Watching Bernie Sanders’s speech announcing his candidacy for president, it struck me that—except for the part about a woman’s right to choose—Pope Francis would have found himself in agreement with just about every item on the aging socialist warrior’s agenda. This reminded me for the umpteenth time that the pope has far more radical ideas … Read more
On February, 26, 2019, Nebraska’s Attorney General served more than 400 subpoenas on Catholic churches, schools, and institutions in the state of Nebraska. The subpoenas requested twenty-two years of records concerning inappropriate conduct with children. Recipients were ordered to deliver the records within three days. Nebraska has three Catholic dioceses. All three dioceses already provided … Read more
Like many Catholic faithful, some parishioners at Immaculate Conception Parish in Clarksville, Tennessee, have simply had enough. Their parish pastor, Fr. Stephen Wolf, is openly “gay.” He just got his fifteen minutes of fame as one of the subjects presented in the recent New York Times piece on “gay” priests. And Wolf is using his … Read more
The teaching of the Catholic Church with regards to the priesthood is that the priest is ontologically superior to the lay person. This superiority occurs at the moment of ordination. Ordination, like baptism, confers an indelible mark upon the soul of the priest, and it is this mark that causes the superiority. There are a … Read more
Catholics in Colorado were recipients of a recent bombshell in the form of an agreement between our three Catholic dioceses and the State Attorney General’s office. According to the agreement there is to be a new “independent review” in the state of every priest’s file going back seven decades to 1950. The argument for this unprecedented … Read more
Early in his pontificate the Catholic Left gushed about the Francis Effect, which mainly reflected their hopes and dreams that the new Holy See leadership would advance their “progressive” agenda. Progressive is usually code for departing from the teachings of Scripture and Tradition. And they predicted this would attract new converts and reverts who had … Read more
Like a voice calling out from the wilderness, there are times when some of the strongest and wisest words from a bishop arise not out of the cultural centers of the world, like Rome or New York, but rather from unexpected places. This should not really be a surprise, as bishops designated for the major … Read more
“It’s not going to be long now,” says the doctor, as you stand beside the bed of your loved one. “Shall I send for the head of the Liturgy Committee?” Some years ago, on the island where we live during the summer, the bishop assigned a new priest and told him that his job was … Read more
On March 3, 2013, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor—an alumnus of the St. Gallen mafia—met with then-Cardinal Bergoglio over risotto and wine. It was the evening before the pre-conclave general congregations—as Murphy-O’Connor recalls in his memoirs—and the old friends were discussing “the sort of person we felt the cardinals should elect.” A day earlier, an anonymous cardinal … Read more
In recent conversations concerning the Church and the priesthood, it seems that the main focus when discussing the issue of celibacy is the idea that the one who “chooses” a celibate life is one who willfully forgoes the enjoyment of sex. While this feature of celibacy is without a doubt true, looking at celibacy from … Read more
Theodore McCarrick the ex-cardinal has now been defrocked—just in time for the media coverage swirling around Pope Francis’s sex abuse summit this week. But McCarrick the kingmaker, McCarrick the narrative-spinner, still lives on—a spirit too towering to retire. In 2002, McCarrick worked the media as the “attractive public face” of the sexual abuse crisis. The … Read more
How many tax collectors might have worked in first century Palestine? Every time Jesus of Nazareth associated with sinners, his pariahs of choice were tax collectors. He uttered the phrase “tax collectors and sinners” over a dozen times in the Synoptic Gospels and paired tax collectors and prostitutes—notably smacking the Pharisees with, “Truly I tell … Read more
It’s often been said of Pope Francis’s bridge-building initiatives with Islam that the traffic over the bridge goes only in one direction—away from Rome and toward Mecca. This also seems to be the case with the pope’s “historic” trip to the United Arab Emirates last week. Although the resulting document requires concessions on the part … Read more
Modern ways of thinking lead people to moral views that are different from traditional ones, so it’s not surprising they consider themselves morally superior to people in the past. Whether current moral understandings are actually better is nonetheless dubious and deserves investigation. Modern thought wants to take fewer things into consideration but in a more … Read more
“I’m afraid my obedience in that diocese would be absolutely zero. And I hope everybody else’s in that diocese is zero.” ∼ Mother Angelica on EWTN (Nov. 12, 1997) Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Just over two decades ago, EWTN’s foundress, Mother Angelica, was put back on her heels by the full force of Cardinal … Read more
Just weeks before the Catholic Church’s summit on the sexual abuse crisis, the faithful became privy to Pope Francis’s rather unorthodox views on sexual morality. In a book length interview with Frenchman Dominque Wolton, who accompanied Pope Francis to World Youth Day in Panama, the pope concurs with Wolton’s premise that the most radical message … Read more
It might seem odd to classify gender theory as a national security threat. After all, if a woman feels she was meant to be a man, there seems to be no reason why her personal desires should have any impact on national policy. But, as you’re no doubt aware, gender theorists want to make it … Read more
One of the most common criticisms of the Second Vatican Council is that it changed the teaching regarding the relationship between the idea of the Church of Christ and the Roman Catholic Church. Much of the debate among interpreters (and detractors) of Vatican II has centered around the phrase subsistit in, found in the conciliar … Read more
“Ghoulish, grisly, gruesome.” These are the strong words used by Cardinal Timothy Dolan to describe the Reproductive Health Act signed on January 22 by Catholic Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo that, with a broad definition of heath, permits abortion through the ninth month of pregnancy. When the cardinal appeared on Fox and Friends on January 28, … Read more
If The Pilgrim’s Progress was written today, Bunyan could accurately depict our time, by having the allegory’s protagonist, Christian, be besieged by a cacophony of voices. These voices would emanate from within him and from without, from the DNA he had received from Adam and Eve, and from external voices from different sources that would echo and … Read more