Like the Church in most Western countries, the Catholic Church in Germany is in deep trouble. Last year 221,390 Germans renounced their membership in the Catholic Church, and in the past three years more than 700,000 people have exited. Other statistics are just as grim: fewer Baptisms, fewer First Communions, fewer Confirmations, fewer Catholic weddings, [...]

As the saying goes, when life gives you lemons, make a whiskey sour. To this extent, Traditionis Custodes may be a blessing in disguise in the long run. Let me explain.   Two things seem clear from the motu proprio. One, in fact, is clear. The Extraordinary Rite may now be celebrated only with the permission [...]

Yesterday Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill resigned from his position at the USCCB as a general secretary with responsibility for overseeing sex abuse cases. What caused the resignation of the highest-ranking non-bishop Church official in the country? He was caught regularly using apps that connect men who want to have sex with other men.  An article by [...]

The sadness that many of us feel about the release of the motu proprio Traditionis custodes restricting the celebration of the traditional Latin Mass cannot be denied. There is great uncertainty as to whether those of us who attend the Latin Mass regularly will continue to have access to it. While some bishops—like the courageous [...]

In the eleventh chapter of John’s Gospel, we are told that Jesus wept over the death of His friend Lazarus. It's commonly believed this was simply our Lord expressing his grief. However, some scholars argue that our Lord’s tears in this instance were an expression not just of grief but of a holy and terrible [...]

The bomb has been dropped. Today Pope Francis issued his motu proprio Traditionis custodes severely restricting the celebration of the traditional Latin Mass. In effect, it wipes out Pope Benedict’s 14-year-old motu proprio, Summorum Pontificum, which was issued in order to help those faithful who “continued to be attached with such love and affection to [...]

Homosexual advocates like Eve Tushnet, Fr. James Martin, and Kirsten Powers do not like what they derisively call “conversion therapy.”  They use the phrase to conjure up such horrors as boys strapped to tables being shown gay porn and getting electrical shocks. They use it to conjure up what they call “praying away the gay,” [...]

In J.F. Powers’ 1963 National Book Award winner Morte D’ Urban, the acceptance of lavish gifts sets the protagonist, Fr. Urban Roche, into a spiral of spiritual conflict. In this comic masterpiece, Fr. Urban, a priest in a fictitious religious order that is noted in history “for nothing at all,” is an ecclesiastical hot shot [...]

A considerable part of education is merely restating the obvious. No one would answer the question, “Is the Church a hotel?” in the affirmative when the question is stated this bluntly.  Nonetheless, the heresy of identifying her with a hotel sneaks in through the back door. In this way, what should be obvious is obscured [...]

Does the world need yet another article about wayward Catholic politicians and the Eucharistic scandal they and complicit bishops are providing? That depends. Persistence is optional if salvation is optional. One does not stop banging the pan with a spoon while the bear is still in the kitchen. We walk among saints and monsters. Such [...]

I’ve noticed a fear pervading many Catholic discussions about the problems in the Church today. Whether the topic is something Pope Francis said, or the role of Vatican II, or the latest bureaucratic blatherings of the USCCB, there’s a fear that something will happen that will falsify the Catholic religion—that the Catholic Church is a [...]

It’s fitting that the battle for our persecuted priests is raging in the Diocese of Rockford, Illinois. It was here, one hundred years ago, that the diocese’s first bishop, the Reverend Peter J. Muldoon, issued letters to his priests calling them to form what he called “parish councils.” Muldoon had come of age in the [...]

As we come to know more and more about the doctrinal and moral corruption of the Church’s hierarchy today, which rivals Renaissance records, it seems to border on the miraculous that Summorum Pontificum—the motu proprio issued by Pope Benedict XVI liberalizing the celebration of the traditional Latin Mass—was ever issued at all. It was a [...]

For the past several weeks, the report has been circulating that Pope Francis intends to curtail the freedom to celebrate the traditional Roman liturgy granted on this very day 14 years ago by Pope Benedict XVI with the issuance of the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. Reliable sources, perhaps most notably Phil Lawler, have confirmed that [...]

“After the consecration of the bread and wine, Our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and man, is really, truly, and substantially contained in the Blessed Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist under the outward appearances of sensible things.”—Council of Trent, Decree on the Most Holy Eucharist, Chapter 1 The rise in Catholic disbelief in the Real [...]

In the preface to the first edition of the book The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions, after addressing the fact that he’s a secular Jew whose “religious education did not take,” who “barely remembers a word of Hebrew” and “cannot pray,” and after addressing the content of the book as a “defense of [...]

Although Pope Francis has a global reputation as a humble, gentle pastor, those who follow him closely know he’s not averse to handing out strong criticisms when he sees fit, including throwing out insults at times to fellow Catholics. And no insult is more central to his repertoire than the term “rigid.” For Pope Francis, [...]

Pope Francis hears grumbling about Fr. James Martin, SJ. So, he turns to his key advisors.  He starts with the Jesuit Antonio Spadaro, editor of La Civiltà Cattolica, he of 2+2=5 theological fame, who tells Francis there is no problem with Martin who is doing God’s own work in building bridges to a marginalized community. [...]

Western culture has been under attack since its inception. From the 300 Spartans at the Hot Gates, to Lenin, Marx, and the Cold War, this is nothing new. There are dark forces roaming the world that would usurp the sacred role of transcendence at the heart of the Western tradition. Catholicism, a defining institution of [...]

COVID-19 vaccine mandates are being imposed on college students across the nation, including at many Catholic universities. Before returning to campus, students must first scale a vaccination wall or gain a medical exemption. Almost all institutions also provide exemptions for students with religious and conscientious objections. But Creighton University (where I have served on the [...]