“If you think that your priests and bishops are not saints, then be one for them.” — Robert Cardinal Sarah I know that many of our readers were irate over USCCB president Archbishop José Gomez’s statement on the 2020 election. Many of you were angry that he referred to Joe Biden as the second Catholic … Read more
The apogee of collaborationist Catholicism, alongside its more radical co-religionists, was undoubtedly the day of my birth: November 8, 1960. It was the day John F. Kennedy was elected president. He had already paid the price of admission to the Oval Office with a speech before the Houston Ministerial Association the previous September 12, in … Read more
Christians are in uncharted political territory. Once a formidable force in our politics, the Religious Right is now effectively irrelevant, undermined as much by its own hypocrisy and short-sightedness as by growing secularism. Until recently, most conservative Christians have subscribed to a philosophy known as fusionism: a combination of free-market economics, social traditionalism, and foreign-policy … Read more
The feminist writer Florynce Kennedy once said, “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” She didn’t give the left enough credit. Abortion has become a kind of “sacrament” because women can get pregnant. Abortion has morphed from a taboo tragedy to a constitutional right: a sine qua non of the Democratic Party, … Read more
The Reverend Robert E. Morey of Saint Anthony Catholic Church in Florence, South Carolina, denied former vice president and leading Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden Communion during a Sunday morning Mass in late October. Rev. Morey told a local newspaper that Biden, who was in Florence for a campaign stop, was denied Communion because of … Read more
The Religious Freedom Institute honored Philadelphia’s Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., at its annual dinner, November 9, for his decades-long commitment to religious liberty. The following is adapted from his remarks. As I was getting ready for tonight, I remembered a line from the Israeli peace negotiator who said that pessimists are simply optimists … Read more
Like most Catholic schoolboys in the 21st century, I grew up saying the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi more than the Our Father. You know the one: “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace…” Oh, how I hated it. The prayer seemed to encapsulate everything noisome about liberal religion. It was moral pacifism, … Read more
Your Excellency: As a young Catholic I write to share my grave concerns about the looming youth synod. I am grateful for your repeated efforts to promote orthodoxy at this event and your attempt to ask Pope Francis to presently cancel it in light of the sexual abuse crisis. “Right now, the bishops would have … Read more
Pontificates are hard things to peg. When they begin, we can never be sure how they are going to turn out. In 1978, a Polish cardinal who had been an active participant at the Second Vatican Council was elected the 263rd Successor of Saint Peter. He was following an Italian (Albino Luciani) who had died just … Read more
As one who is in the process of leaving the Southern Baptist church for Roman Catholicism, I say without hesitation and full of love and concern that the Church I fell in love with, the Church in which I found, finally, the full embodiment and expression of truth, goodness, and beauty, is becoming harder to … Read more
“If you want to see the face of Europe in 100 years, barring a miracle, look to the faces of young Muslim immigrants.” Thus said Philadelphia archbishop Charles Chaput at a recent Napa Institute conference. “Islam has a future because Islam believes in children,” he said. “Without a transcendent faith that makes life worth living, … Read more
Every year, we are fortunate to hear two accounts in church of the Passion during Holy Week—the first one on Palm Sunday and the second one on Good Friday. The latter account is always from Saint John’s Gospel. On Palm Sunday, we rotate among the Synoptic Gospels according to Cycles A, B, and C. This … Read more
Posted outside my office door is an old cartoon. A bearded professor wearing sandals and carrying a backpack leads a group of wide-eyed undergrads into a land labeled “utopia.” As they merrily march along, they pass an exodus of escaping humanity, fleeing an ash-strewn landscape amid scattered bodies and smoldering ruins. “Isn’t this great?” the … Read more
Let your acquaintances be many, but one in a thousand your confidant (Sirach). I heard last month about the Academy Awards and the Big Flub. I suppose it would’ve been fun to witness it live instead of on YouTube, but not fun enough to regret skipping the broadcast altogether. Frankly, I couldn’t care less about … Read more
It’s interesting to reflect sometimes on how humanity might remember the United States of America, centuries or millennia hence. Sometimes I think it will be remembered as a light to the nations, the proverbial City on a Hill. At other times, it seems to me that it will be remembered as a cautionary tale, proving … Read more
Editor’s note: The following talk, originally titled “Remembering Who We Are and the Story We Belong To,” was delivered October 19, 2016 at the 2016 Bishops’ Symposium co-sponsored by the USCCB Committee on Doctrine and the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and is published here with permission of the … Read more
Back in 2008, in the weeks leading up to the Obama-McCain presidential election, two young men visited me in Denver. They were from Catholics United, a group describing itself as committed to social justice issues. They voiced great concern at the manipulative skill of Catholic agents for the Republican Party. And they hoped my brother … Read more
The Church in recent decades has found itself in an internal discussion about how best to express its belief about sexual morality, and these conversations have filtered into the episcopate as well. Fr. Gerald E. Murray raises some recent examples in an essay at The Catholic Thing. In an interview with America magazine this summer, … Read more
Here’s a simple exercise in basic reasoning. On a spectrum of bad things to do, theft is bad, assault is worse and murder is worst. There’s a similar texture of ill will connecting all three crimes, but only a very confused conscience would equate thieving and homicide. Both are serious matters. But there is no … Read more
Vatican II ended in December 1965 with an outpouring of enthusiasm and hope. The Council’s hope was grounded in two things: a renewed Catholic faith; and confidence in the skill and goodness of human reason. Half a century has passed since then. A lot has happened. The world today is a very different place from … Read more