We're all aware of the heated dispute inside the Catholic Church regarding whether baptized Catholic pro-abortion politicians—and in particular, President Joe Biden—should be admitted to Holy Communion. Instead of treading over well-worn territory, I want to turn to the liturgy, which, as the late Benedictine theologian Aidan Kavanagh defined, is “the faith of the Church in [...]

On Monday, June 7, 2021, a human body was discovered in a black plastic garbage bag buried deep inside a trash container located in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. The foot had been severed from the left leg, the left leg severed from the lower torso, the right hand severed from the right arm—and the rest of [...]

“This is my body!” “My body, my choice!” Those are the mantras, of course, of the pro-choice lobby. And they didn’t start in 1973 with Roe v. Wade. In my unfortunate life as an authority on the communist movement, which means reading a lot of dark stuff, I found communists using similar slogans in the [...]

I have been thinking lately about the three sons of Noah. Some people have had monsters for parents, and they should tell their admonitory stories, as dispassionately but as accurately as they can, lest others fall into the same patterns of wickedness. Yet most people have for parents just the ordinary stuff of human sinners [...]

The U.S. Supreme Court, on the last day of the 2020-2021 session, in a 7-3 vote—the dissenters were Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Clarence Thomas—declined to hear the case in which floral artist Barronelle Stutzman was sued by Washington State Democratic Attorney General Bob Ferguson and the American Civil Liberties Union after she refused [...]

Diversity is a time-honored word in the philosophy of art. But it never stands alone. Just as a string is needed to hold pearls in place to form a necklace, so too, a principle of unity is needed to wed a diversity of factors into a work of art. Hence the adage that art is [...]

Independence Day evokes a positive spirit among Americans. We view ourselves as “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” So much of our nation’s foundation springs from goodness, courage, and virtue. The freedom once fought for by the courageous men of the Revolution, however, is radically different from the doctrine of [...]

For a remarkable example of overplaying your hand, not to mention sheer audacity, behold the letter by 60 Catholic Democrats to the U.S. bishops. It is a surreal document. Reading it leaves one with mouth slightly open, staring and blinking at the page. In asserting its signers’ unrestricted right to advance abortion as “proud” Catholic [...]

I imagine that most everyone has heard the term “woke,” a term that refers to a supposed state of enlightenment to the issues of our time. In a way, it is a bit of an amorphous term, and I have seen people of all political and religious stripes employ its usage. However, it is largely [...]

The Massive Secular State (MSS) looms like a forbidding shadow over the future of the Catholic Church. This form of government is aggressively secular, and aggressively growing. It is also anti-Catholic—designed, whether explicitly or implicitly, to work against the desires of the Church. And although the Church has long battled various governments, the MSS is [...]

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, in what would surely anger the Marxist-founded Black Lives Matter (BLM)—which has boasted to “burn down” the “Western-prescribed nuclear-family-structure”—recently stated that kneeling during the playing of national anthems at sporting events was not only provocative but an act of discrimination. Hungary is one of 14 host nations to the Euro [...]

So, Joe Biden did not, after all, interrupt his preparations for the planned Super Summit with Vladimir Putin the other day in order to fly down to Rome and see the pope. It is just as well, perhaps, inasmuch as the Vatican having nixed the notion of allowing Biden to attend morning Mass with His [...]

Seven years ago, I wrote a dark comedy about political correctness run amok in the military. To quote from the back cover of Insecurity, “Gays, Muslims, and security threats are multiplying at Fort Camp, but no one seems to notice.” The Muslim officers at Fort Camp and other nearby army bases are plotting a coup [...]

Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) recently made headlines in his attempt to redefine the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist. The senator claimed that some U.S. bishops are attempting to change what it means to receive Communion. The debate revolves around the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) plan to be more specific in outlining the [...]

You must admit, it’s incredible. Even in a Church that has two thousand years of history, it’s incredible. The Catholic Church in America, the Catholic bishops and all the laity, are being lectured to about Church teaching by a bunch of heretics. The bishops and priests of the Church are being chastised for even talking [...]

Now that the COVID-19 lockdown is finally lifting (at least in America)—now that we can look back on a chaotic year and assess policy decisions that were often made hastily, with inadequate information— what lessons can we learn? Those lessons will be important to learn because although we can hope and pray that the worst [...]

If Catholicism, in the end, managed to elude the political hatred it engenders, I have almost no doubt that this same spirit of the age which seems so opposed to it would become supportive and that it would suddenly achieve extensive conquests. —Alexis de Tocqueville Almost two centuries ago, Alexis de Tocqueville predicted that Americans [...]

I had an epiphany the other evening while flying from one airport to another in a world whose contours have grown less and less familiar to me. Far less friendly, too. It may be worth sharing since others, I suspect, may have been similarly struck. Actually, it hit me long before boarding the plane; in [...]

The United Nations is persistently pursuing “sustainable development,” a goal with which some in the Church hierarchy, even the pope, seem to be onboard. This is troubling in a time when many see U.N. global initiatives as thinly-veiled Marxist ploys. Still, no matter what the subject, it seems such a reasonable question when someone chimes, [...]

The Word of the Month is RADISH. I’ve long told my students that one really interesting thing about the Roman Empire is that nobody seemed to care much about what we call “race,” that is, a large group of people, not bound by ethnicity, who share a few physical characteristics held to be definitive and [...]