, that is no longer true.
The year 2018 will mark the 50th, or Golden, anniversary of Humanae Vitae (HV), in which Paul VI restated what had been, until 1930, an unbroken and universal Christian teaching. Today, on HV’s 44th anniversary, the Bellarmine Forum is launching The Campaign for Humanae Vitae. Our goal is to gather a million signatures on our … Read more
If a decree like the HHS contraception mandate was issued during the Medieval era, Archbishop Dolan would probably have declared Secretary Kathleen Sebelius “anathema” and excommunicated her from the Church (see this famous scene from the movie Becket for an example). If President Obama was a tyrannical monarch in that era, he would be muttering … Read more
Hand-in-hand with the Hollywood portrayals of Catholic priests and devout believers as evil, stupid, cruel, or unhinged is the academic Left’s long-established hostility to the Church. But the academic setting of its critiques doesn’t make them any less false and cartoonish. The recent controversy over public funding of contraception, as well as Rick Santorum’s presidential … Read more
Why won’t American Catholics get behind the very Catholic Rick Santorum? From New Hampshire to Nevada, he has lost the Catholic vote in nearly every state where Republicans have gone to the polls to elect their nominee for president. The only slight exception is Tennessee*, where he carried the Catholic vote by a whopping one … Read more
If you haven’t heard yet, the New York Times recently published a full-page “advertisement” by the “Freedom From Religion Foundation” (FFRF) viciously attacking the Catholic Church. Even some not typically inclined to rush to the Church’s defense have noted the particularly mean-spirited and bigoted nature of the propaganda piece. What has followed in the wake … Read more
Religious-freedom infringement occurs quite a bit in American legal practice, and it makes sense that it does; for, those in charge of securing the common good of the community, as well as the rights of individuals, have the right and obligation to ban practices that are a direct and serious threat to it.
A quiet, closed-door meeting in Washington next month will be of crucial importance in shaping the Church’s response to the nation’s biggest church-state crisis in decades. When some 40 bishops of the administrative committee of the national bishops’ conference gather March 14-15 at conference headquarters, they’ll be looking at the Obama administration’s January mandate to … Read more
No, I’m not exaggerating. The American experiment in religious liberty is officially over. The First Amendment provided institutional structures that allow different religions to peacefully coexist. All groups agree to not try to capture governmental structures for the benefit of their own particular denomination. But the Obama administration has ended that truce. The administration made … Read more
Two weeks have passed since the indictment of Kansas City’s Bishop Robert Finn. The bishop’s critics are demanding his resignation, while his defenders protest his innocence. Let’s step back a pace, and put the matter in perspective. The indictment of an American bishop is a big story—a huge story, an unprecedented story. Yet oddly enough, … Read more
The Catholic Church in America has suffered in recent decades from rapidly declining Mass attendance. Its higher education institutions have pushed Catholicism out of the curriculum and culture, with no real catechesis program for young adults. And efforts to attract more young people to the Church have looked more like a “cool” Dad trying to … Read more
The fight to protect Catholic institutions from the Obama administration’s new health-insurance mandate is not only a dispute over contraception and abortion. For many colleges, schools, and charities, it is a fight for the right to be Catholic. If the outrageously narrow “religious employer exemption” put forward by the Department of Health and Human Services … Read more
Even as the nation’s bishops react with alarm to a recent Montana Supreme Court ruling allowing physician-assisted suicide, their efforts are being undermined by ethics and law professors at several Jesuit universities. Last week, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops approved a statement describing assisted suicide as “a terrible tragedy, one that a compassionate society … Read more