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
In his book Heretics, G. K. Chesterton writes, There are some people — and I am one of them — who think that the most practical and important thing about a man is still his view of the universe. We think that for a landlady considering a lodger, it is important to know his income, … Read more
The German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831) began his education as a Lutheran seminarian during the cultural ferment that we now refer to as the French Enlightenment. Later, as a philosophy professor at Jena, in a chapter in his 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit on “the struggle of the Enlightenment with Superstition,” he offered a … Read more
In a recent speech to the Royal Society of Arts in London, Sir David Attenborough said there’s a “strange silence” about overpopulation. Journalist Bonnie Erbe apparently believes Attenborough statements should be shouted from the rooftops, so she wrote an opinion piece for Scripps Howard News Service about it: Sir David said there needed to be … Read more
Germain Grisez, professor emeritus of philosophy and moral theology at Mount St. Mary’s College in Maryland, has released some documents that few in the Church have seen before. According to the Catholic News Agency, Grisez wants to set the record straight about the 1963-1966 commission about birth control which took place before the encyclical Humane … Read more
Contraception is the elephant in the living room of contemporary Catholicism: Everybody knows it’s there, but few people care to acknowledge the fact. Meanwhile, the accumulating pastoral damage that results from this state of collective denial is painfully real. Partly it arises from the circumstance that even churchgoing Catholics today live in a state of … Read more
Catholics are obsessed with rules about what can and cannot be done. Contraception, abortion, women in the priesthood, even kneeling for the Eucharist are often subjects of controversy whenever Catholics discuss their faith. Thus, when Pope Benedict XVI made his now-famous comment in Light of the World about condoms, it was inevitable that his utterance … Read more
In the current issue of the Catholic Herald, Bishop Jaime Soto of Sacramento writes that most modern couples accept contraception as the “default” position in marriage, only giving up the practice when it’s ‘time to have kids.’ This isn’t merely a drag on our population’s replacement rate, but has itself confused the definition of marriage. … Read more
Europe is dying. The Washington Post, among others, reports that, within a hundred years, there will be the rare German in Germany or Italian in Italy. Some demographers believe it is too late to correct Europe’s plunge into extinction. “The fall in the population can no longer be stopped,” reported Walter Rademacher of the German … Read more
On Friday, the FDA approved a new emergency contraceptive called “ella,” which can prevent pregnancy up to 5 days after sex. It passed with little fanfare or resistance, compared to the uproar surrounding the approval of Plan B, also known as the “morning after” pill (which is effective up to three days at most). The … Read more
The solemn declaration of the Credo that “Christ was engendered, not made” (genitum, non factum), is pregnant with rich philosophical insights and is an inspiration to investigate two possible ways of relating to existence: to be made or to be engendered. God is eternal and the Creator of heaven and earth, though our current … Read more
Margaret, over on on NRO’s Corner Maggie Gallagher says that Kagan will be the lynchpin for same-sex marriage in all 50 states: A vote for Elena Kagan is a vote for “marriage equality,” which features in two key cases that will shortly be before the Supreme Court: Perry v. Schwarzenegger, which arises out of California’s … Read more
The current issue of First Things has an important piece by Timothy Reichert examining the social impact of contraception. He argues that the modern contraceptive culture has led to “a massive redistribution of wealth and power from women and children to men.” The popular use of birth control has split the “market” governing gender relations … Read more
A few weeks ago, a young man I’ll call David dropped in to see me. David has been working with me discerning a vocation to the priesthood, so it was with some interest that I heard him announce that he had acquired a girlfriend. We discussed the possibilities and prospects for the future, and … Read more
A new study of an abstinence-only sex-ed curriculum showed it to be more successful at delaying teen sex than a comparable “safe sex” program — and even one that combined abstinence and safe-sex messages: Only about a third of sixth- and seventh-graders who completed an abstinence-focused program started having sex within the next two years, researchers … Read more
Of all the things I remember about the Texas March for Life in Austin last January, the memory that stands out the most is the look on the faces of the counter-protesters who followed us along Congress Avenue and down to the capitol that frosty morning. When I glanced over to see the source … Read more
Despite profits of $85 million in 2008, Planned Parenthood is facing serious financial difficulties. According to a recent Harvard Business School case study, Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) is structured as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization with multiple affiliates, each of which is also a 501(c)(3) non-profit. The national entity lobbies on national policy, sets … Read more
Sometimes a “progressive” Catholic asks me why my family and I became Catholics. As often rapidly becomes clear, the Episcopal Church we left is his ideal for the Catholic Church. We had married priests, women priests, homosexual priests, no doctrinal restrictions, evolving moral standards, and an official reason to be rude to the pope. What … Read more
I know a woman – and, in fairness, I must say that she’s a truly good Catholic woman — who’s slightly bonkers on the subject of birth control. I suppose there are people like that on both sides of this argument, but this woman happens to be bonkers on the pro-contraception side. You can’t … Read more
The juxtaposition of same-sex “marriage” being approved in California with the raid on the Texan polygamists seems to have made a few people ponder the logical connection between homosexuality and polygamy — and, in some cases unhappily, reflect that former senator Rick Santorum was right when he said the Supreme Court’s Lawrence decision would … Read more