Benedict has been a great pope. His Regensburg Lecture will be admired for centuries. His encylicals, though dense, are profound and illuminating. And he is arguably the world leader in helping rid an institution of child sexual abuse. That said, all popes are fallible. Even Peter denied Christ three times. In the case of Benedict, … Read more
Let us set aside, for the sake of this essay, various questions concerning the recent health-care bill passed by Congress. We will concede the highly dubious proposition that it will hold down costs; that it will not add hundreds of billions of dollars to the national debt; that it will not lead to the queues … Read more
Sexual abuse is deplorable, no matter where it occurs. But one wonders: Why the near hysteria regarding sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, most of which occurred decades ago, from a society that celebrates the lack of constraints against almost every form of sexual activity, no matter how degraded? Is there any other instance of … Read more
Neal McDonough is one of those actors who has appeared in so many movies and TV shows that his face is almost immediately recognizable to anyone that has watched their fair share of either in the past 10 years. Check out this Minority Report still, for example. He’s not Tom Cruise. And he’s not Colin Farrell. But I … Read more
The recent attacks on Pope Benedict and the Church have brought forth some excellent responses. First, over at National Review Online, Fr. Raymond J. de Souza says that the New York Times‘ Friday expose’ of the pope’s alleged intervention into a Milwaukee abuse case is undercut by the very evidence the reporters cite. The documents … Read more
My former editor at the National Catholic Register, Tom Hoopes, has done me a courtesy rarely afforded tradition-minded Catholics: He has stooped to address my arguments, instead of airily dismissing them as the sad obsessions of half-wits, bag ladies, and yellow-eyed anti-Semites with dirty fingernails. Sure, he did so in a blog post which referred … Read more
When America’s pro-abortion forces won their great victory of January 1973 — the Roe v. Wade ruling of the United States Supreme Court — they were not surprised to see that religious and moral conservatives were immediately outraged. Similarly, white supremacists were immediately outraged when the Court handed down its Brown v. Board of … Read more
Our good friend Tom Hoopes of the National Catholic Register enjoyed John Zmirak’s column on the Traditional Latin Mass from a couple of weeks back, calling it “hilarious, copiously linked to supporting material, clever”…and also wrong. John argued that, while the form of the Mass itself may be composed of changeable externals, “Inessential things have … Read more
Big news from the Archdiocese of Washington this week: Catholic Charities announced that they would no longer be offering spousal health-care benefits for employees, rather than be forced to acknowledge same-sex partners under DC’s new law. In a statement on Tuesday, Archbishop Donald Wuerl justified their decision: “The Catholic Church teaches to pay a just … Read more
The bishops of Ireland wrapped up their meeting with Pope Benedict today regarding the sex-abuse scandal in that country. The Holy See has released an official statement about the closed-door meeting: For his part, the Holy Father observed that the sexual abuse of children and young people is not only a heinous crime, but also a grave sin … Read more
I’ve picked on Ohio numerous times in the past, and I’m about to do it again. A new report by the Trafficking in Persons Study Commission (formed last year by Ohio Attorney General Richard Condray) found that Ohio is not only a destination place for foreign-born victims of human trafficking, but also a place of recruitment. In … Read more
A friend’s therapist once suggested that she consider becoming Episcopalian. Wouldn’t that be so much easier than wrestling with all her Catholic angst? Â This suggestion made me think about the many misconceptions and stereotypes surrounding religious faith — and, maybe especially, religious conversion. No metaphor can really capture the wild variety of conversion experiences … Read more
News has been spreading through the blogosphere that the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, will be appearing on Oprah tomorrow afternoon. The sisters explained how it all came to be in an e-mail update: Oprah was interested in doing a show on religious life as a hidden way of life which many people never … Read more
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has some surprising associations. For example, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (LCCHR), founded in 1950, lobbies the Congress and White House on behalf of its 200 coalition members, which includes the USCCB. Members of the LCCHR must pay annual dues depending on the size … 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
More startling evidence has been unearthed about the Catholic Campaign for Human development that shows a disturbing pattern of cooperation between the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and groups that advocate abortion and same-sex marriage. Two reports, released yesterday by the American Life League (ALL) and Bellarmine Veritas Ministry (BVM), reveal that the Center for … 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
Zoe can stop buying those lottery tickets — turns out that (surprise!) money can’t buy you happiness. In fact, many of the things society associates with happiness — health, good looks, career success — are not as important as our relationships with one another, says Nicholas Kristoff in the New York Times: Men are no … Read more
If you haven’t read The Screwtape Letters, you should. In fact, click over there right now and buy it. C. S. Lewis’s harrowing look inside of the mind of a “designated tempter” (he’s just like a guardian angel, except . . . the opposite) isn’t just insightful entertainment; it’s more like reading an intercepted copy … Read more
Last week, Phases of Womanhood posted a column by Mary Hasson about a heated same-sex custody battle that reached Virginia’s Supreme Court. While Hasson and I agree on some of the fundamental issues involved, I disagree with both the tone and content of her commentary. First, the case: Two lesbians — Lisa Miller (on the … Read more
