In its recent Sunday edition, America’s newspaper of record ran a front-page article on the challenges facing gay Catholic priests titled “A Silent Crisis for Gay Priests.” It is the most recent specimen of the journalistic genre of suffering-gay-Catholic-priests-in-an-unwelcoming-Church. The narrative is well-known by now: a Church which fails to welcome gay priests, whose leaders [...]

“Can a woman forget her nursing child that she should have no compassion for the son of her womb?”  ∼ Isaiah, 49:15 “Every man is in a direct relationship with God. Faith claims no more for the first man than for each one of us, and vice versa no more for us than for the first [...]

March 5, 2019, will be the 75th anniversary of the death of Max Jacob (1876-1944), a figure somewhat on the margins of the renouveau catholique, a literary renaissance marked by expressions of the Faith among a broad range of novelists, poets, playwrights, and essayists in early twentieth-century France. Born to a secular Jewish family in [...]

Not too far from where I live, in a small town in the middle of the Midwest, the National Churchill Museum celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this year. One would expect to find a national-level museum honoring the great British prime minister elsewhere, such as Washington or New York City. Rather, its location in Fulton, Missouri, [...]

Whatever can be said about our current cultural climate, particularly when it comes to the two sexes, one thing is for certain. The battle lines are becoming ever clearer. What it means to be a woman, or to be a man, is at the front and center now. The things that used to be the [...]

Ours is a tragic age, but based on my cultural observations over the Christmas holidays hardly anyone appears to be taking it tragically. Instead, people are blissfully adrift: eating, drinking, marrying, and being given in marriage. Few seem to be noticing the red tide rising. The holidays always afford me the opportunity to take the [...]

Popular consciousness in the West has affirmed over and over again, like the beating of a drum, that natural science and theology are in bitter conflict. Recently, evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne made this claim in a predictable piece, claiming that the two are incompatible and are at war with one another. In recent years, scientific [...]

Among all the quickly produced denunciations of the Covington Catholic students, the condemnations from fellow Catholics and fellow pro-lifers were perhaps the most disappointing. Covington Catholic High School and the Diocese of Covington quickly put out a statement saying: “We condemn the actions of the Covington Catholic High School students towards Nathan Phillips specifically, and [...]

“Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Among Catholic students of political thought, few figures are more liable to provoke vigorous debate than does this famous dictum’s author, Cambridge University history lecturer John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, a.k.a., the 1st Lord Acton, Catholic godfather of classical liberalism. Where Acton’s critics identify classical liberalism as a [...]

From October 22 to November 30, in 1878, a large fair was held in the Cathedral of Saint Patrick in New York City before its dedication. It took advantage of the magnificent open space before pews were installed to the distress of the architect, James Renwick, who objected that Protestant furniture had no place in [...]

I recently wrote an article offering a different approach to communicating with Mormons. Instead of the often confrontational stance of trying to prove their theology wrong on biblical grounds, or, even less effective, mocking their unusual beliefs, I suggested Catholics work within a paradigm of hospitality and empathy, inviting LDS members into their home, feeding [...]

From time immemorial, people have buried the dead. Sometimes they even risked their lives to carry out this most basic duty. In times of persecution, for example, Christians put themselves in great danger to recover the bodies of martyrs so that they might receive the holy rites of Christian burial. The Old Testament recounts the [...]

Misology is a neologism, coined by Plato, to name the hatred of argument, and not in the sense of a quarrel or domestic squabble. Misology names the hatred of logos; it is the hatred of reason and rational discourse. It is a commonplace in our culture today that we are deadlocked when it comes to the [...]

A few days ago, the Nashua Public Library hosted a Drag Queen Teen Time starring the soi-disant Monique Toosoon, a gay man whom the once-conservative Manchester Union Leader—in a short puff-piece—denominated as “she.” Over 130 people attended, mostly women and teenagers. When one girl asked the transvestite Toosoon whether a girl could be a drag queen, he said [...]

Many complain that young people are not getting the basic life skills so needed to survive in the world. Parents and schools no longer teach skills like cooking, laundry, budgeting, or car repair as in times past. At the same time, our culture encourages young people to extend their adolescence well into their twenties. They [...]

In many of California’s largest cities, pets are replacing people.  In a recent article, “San Francisco Asks: Where Have All the Children Gone?,” the New York Times reports that the City by the Bay has the lowest percentage of children of any of the largest 100 cities in America. The article introduces a young San [...]

It may seem a bit odd to speak of modesty when the weather outside is frightful—at least roundabout where I live in rural Ontario. But modesty is not just an outdoors virtue, as a trip anywhere—from the grocery store to the office staff party to the local yoga class—will demonstrate. In the words of the Bard,"Can [...]

In 1930, “Twelve Southerners” published a thick volume of essays entitled I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition. Led by the already venerable poet and critic John Crowe Ransom, the contributors responded, at once, to the increasing industrialization of the southern states over the previous few decades, the sudden trials of the [...]

Last spring, I wrote about a new book, put out by British publisher Darton, Longman, and Todd: Transfaith. The book is a collection of seven experimental liturgies for “transgender” use composed by a Church of England priestess and a former Metropolitan Community Church minister who “retrained” for ministry in the United Reformed Church. The story [...]

So many of us have heard indirectly and anecdotally that our public school system is a nationwide wasteland that does harm to children and has wrought havoc upon our culture, values, and sense of history. But has anyone taken the time and energy to examine this catastrophe at its root? Perhaps not until now. Regnery [...]