After decades of well-documented dissent on many Catholic college campuses over Church teachings on abortion, contraception, and same sex marriage, a new front in the Catholic culture wars has opened on Catholic K-12 campuses as increasing numbers of gay and lesbian teachers and administrators at these schools are lobbying for the right to marry their … Read more
In my last post I made the case that sexual “orientation” as defined by secular culture today is conceptually far removed from the dignity of the human person and is an abstract and generic form of data collection that does not even accurately describe one’s total experience of sexual attraction once we have found “the … Read more
In their continuing quest to marginalize the influence of the Catholic Church on the culture war issues of abortion and same-sex marriage, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child is attempting to resurrect yet again the moral panic surrounding exaggerated claims of clerical sexual abuse. Denouncing the Vatican for adopting policies that … Read more
I’ve never been to the March for Life. It’s on my bucket list. I love looking at the pictures, because it inspires me to see all those well-bundled people, cold but smiling, feeling good despite the grimness of the occasion they have gathered to commemorate. They ought to feel good. They stand as representatives of … Read more
I am a Catholic and it is the very intellectual foundations of the Catholic Church that drew me back to my faith. I grew up admiring Pope John Paul II’s battle against communism—a battle that we now know he played an integral part in. Pope Francis’s background is very different from his two most recent … Read more
Not caring about what happens to gay men is like not caring about prison rape. Prisoners are our brothers, too, and so are gay men. We must care deeply about the abuse of our brothers in prison and we must care deeply about the lives led by our gay brothers. Prison rape seems a world … Read more
On the plane, on the way back from Brazil, the journalist Gianguido Vecchi, of Corriere della Sera asked Pope Francis the following question. “Holy Father, during this visit … you have frequently spoken of mercy. With regard to the reception of the sacraments by the divorced and remarried, is there the possibility of a change … Read more
A man dressed as a woman entered a women’s locker-room at a college in Washington State. This locker-room at Evergreen State College is used not just by co-eds but also by little girls who use the college for programs. In a subsequent police report the transvestite was accused of “sitting with her legs open with … Read more
A recent Quinnipiac poll found that some 53 percent of Catholics who attend Mass weekly, and some 65 percent of those who attend Mass less frequently, would favor a law legalizing so-called same-sex “marriage” in spite of the Church’s clear teaching that any true marriage must always and necessarily be between a man and a … Read more
There is a new and significant piece of evidence in the social science debate about gay parenting and the unique contributions that mothers and fathers make to their children’s flourishing. A study just published in the journal Review of the Economics of the Household—analyzing data from a very large, population-based sample—reveals that the children of … Read more
Many good things distinguish Redeeming Grief, Anne’s Lastman’s gripping testament to the dehumanizing havoc wrought by abortion. It is the work of a woman who has devoted over seventeen years of her life to helping thousands of fathers and mothers heal from the wounds of abortion. It is an unsparing analysis of the way abortion … Read more
After six years and hundreds of celebratory confections, it wasn’t the economy, the stiff competition, financing, or any of the other usual road bumps of building a new business that caused Sweet Cakes by Melissa—a husband-and-wife bakery in Portland, Oregon area—to close its doors at the end of the summer. Instead, it was the nationwide … Read more
Recently, as readers of Crisis may have heard, our administration at Providence College retracted an invitation to a Professor John Corvino, who afterwards said in disgruntlement that he’d been looking forward to speaking at a Catholic college like ours, to persuade young people that the homosexual life was good for the individual and for the … Read more
Among American conservatives it seems to be common knowledge now that marriage is on the rocks. According to the Pew Research Center, just over half of American adults 18 and older are now married. This is a record low, and most indicators suggest that marriage is continuing to decline. In many demographics, co-habitation and illegitimacy … Read more
So-called same-sex marriage is not yet the law of the land, although in its U.S. v. Windsor case handed down on June 26, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court nevertheless recognized it as truly a marriage in those jurisdictions where it has been legalized by some official action. How the high court could ever have legalized … Read more
Much has been said, maybe pretty much everything that needs to be said, about former First Things editor Joseph Bottum throwing in the towel over the same-sex marriage fight. He believes that the legalization of this aberration is already a done deal and that Catholics should simply accept it henceforth as a civil matter. It’s … Read more
Two recent court cases illustrate the incoherence and remarkable intolerance of “liberal” views regarding conscience. One involves the bottomless pockets of the atheist Michael Newdow, who most recently joined several plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the U.S. Treasury Department demanding the words “In God We Trust” be scrubbed from U.S. currency. Newdow advocates what Richard … Read more
Editor’s Note: A friend passed on this manuscript written by someone named “Foggy Bottom,” which purports to be the notes or an alternative draft of a recent piece, with a similar title, which has received some attention by one “Jody Bottum” in Commonweal. We cannot vouch for its authenticity, but in light of its curious … Read more
Yet another priest is under fire for enforcing Canon 915, the codicil of canon law that regulates who may receive Communion; or to put it more precisely, who may not receive Holy Communion and the reasons for that prohibition. It seems that Father Brian Sistare, of Sacred Heart Church in Woonsocket, R.I., has done the … Read more
Plutarch, the first-century Greek moralist who outlined four stages of a civilization, said that a society that has become libertine is in its next-to-last stage before its final descent into tyranny. When tyranny is mentioned, most people, if they are old enough to remember, think of Mussolini and his secret police or Hitler and his … Read more