If a decree like the HHS contraception mandate was issued during the Medieval era, Archbishop Dolan would probably have declared Secretary Kathleen Sebelius "anathema" and excommunicated her from the Church (see this famous scene from the movie Becket for an example). If President Obama was a tyrannical monarch in that era, he would be muttering [...]

Hand-in-hand with the Hollywood portrayals of Catholic priests and devout believers as evil, stupid, cruel, or unhinged is the academic Left’s long-established hostility to the Church. But the academic setting of its critiques doesn’t make them any less false and cartoonish. The recent controversy over public funding of contraception, as well as Rick Santorum’s presidential [...]

Why won’t American Catholics get behind the very Catholic Rick Santorum? From New Hampshire to Nevada, he has lost the Catholic vote in nearly every state where Republicans have gone to the polls to elect their nominee for president. The only slight exception is Tennessee*, where he carried the Catholic vote by a whopping one [...]

If you haven't heard yet, the New York Times recently published a full-page “advertisement” by the “Freedom From Religion Foundation” (FFRF) viciously attacking the Catholic Church. Even some not typically inclined to rush to the Church's defense have noted the particularly mean-spirited and bigoted nature of the propaganda piece. What has followed in the wake [...]

Religious-freedom infringement occurs quite a bit in American legal practice, and it makes sense that it does; for, those in charge of securing the common good of the community, as well as the rights of individuals, have the right and obligation to ban practices that are a direct and serious threat to it.

A quiet, closed-door meeting in Washington next month will be of crucial importance in shaping the Church’s response to the nation’s biggest church-state crisis in decades. When some 40 bishops of the administrative committee of the national bishops’ conference gather March 14-15 at conference headquarters, they’ll be looking at the Obama administration’s January mandate to [...]

No, I’m not exaggerating. The American experiment in religious liberty is officially over. The First Amendment provided institutional structures that allow different religions to peacefully coexist. All groups agree to not try to capture governmental structures for the benefit of their own particular denomination. But the Obama administration has ended that truce.  The administration made [...]

Two weeks have passed since the indictment of Kansas City’s Bishop Robert Finn. The bishop’s critics are demanding his resignation, while his defenders protest his innocence. Let’s step back a pace, and put the matter in perspective. The indictment of an American bishop is a big story—a huge story, an unprecedented story. Yet oddly enough, [...]

The Catholic Church in America has suffered in recent decades from rapidly declining Mass attendance. Its higher education institutions have pushed Catholicism out of the curriculum and culture, with no real catechesis program for young adults. And efforts to attract more young people to the Church have looked more like a "cool" Dad trying to [...]

The fight to protect Catholic institutions from the Obama administration's new health-insurance mandate is not only a dispute over contraception and abortion. For many colleges, schools, and charities, it is a fight for the right to be Catholic. If the outrageously narrow "religious employer exemption" put forward by the Department of Health and Human Services [...]

Even as the nation's bishops react with alarm to a recent Montana Supreme Court ruling allowing physician-assisted suicide, their efforts are being undermined by ethics and law professors at several Jesuit universities. Last week, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops approved a statement describing assisted suicide as "a terrible tragedy, one that a compassionate society [...]

A religion writer for a secular news organization and a retired church official were comparing notes on developments relating to clergy sex abuse. At the time, the Vatican was preparing to issue guidelines for bishops' conferences in handling the problem (the American conference has had guidelines for nine years). The U.S. bishops were getting ready [...]

There are two reasons I particularly enjoy reading The Telegraph's (UK) Damian Thompson. The first is his aggressive-yet-even-handed defense of Catholic matters in an environment that seems primarily hostile. And the second is his ability to come up with something to say when confronted by such things as this recently-released image of the altar planned [...]

Over the past several months, The Telegraph's (UK) ever-interesting Damian Thompson has written a number of posts concerning Sydney's Cardinal George Pell and the chance that he might soon be named Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops. In early May, Thompson reported that "authoritative sources in Rome" had all but confirmed the good Cardinal's impending appointment. Yet [...]

"Don't mess with nuns!" is a comment I've often heard over the years from cradle Catholics who were taught by them. The question now arises whether the undecided Catholic members of the House will be influenced by the 60 nuns -- each a leader of her religious order -- who signed a letter to members [...]

The bishops of Ireland wrapped up their meeting with Pope Benedict today regarding the sex-abuse scandal in that country. The Holy See has released an official statement about the closed-door meeting: For his part, the Holy Father observed that the sexual abuse of children and young people is not only a heinous crime, but also a grave sin [...]

Up here in Canada, from where I am writing, the prime minister called an election on September 7, and we had it on October 14. By the common consent of the five major parties, there was no discussion whatever of abortion, gay marriage, "human rights" tribunals, or any other of the civilizational issues that are, [...]

  Joe Biden's voting record on abortion in the United States Senate is likely to cause heartburn for two groups of people: ardent pro-choicers and Catholic bishops. Biden is a Catholic; and yet for the last ten years, according to the National Right to Life Committee, he has voted the "wrong" way 88.5 percent of [...]

Deal W. Hudson and Francis X. Maier conclude their discussion on the propriety of a Catholic leveling public criticism against a bishop. In this special InsideCatholic.com Point/Counterpoint, Deal W. Hudson and Francis X. Maier, the chancellor of the Archdiocese of Denver, discuss and debate whether a Catholic may criticize a bishop publicly. Is it a [...]