He said to them, “Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.” (Mt. 19:8) Scripture tells us that “God hates divorce” (Malachi 2:16), and it doesn’t sound like Jesus was too thrilled with how Moses handled it, since “it was not … Read more
When I think of a holy hero who speaks with authority, who reflects my beliefs and values, I think of Pope St. John Paul II, worthy of canonization. When Fr. James Martin, S.J., who was out hawking his new book Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter into a Relationship … Read more
Writer Dan Mattson has bequeathed a lasting treasure to the Church, a spiritual masterpiece titled Why I Don’t Call Myself Gay: How I Reclaimed My Sexual Reality and Found Peace. Might this be over-effusive praise for a book that’s only about homosexuality and identity labels? Not quite. That would be like saying St. Augustine’s Confessions was … Read more
Hey, Amoris Laetitia, the 1968 Canadian bishops phoned and they want their strategic ambiguity back. That line may not mean much to anyone who isn’t familiar with the Canadian Conference of Bishops’ statement in response to the birth control encyclical Humanae Vitae. Dubbed the “Winnipeg Statement” for the last 49 years, it represents in the … Read more
“I am amazed that you are so quickly forsaking the one who called you by grace for a different gospel (not that there is another). But there are some who are disturbing you and wish to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other … Read more
After 35 years as a liturgical musician, it’s amazing how little I really know about the liturgical music of the Roman Rite. Then again, what should I expect when my earliest memories of music at Mass tend to involve now-forgotten attempts to make Ray Repp tunes, guitar-group versions of Beatles songs, social-justice-pop-folk songs, and patently … Read more
Here’s a little thought experiment to start your day: Imagine you woke up one morning last week and read this headline in your local Catholic newspaper: “Bishop John Smith Leads Prayer at Contra Catholic Gathering.” In this imagined universe, you’ve heard of these “Contra Catholics”—these are fellow Catholics who have publicly “come out” as using … Read more
Sometimes I think I must be the one in error. In a very high percentage of Catholic media I encounter, I see terms like “gay,” “lesbian,” and “LGBTQ” used without reservation or qualification. Just a day before writing this piece, I saw a major Catholic news source use the term “gay” in this way in … Read more
I’m in the dance band on the Titanic Sing “Nearer, my God, to Thee” The iceberg’s on the starboard bow Won’t you dance with me. ∼ Harry Chapin, 1977 Back in the late 1970s, when I was an impressionable young lad, I was introduced to the … Read more
The recent April 26 Religion News Service commentary by Fordham University’s Fr. Bryan Massingale is titled “As a Catholic priest, I am against an executive order on religious liberty.” I found it to be breathtaking—in much the same way as a steel-tipped boot can take your breath away as it lands in your gut. The … Read more
“The primary end of marriage is the procreation and education of children; its secondary end is mutual help and the allaying of concupiscence.” (Canon 1013, 1917 Code of Canon Law) Anyone familiar with the history of contraception and the Church in the 1960s will know the name of John T. Noonan. His singular 1965 work … Read more
The Holy Father actually said to the College of Cardinals: “In a matter of such importance it seems right that Catholics desire to follow one single law propounded authoritatively by the Church. So it seems advisable to recommend that for the present no one should arrogate to himself the right to take a stand differing … Read more
In late October 2016, Jesuit Fr. James Martin received the annual “Bridge Building Award” from New Ways Ministry, a dissident, pro-gay-identity, pro-gay-sex, pro-gay-“marriage” group whose work was long ago condemned by both the Roman Curia and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. At the award event, Frank DeBernardo, executive director of the group, compared … Read more
“Distinguo”—that curious Latin term that reminds us that we need to make essential distinctions between and among similar concepts in order to fully understand them. And now, with the untimely passing of reparative therapy pioneer Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, which in turn met with an inhumane “glad-you’re-dead” response from ‘gay’-affirming ideologues who refer to Nicolosi’s life’s … Read more
“An essential dimension of authentic pastoral care is the identification of causes of confusion regarding the Church’s teaching.” Thus begins an early paragraph (no. 4) of the pivotal 1986 CDF “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons.” Said another way, authentic love and authentic freedom can only … Read more
The aftershocks continue after the ground-shaking April 8 release of Pope Francis’ post-synodal apostolic exhortation on the family, Amoris Laetitia. Extreme reactions vary from “we don’t have to talk about sin any more” and “conscience trumps everything” and “Communion for everybody” and “now we can contracept” all the way to “Francis is a heretic and … Read more
For years to come, a range of experts and armchair analysts will likely argue about the origins of same-sex attraction and “gender” confusion and to what extent either counts as a psychological disorder. But there is one aspect of the LGBTQ(etc.) phenomenon that, it seems to me, is beyond dispute: basing identity on attractions and … Read more
At first glance, it may not seem that the nature of public discourse—particularly on faith and morals—has changed all that much since the days of Jesus’ engagement and entanglement with so many different groups during his public ministry. Don’t we still have all the usual suspects today? Over there we have the religious zealots; over … Read more
“Is homosexuality a psychological disorder? And could it be cured?” These are the “dead-horse” questions that blogger Melinda Selmys mentions as she takes exception to the substance of a Crisis Magazine article on homosexuality—Mark Latkovic’s “Using Modern Science to Treat Homosexuality.” Selmys considers this question—“homosexuality as mental illness”—as tantamount to a lifeless horse brought back … Read more
Events of recent memory have left my head spinning in disbelief—“Caitlyn,” same-sex so-called “marriage,” three women “marrying” in South America, and, yes, “gay Catholics” and “chaste gay couples.” With me, you may wonder how all this has emerged in a short few decades of social upheaval. I may have an answer: Society has constructed an … Read more