Jane Clark Scharl
China’s record on human rights protections has long been appalling. But, in the past few weeks, a series of interviews with Uighur Muslims who have escaped from China revealed a whole new level of gut-wrenching details about the Communist regime’s oppression. These interviews expose the existence of a long-suspected archipelago of concentration camps (called “reeducation … Read more
The New York Times recently ran a piece titled “Women’s Unpaid Labor is Worth $10,900,000,000,000.” It was exactly as cynical and one-sided as one might expect. Though the piece masqueraded as a simple survey of women’s often-unseen contributions to society (in honor of International Women’s Day), the piece slipped into the quasi-Marxist commercialist drivel that … Read more
There’s nothing like a catastrophe to show us what it is that we worship. The past few weeks have further proven that many Americans believe they can buy safety—witness the shocking stripping of basic goods from grocery stores at a level far beyond what people actually need. And in just the past few days, as … Read more
On February 13, 2020, the House of Representatives passed the dull-sounding H.J. Res 79. Despite its name, this resolution indicates a dangerous attempt to disregard constitutional order and states’ rights for the purpose of codifying a progressive dogma: the alleged “right” to abortion. For progressives, the inconvenient truth is that abortion rights in America stand … Read more
Over in Spain, the Vox (“Voice”) party is standing up for parents’ rights in education. Vox is promoting a policy that allows parents to opt their children out of “talks, workshops or activities with an ideological or moral leaning against their leanings”. Not surprisingly, the policy in defense of parental rights has sparked a firestorm … Read more
In the midst of some of the most divided, rancorous politics America has ever seen, there is one area of intriguing bipartisan agreement: paid family leave. What in the past has been decried by the Right as socialism and by the Left as unnecessary has, in the past few years, become an unexpected rallying point … Read more
Lest anyone think that American politics is in any danger of receding back to pre-2016 partisan boundaries, Tucker Carlson used his Fox News segment last week to go after hedge fund manager and GOP mega-donor Paul Singer… for his free-market economics. Catholics should be thrilled by this development. Carlson condemns what he calls “vulture capitalism,” … Read more
On November 4, this year’s 40 Days for Life campaign ended. During the campaign, a million Americans committed to fasting and praying for an end to abortion and healing for those affected by this tragedy. Even though the 2019 campaign has ended, there are many ways for pro-life Americans to continue to work towards making … Read more
This month, the question of how to deal with the rapid spread of gender dysphoria among young children reached a breaking point. In Texas, a jury ruled that Jeffrey Younger could not do anything to prevent his seven-year-old son James from undergoing irreversible hormone-replacement procedures, which can cause infertility and significant health issues if used … Read more
Last week, presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke said outright that if he is elected president, he will work to eliminate the tax-exempt status for churches that hold traditional views of gender and sexuality. And O’Rourke is not the only candidate taking aim at groups that defend age-old beliefs about marriage and gender. His Democratic rival Cory … Read more
Due to teenage activist Greta Thunberg’s thunderous—and divisive—speech to the United Nations last week, climate change is getting another moment in the sun. It may be tempting to brush off her comments as youthful hyperbole, but Thunberg’s speech does not stand alone. She’s the most prominent figure in a worldwide movement of young people who … Read more
It was only a year ago that the Pennsylvania grand jury released its report on sexual abuse by priests. It was only a year ago that allegations broke about Theodore McCarrick and the network of sexual abusers who have infiltrated the highest levels of the Church. It was only a year ago that Archbishop Viganò’s … Read more
This past June, the Archdiocese of Indianapolis opened a huge can of worms when it asked two Catholic schools within the diocese—Cathedral High School and Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School—not to renew the contracts of two male teachers who had, in flagrant violation of the Church’s teachings, been married in 2017. This should have been a … Read more
The autonomous territory of Hong Kong is in a fight for its life. For over two months, the citizens of Hong Kong have persisted in protesting an attempt by the Hong Kong chief executive to impose an amendment to the existing extradition laws that would allow the Chinese government to take suspects from Hong Kong … Read more
One of the perils of living in America, ostensibly a democracy, is that we might start to think our elected officials represent the majority and are trying to justly balance various minority perspectives with the majority’s opinion. Believing this would be a mistake. A quick look at the issue of abortion shows just how little … Read more
Robots are all the rage these days, promising to automate many of the functions that previously required human beings to fulfill them: factory work, manufacturing, transportation … and, of course, sex. The burgeoning sex robot industry is dedicated to creating increasingly “life-like” animatronic lovers for consumers, with the intention of eventually developing robots that are, … Read more
To live as an American and as a Catholic is no small challenge, for America is fundamentally a modern project and Catholicism is decidedly not. The driving force of modernity (which began with the Protestant Reformation) can be summarized as “self-discovery”; to be a modern is, essentially, to exist in a constant state of self-awareness—specifically, … Read more
Modern artistic treatments of religious life tend to share a few assumptions: first, that there is something sinister in a life of vocation, and secondly, that those who choose such a life must have some degree of psychological or emotional disturbance motivating them. If these stories feature a nun, priest, or monk as a protagonist, … Read more
The French filmmaker and writer Marcel Pagnol died in 1974 at the age of 79 in Paris, having lived through one of the most morally destabilizing periods in history. He watched as two world wars devastated his country; he witnessed the permanent loss of the rural way of life in France through industrialization; he saw … Read more