Expert commentary on the spiritual, moral, political, social, cultural, and ecclesiastical issues facing Catholics today.
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Bishops to Rally the Faithful?(Friday) It's a banner day for commentary on CatholicCulture.org, and we begin with a critical question. The American bishops are on fire in their opposition to the federal mandate to support contraception and sterilization. But will they succeed in rallying lay support? Will they even get Catholic... |
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A Dream Bishop Rallies His Troops(Friday) “As your bishop, I come to you with an apology, a prayer, and a mission. We face a grave threat from the government of the United States, the threat of the most powerful government in the world attempting to force Catholics to participate in actions which both Faith and nature teach us are... |
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HHS mandate might awaken the sleeping Catholic conscience(Friday) "In effect, the president is saying we have a year to figure out how to violate our consciences," said New York’s Archbishop Timothy Dolan about the Obama administration’s new mandate for contraceptive coverage in health-care policies. Sad to say, we Catholics have done it... |
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Stop HHS: a new resource against the mandate(Friday) Ave Maria radio has launched a web site devoted exclusively to the fight against the new HHS mandate that would compel Catholic institutions to subsidize contraception. The StopHHS.com site will provide the latest news on this issue, background, and suggestions for those who want to become... |
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Snow in Rome!(Friday) Good grief. It’s snowing in Rome today, and it’s not snowing here in central Massachusetts. You can watch the snowflakes settling on the dome of St. Peter’s basilica, but when I look out my window I see bare ground. We had more snow in October than in November, December, and... |
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The devout atheist(Friday) Gotta love the idea of building a temple to atheism, and the behind the project. The misguided millionaire who’s funding the venture believes that “you can build a temple to anything that's positive and good.” I suppose you can—if you have the money, and nothing else to... |
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Support Komen against Planned Parenthood pressure--update--too late?(Friday) The Komen Foundation is being hammered for its decision to drop funding of Planned Parenthood. Hell hath no fury like Planned Parenthood when it’s deprived of the money it considers its due. (For those who don’t know the history here, Komen was giving PP funds for breast-cancer... |
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Sister Marie-Thérèse’s Trials(Thursday) Poor Sister Marie-Thérèse de Vioménil! Again and again she wrote to Fr. Jean-Pierre de Caussade to explain her spiritual troubles, yet again and again she received what must have seemed like disheartening replies. There was, for example, the long series of letters in the... |
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God, thanks for not sharing the details...(Thursday) After a week full of various personal trials, I've realized that the less you try to figure out (or worry about figuring out) the specific details of God’s plan, the easier it is to recognize that plan while it is happening. Whew... good thing I’ll never have to learn that lesson... |
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A List of the Catholic Top Ten(Thursday) Inside the Vatican named its top ten Catholics of 2011 in January. No two Catholics would choose the same ten, but some of these have news stories or library articles on CatholicCulture.org. They are: Fr. Cassian Folsom, OSB, a Massachusetts native who refounded the monastery in... |
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Fairness, decency not in evidence in the Philadelphia abuse case(Thursday) In the prosecution of three priests from the Philadelphia archdiocese, the level of hostility toward the Catholic Church has become so pronounced that it’s difficult to see how a fair trial could take place. Prosecutors have indicted one former official of the archdiocese (along with two... |
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Cardinal Bevilacqua's Capabilities(Wednesday) You've probably already read in our news story that Cardinal Bevilacqua died yesterday at the age of 88, literally days after a Pennsylvania judge ruled once again that he was perfectly capable of giving testimony in the Philadelphia sexual abuse investigation. Considering the state of his health... |
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Russell Shaw’s Book on Clericalism(Wednesday) Please note that I have just reviewed Russell Shaw's interesting book, To Hunt, to Shoot, to Entertain: Clericalism and the Catholic Laity. You'll find it in the In Depth Analysis section here:... |
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Clericalism(Wednesday) I read through Russell Shaw’s book on clericalism last night. I had missed it the first time around, when it was published by Ignatius Press in 1993. Now it is out in a new printing from Wipf and Stock Publishers in Oregon. The full title is To Hunt, to Shoot, to Entertain: Clericalism and the... |
