It Was Homosexual Abuse
Leftists deny the mountain of demographic data that draws a strong link between homosexuality and abuse of minors in the Church.
Crisis, Church Reform, and the Lay Vocation
A dozen or so years ago, a colleague gave me a little wooden plaque for my office. I’ve had it on my bookshelf ever since. On it are carved these words: “It is as bad as you think, and they are out to get you.” The colleague who gave it to me is a Capuchin … Read more
Chaput, Sarah, and Schneider Weigh in on Our Troubled Times
One of the lessons of both the history of Israel and the Church is that it is unwise for the faithful to tie their sense of emotional and spiritual well-being to the words and actions of those who rule over them. This fact is highlighted with both clarity and brio by the 2018 book by … Read more
Will Militant Atheists One Day Celebrate Clerical Sexual Abusers?
Often, in comboxes on different sites around the web, I have witnessed the fury of self-avowed atheists whose favorite piece-de-resistance against Catholic presentations of the Gospel and morality consists of the ritual invocation of the clerical sexual abuse scandal that rocked the Church as a rhetorical mace with which to slam Catholics. Their aim, if … Read more
Pope Francis: “Stop Using Church as Sexual Abuse Scapegoat”
Pope Francis has now once again (though to judge by the so far sparse coverage, you’d think he’d never said or done anything before) expressed his abhorrence of clerical sex abuse. Previous popes—indeed most senior clergy—are normally too reticent, however, to do what he has now done as well, that is to say, he has … Read more
The Brazen Clericalism of Cardinal Mahony
As archbishop of Los Angeles, Roger Mahony was famous for his petulance, dispatching angry letters to priests and others whom he considered insufficiently deferential. But now that he finds himself in a subordinate position as a retired and rebuked bishop he displays none of the deference he once demanded. No sooner had his successor stripped … Read more
How Not to Criticize the Church
That rigorist Christian apologist of the second and third centuries Tertullian wasn’t what most people would call a funny guy, yet now and then, when something really got his goat, he seems to have been capable of a sharp-edged sort of humor. As in this: If the Tiber cometh up to the walls, if the … Read more
On Clericalism
Imagine a man who wakes up in the morning with a headache, fever, and chills. The symptoms persist and are there when he goes to bed that night. Next day, it’s the same thing again — headache, fever, chills. This continues day after day, week after week, over and over. Finally the poor man starts … Read more