Clergy Sexual Abuse

Church Scandal Through the Eyes of St. Thomas More

And he said, “Sit down here while I go over there to pray.” And he took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee with him. He began to feel sorrow and grief and fear and weariness. Then he said to them, “My soul is sad unto death. Stay here and keep watch with me” (Matt. … Read more

The Modernist Roots of Our Current Crisis

Recently, the Church has suffered blow after blow as a result of scandals involving clergy sex abuse and the abuse of power exercised by certain bishops and cardinals who sought to cover up that abuse so as to protect the abusers. Some accusations have been raised about Pope Francis stemming all the way back to … Read more

What Our Lady’s Suffering Can Teach Church Leaders

My wife grew up in a small town, and as Chesterton said, small-town people are the real cosmopolitans. They can’t insulate themselves in a comfy circle of the like-minded; they must deal with everybody. There were good people in her town, but the nasty ones were always walking down her street. Cosmopolitan in a fallen … Read more

“The Church’s Greatest Crisis”

On September 21, the well-known German magazine, Der Spiegel, featured a long article on the whole career of Pope Francis under the title “The Greatest Crisis in the History of the Church.” The immediate issues brought up concerned the pope’s handling of abuse issues while he was still in Argentina. Most people are by now … Read more

The Sin of Silence

In the Inferno, Dante Alighieri, a critic in his day of Church leadership, famously put the souls of at least three popes in hell, as well as countless other clerics who go nameless, their faces blackened beyond recognition. However, one cleric he does meet along the way is Ruggieri degli Ubaldini (d. 1295), the archbishop … Read more

Public Penance for Wayward Clerics?

My first visit to the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Chartres was in 1968. I was 15-years-old and knew little about what I was looking at—though in truth, I could hardly see anything. The magnificent stained glass windows were visible, but at that time were still wearing centuries of grime. Looking up at them was like … Read more

Truth and Integrity Are Under Assault

If anything becomes clear as we consider the current raging questions on the American scene, it is that concern for truth is readily cast aside. While falsehood and deceit, to be sure, are nothing new in human history—they began when Adam and Eve tried to hide themselves from God after their sin—it’s fair to say … Read more

Triumph of the Will in Chicago

A priest of the Chicago archdiocese, Fr. Paul Kalchick, has been disciplined by his bishop for burning a Nazi flag that had been lying in a closet somewhere. It was left over from many years before, when German Catholics wanted very much to believe, along with plenty of temporizers, trimmers, and German bishops, that National … Read more

Time for the Laity to Become Mary’s Heel

We’re all troubled by the moral confusion and heterodox beliefs of self-identified American Catholics that have been chronicled in many polls: 65 percent believe that employers who have a religious objection to the use of birth control should be required to provide it in health insurance plans for employees; 32 percent disagree. 54 percent believe … Read more

Why Seminary Formation Must Be Scrutinized

“Amen I say to you, unless you be converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.”   ∼ Matthew 18:3 Ever since I seriously embraced my Catholic faith, I’ve lived with the sensation of biting into an orange right after brushing my teeth. Toothpaste has a chemical in it that … Read more

Beware the Allure of the Inner Ring

I have had an uncanny and revealing experience this week. There are three elements to it. Let me describe the first two, as a preface for drawing out a moral imperative for Catholics in these bad times. Every semester at Thomas More College, we set a few Fridays aside for what we call traditio. No … Read more

Is a Married Clergy the Answer?

With the latest revelations concerning sexual abuse by the clergy, the Church has once again asked the question “What is to be done?” One answer often given is that of a married clergy. While this proposal is not contrary to the Faith, there are arguments which make it unsound, perhaps particularly at this time and … Read more

Hunting for Fr. Martin’s “Witch Hunt”

“The witch hunt for gay priests must end. Now.” That’s how homosexualist Jesuit Fr. James Martin flatly states his view regarding how many Catholics—though not nearly enough—have finally come to terms with the fact that a homosexual culture within the Church’s hierarchy has fueled the clergy abuse crisis. It has fueled both the majority of … Read more

The Other Scandal

The Pope’s popularity in Italy has dropped from 88 percent in 2013 to 71 percent in 2018. But you’d be mistaken to think that the decline has to do with Archbishop Viganò’s charge that Francis had covered-up for Cardinal McCarrick. The poll was taken before that story broke. According to the poll’s author, much of … Read more

Sowers of the Current Chaos

For keen insight into some of the malevolent forces at work in the Church right now, an unexpected source is a fascinating book by Father Charles Theodore Murr, titled, The Godmother: Madre Pascalina. Published in May 2017, for the centenary of Fatima, it is one of the most interesting yet underreported Catholic books of recent … Read more

Catholic College Leaders Who Are Part of the Problem

Instead of helping faithful Catholics put things into perspective on the predatory priest crisis, several Catholic college leaders have made things worse. Buffalo’s Canisius College president, John Hurley, issued a letter to the campus community decrying the male leadership of the Church. Claiming that “for centuries, the institutional Church has marginalized women in so many … Read more

What the Priest Scandal Is – and Is Not – About

I have not written about the recent barrage of accusations regarding the scandal of Catholic priests who could not keep their hands and other things to themselves, and the prelates who did the same, encouraged them, or shuffled them here and there to hide them. I am not a private investigator or a lawyer, so … Read more

The Time Has Come to Ban “Reconciliation Rooms”

Amid the recent revelations of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, there have been calls for substantive actions to prevent future abuse by clergy. While most of these calls have focused on transparency, accountability, punishment of guilty parties, and lay oversight of cases after the fact, there are a few which deal with how to … Read more

Seminarians Require Our Protection, Too

A scene from The Shawshank Redemption popped into my head yesterday. The Shawshank Redemption is a movie based on Stephen King’s novel about a falsely convicted man in a New England prison. The scene that came to me was when Andy Dufresne, played by Timothy Robbins, was discussing new evidence of his innocence with the … Read more

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