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All Catholic commentary from August 2008
following orders?
Last August, Bishop Donald Pelotte asked the public to believe that the severe injuries he had sustained were caused by a household accident, not a savage beating. Now he's ready to admit with a chuckle that his original explanation was implausible. Where does that leave us? For one thing...
Imagine
Imagine if this year millions of Catholic voters simply say 'no' -- no to every candidate of every political party who supports abortion. A beautiful thought. And it gets better: It's time we stop accommodating pro-abortion politicians, and it's time we start demanding that they accommodate...
Muddled? Who's muddled?
Pat is the security guard at a bank. Mike is a bank robber. Pat is an indifferent employee. He punches the time-clock, plods through his dull routine, and waits for the paycheck on Friday. Mike, on the other hand, is a perfectionist: hard-working, methodical, punctilious about the details of...
the usual suspects
Accused anthrax terrorist Bruce Ivins was a Catholic, whose wife has been involved in the pro-life movement. Therefore, National Public Radio reports, Ivins might have read a letter charging that Senators Daschle and Leahy were betraying their Catholic faith, and that letter might have motivated...
in vino veritas
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports on the case of Raymond Kownacki, a suspended priest of the Belleville, Illinois diocese with a history of trouble: In one case in the 1970s, Kownacki was accused of raping a girl — who later became pregnant — and then trying to squeeze her uterus to force...
The Problem with Being Busy
The ancients (those wonderful thinkers with plenty of slaves) had the attractive notion that a free man was one who had leisure time on his hands. They even developed the idea of the “liberal arts”, being those studies about the nature of reality which were characteristic of a free man. Slaves,...
Anglicans Who Want to Come Home
Both before and during the decennial meeting of the Anglican bishops at Lambeth (July 16 – August 3), Vatican officials were muted, to say the least, in their public responses toward Anglicans exploring the possibility of reunion with Rome. The intensity of such explorations heightens every...
New Mass translation accentuates reverence and awe
Imagine that you are a student in an introductory Latin class, and this phrase pops up on a quiz to be translated: totiusque ecclesiae suae sanctae. Fortunately you’re Catholic, and you have one of those wonderful missals with the English and Latin texts on facing pages. Working easily from...
Solzhenitsyn's message: the power of the truth
During the past week the CWN home page carried a link to a memorable essay by the late, great Alexander Solzhenitsyn, entitled ”Live Not by Lies.” If you haven’t already read (or re-read) it, I urged you to do so now. Solzhenitsyn was a prophet: not only in the sense that he spoke the truth,...
fur will fly
Italian animal-rights activists are urging Pope Benedict to stop wearing fur. Hmmm. Somehow I doubt that the fur vestments are in heavy use during the month of August. And somehow I doubt that Vatican tailors are actively hunting animals today to add pelts to the papal collection. Yet there's a...
a masterpiece at a bargain-basement price
The Red Horse, by Eugenio Corti, is one of my all-time favorite novels. Based on historical events, and written on an epic scale, this book provides a fresh, penetrating insight into the Italian experience of World War II. Corti shows how a traditional Catholic culture was battered first by...
Where are the nine?
An Australian scholar, citing the apocryphal Armenian Gospel of the Infancy, suggests that the young Jesus and his friends probably played an early version of cricket. Ridiculous. We all know it was a rudimentary form of...
Kasper to Anglicans
I have mentioned Cardinal Walter Kasper’s address to the Anglican bishops assembled at the Lambeth Conference several times, but I have only recently been able to study it myself in depth. It constitutes the Catholic Church’s formal statement to the Anglican Communion on the state of...
what non-believers believe
"I have yet to let Jesus enter my life, but I admire Warren," writes Alan Wolfe in a New Republic essay.
storm clouds over Amarillo
Don't look now, but the Missionaries of the Gospel of Life, the religious order founded in 2005 by Father Frank Pavone, has quietly been disbanded. The Missionaries continue to exist as a lay association, but the lay members may be confused, since they originally signed up as lay affiliates...
Both candidates stumbled at the Saddleback Forum
The first official meeting of this year's major presidential contenders took place at an Evangelical church. That fact in itself is remarkable: an unmistaken indication of how clearly both major parties recognize the importance of the Christian vote. The Saturday-night encounter was...
What’s Wrong with Liberalism?
The word liberalism is used in many different senses, at least one of which has been condemned by the Church (Pius IX, Quanta Cura, 1864). At its philosophical core, liberalism seeks emancipation from the supernatural, moral and Divine order, with a rejection of all authority that does not...
Why you need CWN: illustration #6,407
This headline is popping up in quite a few newspapers in and around Vermont: Former Vatican counsel castigates Vt. Church The story-- here's a representative sample-- involves...