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Courage Reparation(Wednesday) A visitor to CatholicCulture.org in London, George Day, recently came across my 2010 In Depth Analysis, Homosexuality: A Special Call to the Love of God and Man. Reading it put him in mind of the reparation groups organized around Courage's program to help those with same-sex attraction to... |
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Immigration: would the archbishop accept any limit?(Wednesday) Archbishop Niederauer opposes a federal drive to deport illegal immigrant who have been convicted of crimes. “We cannot allow the pain of family separation and the fear amongst our communities to continue,” he explains. OK, let’s take an extreme case: An illegal immigrant is... |
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To-do: Thank Komen for dropping Planned Parenthood(Wednesday) Austin Ruse of the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute has written to all the readers of his Friday Fax with an action item that’s well worth passing along: Yesterday it was announced that the Susan G. Komen Foundation, which is the largest global funder of breast cancer research,... |
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Psychological Manipulation(Wednesday) In my view, the average person will receive more influence from psychologists through advertising than through any other means. Catholics should reflect that psychological manipulation is the intent of much consumer advertising, including political advertising. Another good reason to have the... |
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Changes: Something New, Something Old(Tuesday) Today we released a new blog, The City Gates, in which we'll write shorter and often lighter items Personal observations, answers to questions, pointers to other good material, information on how CatholicCulture.org is being used elsewhere, and so on. We've repurposed our old “On... |
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Discovered: 116,000 square miles of 'missing' polar ice cap(Tuesday) Non-scientists like me can often feel helpless in the public debate about climate change. We have neither the skill nor the training to rebut the latest claims by certified scientific “experts” who tell us that the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible. Yet we notice that... |
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Love and Marriage(Tuesday) I was listening to the third track of the Classic Sinatra II album, and I suddenly did a double-take. The song was “Love and Marriage” by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen, which became a huge hit by Frank Sinatra in 1955, just 57 years ago. Here are the lyics: Love and marriage,... |
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Torture(Tuesday) One of our users asked in a Sound Off! comment whether the Catholic Church had a clear teaching on torture and on the use of coercive means to obtain information. The Second Vatican Council (Gaudium et Spes 27) included torture in the list of evils it used to illustrate the concept of intrinsic... |
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Catholic Superheroes, Revisited(Tuesday) I went to an Opus Dei “circle” yesterday evening, and some of the themes touched upon in the talk reminded me of a fun article I wrote for this site in 2004: Catholic Superheroes. If you really think about it, we Catholics live on the edge. We're a radical bunch — composed of... |
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De-Baptism and the Records of the Church(Tuesday) It’s a short story with big consequences: A French diocese appeals order to remove baptismal record. A similar case occurred in Spain regarding membership records kept by Opus Dei. There are four reasons for the Church to categorically refuse such demands. 1. History: The records we create... |
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Back to the Future in Ireland(Monday) I doubt things have deteriorated quite enough for this to go anywhere, but the logic of a recent hate crime complaint in Ireland is intriguing. Humanist John Colgan argued that a recent homily of Bishop Philip Boyce of Raphoe constituted a hate crime under an act passed in 1989. Before I point... |
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The Church Militant...Again!(Jan 27) You'll recall that Pope Benedict warned some American bishops recently that he was seeing a marked decline in religious freedom in America. Coupled with the Obama Administration's full-scale assault on the consciences of Catholics, a new militancy is—at long last—gripping the... |
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Archbishop Dolan’s Letdown, and Job One(Jan 27) What’s wrong with this picture? The leader of the American hierarchy, Archbishop Timothy Dolan, said in an interview that he was “terribly let down, disappointed and disturbed” by President Obama’s decision to force insurance coverage of contraception and... |
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Declining birth rates make the Islamic world more dangerous(Jan 27) David Goldman, who writes online under the pseudonym Spengler, has a new book out: How Civilizations Die: (And Why Islam Is Dying Too). While I haven’t yet read the book, I recently happened across Goldman’s preface, and it’s brilliant. It’s a longish piece, and not always... |
