Last week, a man who claimed to be defending Western Civilization killed 50 defenseless worshippers in two New Zealand mosques, thereby betraying every good thing that Western Civilization stands for. A supposed foe of jihad terror, the terrorist adopted the savage tactics of jihadists in order to further his twisted ideology. Whatever he was trying [...]

Trump recently took $60 million away from Planned Parenthood, the first president ever to do so. This and other unique pro-life initiatives of President Trump turned my mind to certain claims made by the pro-life Smart Set back in those crazy days of the 2016 campaign. In March 2016, a group of old and very [...]

Longtime pro-life educators are like tortoises compared to some political hares who have recently raised awareness about lesser known aspects of abortion. One Philadelphia area group, Pennsylvanians for Human Life, which offers presentations on life issues like abortion, infanticide, assisted suicide, and euthanasia in schools and other private and public forums, has been at it [...]

Many commentators have perceived that the New York State law that legalizes infanticide when a child has survived a late-term abortion is a watershed. This was certainly buttressed by both the State’s celebratory lighting up of the Freedom Tower building after its passage and the subsequent public justification of infanticide by Virginia’s governor (a pediatrician, [...]

On February 22, 2019, The Irish Times reported  that “a four-year-old child, who was found to have been injured at 20 weeks’ gestation, is to receive €45,000 damages for personal injury arising from an accident in a [supermarket] store.” The Irish Times went on to report that the judge declared that the injury of an [...]

Good friends came over the other night with their six kids to watch School of Rock, the story of never-was rocker Dewey Finn who pretends to be a substitute teacher at a swank middle school. Rather than teach the usual curriculum, he teaches them rock ‘n' roll so they can win a Battle of the [...]

The New York Times has spent this past week in a less than subtle attack on clerical celibacy, insinuating it as the cause of the current crisis in the Church. On the eve of the Vatican summit on The Protection of Minors in the Church, the Times, in a panic that homosexuality will be blamed [...]

When Poland agreed to host a Middle East conference in Warsaw, on February 13-14, it expected some flak from Muslim countries, in particular Iran, a cold shoulder from the European Union, and, of course, scathing criticism from Russia and, perhaps, China. What the Polish hosts did not expect were attacks and hectoring from the United [...]

Back in August, after a special solemnity Mass in my parish in the Diocese of Erie, Pennsylvania, I came home and read the grand jury report on clergy sex abuse in six Pennsylvania Catholic dioceses, including my own. I read the 884-page online version. I saw allegations against priests in my diocese and the Pittsburgh [...]

I attended a private high school, a very prominent establishment in my home town, and one that prided itself on academic excellence and athletic accomplishments. It was a very expensive school, and my parents sacrificed a lot to send me there. Since it was and still is one of the best-known schools in the Southwest [...]

In what is becoming yet another scandal for the Catholic Church, Rhode Island’s governor, Gina Raimondo, joined a growing list of Catholic lawmakers embracing a woman’s access to late-term abortion. A graduate of Providence’s Catholic college prep school La Salle Academy, an institution that describes itself as “rich in history and grounded in the tradition of [...]

The name of the stepbrother of William the Conqueror was a palindrome, and the ladies who made the Bayeux Tapestry must have enjoyed embroidering it along with the caption under the scene of Odo at the Battle of Hastings. A year after the Norman Conquest, he became Duke of Kent, assuming vast lands and power, [...]

Some readers may have noticed the campaign in some states to “ratify” a constitutional amendment proposal that people thought had died almost forty years ago. Remember the Equal Rights Amendment, which was a major feminist rallying point in the 1970s? Proposed by Congress in 1972, after the idea had been kicked around for fifty years, [...]

Julia Beck was booted from the Baltimore LGBTQ Commission because she referred to a male rapist as male even though he says he’s female. They placed this male rapist in a woman’s prison where he proceeded to rape more women. Beck is both a lesbian and a self-confessed “radical feminist” who told her story on [...]

There was a literary symbiosis between G.K. Chesterton and Henri Ghéon somewhat like the musical one between Rimsky-Korsakov and Mussorgsky. Ghéon’s biography of Saint John Vianney, The Secret of the Curé d’Ars, is enhanced by the brief commentary that Chesterton added to it. Chesterton mentions a mayor of some French town who not only commissioned [...]

Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson, a former George W. Bush speechwriter, warns the pro-life movement of the dangers of “Trumpification.” Citing the presence of political figures at the recent March for Life—principally Republican ones, including a video message from the president—he warns that even if conservatives in the pro-life movement succeed in overturning Roe v. [...]

Several years ago, after a course I had taught on Church history, my students presented me with a gift. It was an eight-inch-tall action figure of Pope Innocent III they had purchased from a novelty store in Frankenmuth, MI. A pope of the thirteenth century, Innocent III—besides approving the Rule of St. Francis—is known for calling the [...]

Recently, within just a couple days of each other, we saw two particularly egregious cases of mainstream media journalists and commentators frenetically trumpeting dubious news stories that were quickly debunked. The first was the anonymously sourced story from Buzzfeed News claiming that hard evidence exists of Donald Trump directing his former lawyer Michael Cohen to lie [...]

Pope Francis is planning a pilgrimage to Arabia, a land of no reciprocity. Unlike in the West, no religious equality is to be had there, and, for the most part, in practice, no religious freedom either. It is doubtful that the Pontiff will be able to remedy the situation. Aside from Iraq and Yemen, which [...]

The Internet is haunted by readily memeable misquotes and misattributions of quotes. Among the ever-growing detritus of fabricated and seemingly sagacious sayings is a quote wrongly attributed to the eighteenth-century radical French Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire, which reads something like this: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right [...]