The Democrats' uninvited guest
When the leaders of the Democratic Party gather in Denver for their nominating convention, they'll hear from a number of prominent religious leaders. They'll hear from several prominent Catholics, too. But they won't hear from the Archbishop of Denver, points out Julia Duin of theWashington...
Prayer while shaving
Who needs a tabernacle, when you can use a mirror? A Catholic priest in India, the founder of the Universal Solidarity Movement, has devised a new form of prayer: in a small room dominated by a large mirror. The faithful are asked to spend an hour gazing at the image of themselves, and discover...
Benedict on Saving the Planet, Impromptu
Pope Benedict XVI is at his best when taking impromptu questions. Recently, in a meeting between Benedict and ecclesiastics of the Italian Diocese of Bolzano-Bressanone, Father Karl Golser asked the Pope how to increase the sense of responsibility for creation among Christian communities, and how...
Adoption for Same-Sex ‘Couples’
Catholic agencies have been divided on how to handle requests for adoption by homosexual couples. In recent years, this division has been exacerbated by two opposing forces: On the one hand, governments have begun requiring equal treatment for gay “parents”; on the other, the Vatican has made it...
introducing complications
At the Saddleback Forum, Senator Obama stumbled badly over the question of when human life begins. Speaking to a Virginia television audience on August 20, he tried again, with downright laughable results: I don't think this issue has to be resolved in terms of when life begins. It is resolved,...
very personal
The top headline in the New York Times reads: In Obama's choice, a very personal decision. Where have we heard that phrase before: "a very personal decision"? Wait! Do you mean Obama's choice was an...
When the Gospel is Me
It was last Sunday. We were attending Mass in a strange town, and the Gospel was taken from St. Matthew (16:13-20). Christ asked his disciples, “Who do men say that the Son of man is?” It is a passage Catholics typically remember because it ends with a powerful ecclesiastical...
drones
Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence, Rhode Island, has joined with several priests of his diocese in a strong critique of US immigration law. Well OK, a bishop should be free to criticize legislation. But... In their public statement, the bishop and his priests ask immigration officials...
discrete observations on convention wisdom
Thoroughly disproving the nostrum that the apple never falls far from the tree, US Senator "finger puppet" Bob Casey Jr.--son of the late Pennsylvania Gov. Robert Casey--rose to the Democrat Convention podium giving a speech suggesting that the Democrat party is becoming pro-life....
togetherheid
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bowing to the inevitable, but not too fast
The burning question that divides the Anglican communion is homosexuality. At the Lambeth Conference, Anglican divines discussed how they could resolve that question-- or, better, agree to leave it unresolved. Looking back upon those discussions, the Archbishop of Canterbury...
The promise of tomorrow
If I understand the convention rhetoric properly, the Democratic Party leadership is promising to deliver the future. A vote for Democrats, they tell us, is a vote for the future. As opposed to what? The future is coming. Unless you're contemplating suicide or watching...
the incompetence defense
Former Belleville Bishop Wilton Gregory testified Tuesday that key documents concerning an accused priest were kept from him while he was leading an investigation into sexual abuse of minors in the 1990s. So once again we have an American bishop offering an excuse that undermines his own claim to...
Thank you, Nancy Pelosi!
Thank you, Nancy Pelosi! In the course of your memorable interview with Tom Brokaw, Madam Speaker, you accomplished several things that battle-weary pro-life activists might have considered impossible. 1. You introduced an argument so profoundly stupid that not even pro-abortion...
Thinking Twice about the Environment
With environmental hysteria reaching new heights, it is helpful to take a look at what the Judeo-Christian tradition says about the relationship of man to his environment, and about the proper way to handle environmental concerns. The Acton Institute sponsored a conference of Jewish, Protestant...
Augustine Today
August 28th is the feast of the great St. Augustine, arguably the most significant Father of the Church. Augustine has much in common with us today. He grew up in a largely pagan society, where education was dominated by men who opposed the teachings of Christ. Spiritually, he was a late bloomer,...
especially troublesome
The National Abortion Rights Action League is spitting mad over McCain's pick of Sarah Palin as his running mate. The phrase "anti-choice" occurs eleven times in its heavy-breathing press release. Here's NARAL's Nancy Keenan: "John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as...
That's the ticket
Vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin talks about her Down Syndrome child: We knew through early testing he would face special challenges, and we feel privileged that God would entrust us with this gift and allow us unspeakable joy as he entered our lives. We have faith that every baby is...
Integrity in Politics
The selection of Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska, as John McCain’s running mate has people thinking about integrity again. Palin is a pro-life mother of five who makes no bones about fighting corruption and standing up for the vulnerable. She opposes abortion not only in speech but in personal...
minority rules
This November, voters in the state of Colorado will be asked to approve legal definition of a "person" as "any human being from the moment of fertilization."
Proponents of legal abortion are understandably worried about this referendum question, the Washington Post
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