gossip / calumny / libel

On Speaking Ill

The following is from Alessandro Manzoni’s Observations on Catholic Moral Teaching (1819). The translation is my own. If we followed its wisdom, our politicians would have more freedom to attend to their business, social media might become social, and our churches might become hotbeds of charity. What is the main and common motive that makes … Read more

The Colorado AG Targets the Catholic Church

Catholics in Colorado were recipients of a recent bombshell in the form of an agreement between our three Catholic dioceses and the State Attorney General’s office. According to the agreement there is to be a new “independent review” in the state of every priest’s file going back seven decades to 1950. The argument for this unprecedented … Read more

The Ugliness of Catholic #MeToo

We are told repeatedly that we must believe “the woman” whenever she makes a claim of sexual assault. Disbelieving her or even asking for evidence other than just her word makes you a rape apologist. Just how bankrupt is this charge was borne out in the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. We were supposed to believe “the … Read more

What Sexual Harassment “Crisis”?

The sexual harassment frenzy of the last few months—and it can only be called a frenzy—is disturbing in many ways, and decent and right-minded people need to speak up about it. It’s only the latest poison from the Sexual Revolution and the regime of moral relativism generally. First, it is troubling that in the minds … Read more

The Brine of Caustic Comments

“No one,” we read in St. James’s epistle, “has ever been able to tame the tongue. It is evil and uncontrollable, full of deadly poison” (3:8). One wonders if Phil Montag, until very recently an official for the Democratic party in Nebraska, ever read, or understood, St. James. Montag was properly fired after he was … Read more

Discovering Our Own Sinfulness

Some people say we never hear about sin any more. Not true. It’s just that they are not the familiar sins listed in the Catechism: stealing, lying, missing Mass on Sunday—and especially nothing about sexual sin. Yet we do hear about sins all the time—in the news, on talk shows, and in every kind of … Read more

Why Facts Matter

“Facts don’t matter.” The first time I heard these words they came from a teacher to an audience of students during a presentation intended to celebrate black history. As part of the presentation, the teacher had intended to illustrate racial injustice in this country by showing pictures of the infamous “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” protests … Read more

“Where Do You Get Your News?”

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? ∼  T.S. Eliot, Choruses from the Rock A little over a decade ago, I sat behind a one-way mirror in a nondescript office building outside Denver, watching a focus group go through the motions with a skilled … Read more

Jack the Ripper and the Defaming of a Catholic Poet

In the late autumn of 1888, five women were brutally murdered in Whitechapel, London. All were prostitutes; all were living in squalor; all died horribly in the dead of night. The killings were as vicious as they were to become infamous. They were not the first, nor, indeed, the last, of such slayings in London, … Read more

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