As the coronavirus spreads across the globe and medical professionals struggle to contain it, there is one thing that the rest of us can do besides pray and use hand sanitizer: drink more. Dr. Todor Kantardzhiev, director of Bulgaria’s Centre for Infectious and Parasitic Diseases, reportedly asserted that regular drinkers of hard liquor are at [...]

On this solemnity which celebrates the high-water point in the history of salvation, permit me to explore with you three Latin expressions. The first is, verbum caro factum est: “The Word became flesh.” We find this line, of course, in the Prologue to St. John’s Gospel, and the Epistle to the Hebrews tells us that [...]

In shutting the world in, coronavirus has brought out the viral quality of fear. Men tend to panic when life changes overnight and moves beyond their control. Pandemonium is never as distant as a complacent, comfortable people imagine. Civilized society is not immune from collapse just because it is civilized. Ingenuity leads to dependency, and [...]

The nation has been treated to an uncanny spectacle over the past few weeks. Schools and businesses closed in the face of the Wuhan flu, and public health officials urged all Americans to stay home and  practice “social distancing” to slow the spread of the disease. But as anxious families braved supermarket lines to stock [...]

It has been just six years since I wrote Defending Marriage: Twelve Arguments for Sanity, warning against the fantasy that two members of the same sex can marry one another, when they cannot even have sexual relations but can only mimic them. I founded my arguments not upon Scripture or the teaching of the Church—indeed I did not [...]

“We remind everyone,” The New Yorker announced on February 27, “that the first defense against this outbreak is vigorous handwashing and repentance.” Perhaps I should clarify that the announcement was intended facetiously—it captioned a cartoon of Vice President Mike Pence, who was widely mocked for praying with the coronavirus crisis team. But, for once, The New [...]

Irish immigrants to the United States held the first Saint Patrick’s Day parade in New York in 1762. Over 250 years later, Saint Patrick’s Day parades are a big deal in New York City, with each borough boasting their own. One of these boroughs came under heavy fire this year regarding its Paddy parade. The [...]

March has arrived, and with it, St. Patrick’s Day—patronal feast of the Emerald Isle. But two of the other five Celtic peoples have their patron’s days in March as well. Wales’s St. David opens the month on the first, and Cornwall’s St. Piran rolls along four days later. Of course, the Bretons and Manx celebrate [...]

“They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t not know where they have laid him.” Such were the words, as recorded in the Gospel of John, of Mary Magdalene when she ran up to Simon Peter and John after she had gone to venerate the body of Jesus and found the tomb [...]

Very early in this Lent of 2020, we celebrate a votive Mass, which invites us to take our place at the foot of the Cross with the Mother of Sorrows. Popular piety has identified seven “dolors” of the Blessed Virgin: the prophecy of Simeon; the flight into Egypt; the loss of the Boy Jesus; the [...]

Recently, my wife explained to a friend that having a newborn child was like having a dog—only except ten times more difficult. Her explanation made me think. Dog parks, pet-friendly cafes, and “dog moms” abound. When we lived in Nashville, it seemed like there were more pet services than day cares. It’s almost as if [...]

“Dialogue is our method... The path ahead, then, is dialogue among yourselves, dialogue in your presbyterates, dialogue with lay persons, dialogue with families, dialogue with society. I cannot ever tire of encouraging you to dialogue fearlessly.” —Pope Francis, Address to the U.S. Bishops, September 23, 2015 In the halls of Catholic chanceries around the world, [...]

When the late William F. Buckley set out to find a religion editor for National Review, he was careful to choose a Protestant. Though a Catholic himself, Buckley feared that his magazine—by then, already the flaghship of American conservatism—was becoming “too Catholic.” Eventually, he settled on a bombastic Lutheran minister named Richard John Neuhaus. Alas [...]

In an age in which the natural environment is not geography, flora, and fauna but human vulgarity in its limitless forms, it is easy to overlook even its most extreme manifestations. A notable exception is when these occur in the celebration of Holy Mass, where they are as obtrusive as clowns at a funeral. My [...]

Jamie Forsythe always felt called to be a priest, according to a CBS News 5 February report. That calling persisted even after pleading guilty in 1989 to attempting to sexually abuse a 15-year-old Kansas boy, serving a prison sentence, and being laicized by the Catholic Archdiocese of Kansas City. Forsythe was released from prison after [...]

 “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.” That’s how divorce starts for the Catholic couples I talked to: hard-core, confession-going, Humanae Vitae-believing Catholic couples. Couples who know exactly what marriage is supposed to be. One man I spoke with, now divorced, took Scott Hahn’s Christian marriage class with his theology-major fiancée. Another couple, now divorced, [...]

The scene outside the U.S. Supreme Court in the hours before the March for Life is rowdy and boisterous and occasionally tinged with violence, as pro-abortion counter-protesters in faux-bloodstained pants attempt to infiltrate the area reserved for the women and men of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign to give their testimonies about abortion regret. [...]

Fr. Nick VanDenBroeke got into hot water recently for a homily he delivered on January 5, which is Immigration Sunday in his diocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. In the homily, he called for restrictions on Muslim immigration, saying that “Islam is the greatest threat in the world both to Christianity and to America … [...]

Something is stirring in England. It’s not much. A still, small voice of calm whispering in the dark. Prayers ascending like incense. A rekindled faith. No, it’s not much. Merely a mustard seed. It won’t be noticed by most people. It will go unheeded by the dead men milling around satanically in what remains of [...]

The third Monday in February—latterly called “Presidents’ Day” because of Lincoln’s birthday on the 12th—is legally Washington’s birthday. Of course, his actual birthday is February 22, and I am old enough to remember getting off from school on that day, whenever it fell. But in 1971 Congress’s Uniform Monday Holiday Act took effect, banishing this [...]