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Chastity, seen as a threat(Jan 27) Do you see what’s wrong with this lede from a news story in the Toronto Sun? Catholic school students deserve protection from bullying based on sexual orientation, but the publicly-funded education system will continue to teach children that chastity, marriage and procreation are the way... |
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Demand action—not just rhetoric—on school choice(Jan 26) This week is School Choice Week. Since it’s an election year, it’s also nearly time for Republican candidates to proclaim their devotion to the cause of school choice. In every presidential contest since 1968 (and perhaps further back: my active memory only stretches that far), the... |
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Art Masterpieces Teaching Church History(Jan 25) Duquesne University Press has done something noteworthy by publishing two new full-color books which present masterpieces of art with accompanying text to illustrate key moments in the history of the Church, and also the lives of the saints. The books, originally published in French and authored... |
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Unbearable Wrongness and a Thread of Joy(Jan 24) I am looking back at yesterday's March for Life in Washington, and at the many outstanding statements which accompanied it. But let me pause to call attention to Phil Lawler's prediction of the next big thing in the Republican run for the Presidency. He expects it to happen as soon as President... |
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The Mitch Daniels moment(Jan 24) Many months ago, looking at the way the presidential race was shaping up, I made a prediction. I said that Mitt Romney would be the overwhelming Republican favorite—right up until the voting began. From that point forward, I said, the odds of his winning the nomination would fall... |
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On Life Day, Obama Defies Reality...Again(Jan 23) It should come as no surprise that President Obama has once again used the day of the March for Life to signal his direct and strenuous opposition to the goals of the marchers. In a brief statement, the President recalled the importance of the Supreme Court decision which legalized abortion and... |
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Religious and Spiritual Freedom(Jan 20) In the wake of yesterday's ad limina address by Pope Benedict warning of the decline of religious freedom in the United States, Phil Lawler pulls out all the stops. First Phil discusses the importance of the address, and the chilling data on which it is based, in The Pope's alarming message on... |
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Obama team gives religious freedom a combination punch(Jan 20) This is a one-two punch against religious freedom: The Obama administration refuses to exempt religious institutions from a new rule requiring contraceptive coverage in health-care plans, but cynically allows those institutions a one-year “exemption” from the rule—so that this... |
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Pope & US bishops team up to put religious freedom on the political agenda(Jan 20) On Thursday, Pope Benedict warned visiting American bishops that religious freedom is being threatened in the United States. By the end of the day, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) had issued a statement welcoming the Pope’s remarks and encouraging lay Catholics to become... |
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Is Homosexuality Biologically Determined?(Jan 20) We’ve been trained by the media to believe that same-sex attraction is biologically determined, that it is unchangeable and damaging to attempt to change it, that it has no correlation whatsoever with decreasing mental health, and that homosexual relationships are equivalent to heterosexual... |
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The Pope's alarming message on American religious freedom(Jan 19) Is it humiliating for American political leaders to read that Pope Benedict sees an erosion of religious freedom in our country? It should be. If there is one boast that Americans have traditionally made before the world, it is the claim that our country is a bastion of freedom. And of all the... |
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My Catholic Call, and Yours(Jan 18) The first readings at Mass the last two mornings are favorites of mine. Both involve the call of God, one to Samuel, the other to David. David, of course, received a call when Samuel anointed him King of Israel, the youngest of Jesse’s sons. But today’s reading was about a different sort of... |
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Occupying the Vatican, Occupying Ourselves(Jan 17) I was struck by the news that the Occupy movement had expanded to St. Peter's Square. Do these people have any clear sense of their objectives at all? It was appropriate, I think, that the Vatican had them summarily removed. If people (yes, including myself) could demonstrate consistently that... |
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Challenging the Limitations of Church Authority over Politics(Jan 16) My In Depth Analysis (Banning Contraceptives? The Art of the Possible) occasioned two Sound Off! comments which merit further discussion. One criticizes the limitations I set on the “vocational competence” of the Pope; the other questions limitations I set on the authority of the... |
