December 16, 2019
by Chilton Williamson, Jr.
I found Charles Coulombe’s latest column for Crisis (“Can the Catechism Get It Wrong?”) of particular interest, coming as it did a few days after Pope Francis’s visit to Japan—the first such visit in 38 years—where his remarks about nuclear weapons apparently exceeded anything his predecessors had said on the subject. Before Francis, the Vatican’s [...]
November 29, 2019
by Charles Coulombe
In the wake of the amusements surrounding the Vatican’s Amazon Synod, Pope Francis made an important statement at the conference of the International Association of Penal Law on November 15. Thereat the Holy Father declared: “We should be introducing—we were thinking—in the Catechism of the Catholic Church the sin against ecology, ecological sin against the [...]
June 26, 2019
by Fr. George W. Rutler
Sæva indignatio. Few writers in the history of English letters could express “savage indignation” at human folly as did Jonathan Swift who wrote those words for his own epitaph. Our times give ample opportunity to empathize with him, and that is never more so than when clerics get together in large numbers. Bishops have many [...]
August 6, 2018
by Monica Migliorino Miller
“One has to strongly affirm that condemnation to the death penalty is an inhuman measure that humiliates personal dignity, in whatever form it is carried out.” On August 2, Pope Francis altered the teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) regarding the morality and application of the death penalty. The above quote is [...]
May 8, 2015
by James Kalb
Catholics, it is said, are called to a New Evangelization that involves re-proposing the Faith to a world that is falling away from it. In that effort we are all expected to do our part. But what does that mean for the average believer? We have always dealt with our obligations to those outside the [...]
March 6, 2014
by R. Jared Staudt
I recently wrote of one of my newborn son’s namesakes, Bl. Columba Marmion. My son, Colum, was baptized five days after birth (it would have been three except for the priest’s sickness), which is fast these days. In the old days it would have happened sooner. Pope Benedict XVI, for instance, was baptized on the [...]
January 16, 2014
by Joseph G. Trabbic
The Obama administration’s war on Catholics will continue into 2014 as many courageous Catholic institutions in the U.S. maintain their resistance to its encroachment on their religious freedom through the H.H.S. mandate. In light of this, we can expect that the public debate about religious freedom will also continue into the new year both inside [...]
November 12, 2013
by Peg Luksik
Is Common Core compatible with Catholic education? Are the concerns being expressed by parents across America just the unfounded worries of the uninformed, or are there real problems with the implementation of Common Core in our Catholic schools? To answer these questions, it is necessary to look beyond the particulars of the Common Core and [...]
August 1, 2013
by Scott P. Richert
The media-manufactured brouhaha over Pope Francis's impromptu remarks on homosexuality has finally begun to die down, and there must be few, if any, Catholics who still think that the Holy Father's words represented a departure from 2,000 years of Christian teaching on the immorality of homosexual activity (not counting those, of course, who have let [...]
March 7, 2013
by George Neumayr
The dominant secular culture portrays the world of In vitro fertilization (IVF) and surrogate pregnancies as a great advance for mankind, even as it generates a stream of horror stories beyond the imagination of Greek tragedians. Not a week passes, it seems, without a new disturbing permutation to this culture. “Surrogate offered $10,000 to abort [...]
February 25, 2013
by Arland K. Nichols
Suicide and the legalization of physician assisted suicide seem to appear in headlines more and more. Elected officials such as Peter Shumlin, governor of Vermont, increasingly favor legalization of physician assisted suicide as “the right thing to do” with promises that “we are going to get it done.” Mainstream media addresses suicide positively. Consider the [...]
January 21, 2013
by Nicholas G. Hahn III
If for nothing else, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel will always be remembered at a tragedy. "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," Emanuel told the Wall Street Journal in 2008, "what I mean by that is: an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before." Who better to follow the [...]
April 29, 2010
by Joseph Susanka
Every time my inner paranoid thinks it can take a little break, something like this comes along: New York State Assemblyman Richard Brodsky nearly lost his daughter, Willie, at 4 years old when she needed a kidney transplant, and again 10 years later when her second kidney failed. "We have 10,000 New Yorkers on the [...]