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Politics: Principles, Prudence and Policies(Jan 13) It is a must-read. I'm referring to Phil Lawler's fine essay in On the News: On same-sex marriage, who are the real ‘extremists’?. Among other things, Phil answers the question, raised in the recent New Hampshire debate among Republican candidates, about a State banning... |
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Now why does that sound familiar?(Jan 13) When Andrew Brown wrote in the Guardian, chastising the Reuters news service for a slanted report on the Pope’s “State of the World” speech, L’Osservatore Romano was... |
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Banning Contraception? The Art of the Possible(Jan 13) Phil Lawler’s brilliant essay on contraception and gay marriage (On same-sex marriage, who are the real ‘extremists’?) reminds me of why we are so fortunate to have him as part of the team that runs the show here. Two recent pieces in which I try to make broader and more abstract points about... |
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Self-Abandonment in the Winter of Our Discontent(Jan 12) Shakespeare’s Richard III begins with Richard lamenting the triumphal accession of his brother, King Edward IV, to the throne of England. His words are intended bitterly: “Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York.” Richard, an ugly... |
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On same-sex marriage, who are the real ‘extremists’?(Jan 12) Last weekend in New Hampshire, during a debate among the Republican presidential candidates, host George Stephanopoulos asked—and asked, and asked, and asked—a question about contraception. Framing his question as a matter of constitutional law, Stephanopoulos asked whether the... |
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Ignorance, Ideology, Sovietology and Provisional Politics at Home(Jan 11) In dipping into a series of essays on ideology and totalitarianism, I’ve been reminded of the ludicrous ways in which Soviet Communism was conceptualized, explained and assessed throughout the twentieth century, from 1917 until the fall of the system in 1991, and perhaps beyond. This is a classic... |
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Family Remains at the Center(Jan 10) Today is the first day of Ordinary Time following Christmas. But it is not too late for a sort of examination of conscience on how well we kept Christmas, and how deeply we discerned its enduring value. Pope Benedict asks whether we kept not only a happy Christmas but also a Holy Christmas. And... |
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Papal Diplomacy, Values, and Ourselves(Jan 10) Each year during the Christmas season, the Pope addresses the members of the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See. In this address, he highlights the concerns which should animate the mutual efforts of the temporal powers throughout the world. This year, the Pope emphasized that the key to... |
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Ghosts of Christmas Past(Jan 6) The Week magazine of December 30th did a good job of briefing its readers on the Puritan opposition to celebrating Christmas which afflicted America well into the 19th century. The Pilgrims who began settling New England in 1620 argued that the very concept of holy days implied that there were... |
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Two Books: Devoted to Death and America's Church(Jan 6) R. Andrew Chesnut's Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, The Skeleton Saint and Thomas Tweed's America's Church: The National Shrine and Catholic Presence in the Nation’s Capital, both recently out from Oxford University Press, are reviewed together in our In Depth Analysis item, entitled Saint... |
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On birth and death and debt and hope: a last-minute Christmas meditation(Jan 6) Before the Christmas season ends, let me call your attention to an excellent column by that excellent columnist, Mark Steyn. Writing just before Christmas, Steyn made the observation that the birth of Jesus was preceded by the birth of St. John the Baptist to Elizabeth, a woman who was thought to... |
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The Church: Moving Forward(Jan 6) CatholicCulture.org takes one last look at the current season in a reflection on Ghosts of Christmas Past. The Christmas season ends with Epiphany on Sunday and the Baptism of the Lord on Monday. So we must all prepare to move back into Ordinary Time. This means it is time once again... |
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Saint Death, Churches, and Catholic Scholarship(Jan 6) As I finished skimming R. Andrew Chesnut’s new book on the Mexican/Mexican American cult of Santa Muerte (Saint Death), I happened to notice that the first cover blurb was from Thomas Tweed, author of another book in my stack, America’s Church. The latter book is good scholarship on the National... |
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Ten Years Later, the Church in Boston Struggles to Recover(Jan 5) Ten years have passed since the Boston archdiocese was engulfed in scandal, as the result of investigative reporting by the Boston Globe. Today the faithful in Boston are still struggling to shake off the lingering effects of that scandal. But a full recovery is delayed because of two popular... |
