Each month, to test our courage, my wife Lisa and I stand before an auditorium full of couples about to marry in the Catholic Church and explain to them the Church’s teachings about sexuality. The crowd is generally not happy to be there. Many are not Catholic and few, needless to say, want to hear … Read more
This past weekend was a farrago of extreme experiences — the anniversary of September 11, the build-up to rallies favoring and opposing the Ground Zero Victory Mosque, marches by paranoid 9/11 “truthers” — and a solemn farewell to a dear friend I will never see again. All this at once, in just two days, might … Read more
Despite boasting one-fifth of the world’s population, the Catholic Church is by no means a “popular” institution. Classical teachings on abortion, premarital sex, divorce, and especially contraception are thought by many — both outside the Church and within — to reek of old-fashioned ideas of sex at best and, at worst, patriarchal views of women. … Read more
In the 1970s, I inhabited a world where the Second Vatican Council was seen as an unmitigated disaster. Nuns stopped wearing their old habits — or simply left their convents altogether. Priests left their ministry. There was trite music at Mass, and Benediction seemed to have been abolished. Doctrine wasn’t taught anymore, and catechesis for … Read more
The threats to the Church don’t always arise where you expect them. As C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape advised young tempters, the Enemy’s best strategy is to catch us off guard and keep us there, focused on dangers in the rear-view mirror and ignoring that silly “Do Not Enter” sign up ahead. The devil, Lewis wrote, … Read more
“You’ve got to disintegrate the positive/then figure-skate about the negative/latch on to the pejorative/don’t mess with Sister In-Between.” If that’s what I’ve been singing for the past few columns, let me here squirm out of the blame and shunt it onto the subject matters I’ve dealt with: modern liturgy and terminal cancer. These two things, … Read more
My former editor at the National Catholic Register, Tom Hoopes, has done me a courtesy rarely afforded tradition-minded Catholics: He has stooped to address my arguments, instead of airily dismissing them as the sad obsessions of half-wits, bag ladies, and yellow-eyed anti-Semites with dirty fingernails. Sure, he did so in a blog post which referred … Read more
“Why do you people care so much about externals?” my non-Trad friends sometimes ask me. And they deserve an answer. A few weeks back, my delightfully contentious colleague here, Mark Shea, waded into the conflict between those who describe themselves simply as “orthodox” Catholics, and those who consider themselves “traditionalists.” (Just to save space in … Read more
People sometimes ridicule the Church’s teaching against artificial contraception, but frequently, they just don’t see why the Church teaches against it. To clearly explain Catholic doctrine in this frequently misunderstood area, Fr. John Baptist Ku, O.P., will present a FREE lecture, “Humanae Vitae? Are You Serious?” on Saturday, March 20, at 10:00 AM at Mt. … Read more
In the 1930s, a young Catholic professor at Oxford University began writing stories to read his children at Christmastime. They were tales full of well-known magical creatures — elves, dwarfs, knights, wizards, witches — but what made them unique was a race of his own imagining: the noble, plump little halflings he called “hobbits.” The … Read more
As my readers are probably aware that Christmas Day is approaching, I will flag another religious event that is indirectly related. This is not outwardly a Christian event, nor alternatively “multicultural” either; nor really “upcoming,” since it is already here. Nor is it an “event” in the sense of a holiday, holy day, or anniversary, … Read more
In 2003, I discovered quite unexpectedly that I was pregnant. I was in the middle of my course work for my Ph.D., so we weren’t yet “trying” to get pregnant, but it has a way of happening in a marriage. We were overjoyed to discover the positive pregnancy test — but things quickly went wrong … Read more
For anyone who strongly identifies with traditional Christianity, the October 6-9 series on Fox News’s Hannity, with Sean Hannity interviewing Michael Moore, was rich in irony and vaguely distressing. The occasion was Moore’s new film, Capitalism: A Love Story. Two bright, likable, and deeply sincere married men of middle age passionately argued the … Read more
My last month’s column, on the subject of polarization in American Catholicism, touched off a lively and substantial discussion. My thanks to all who took part. I don’t propose to respond here to what was said, but simply to expand on an issue I raised originally but didn’t really develop. Near the end … Read more
Is Pope Benedict XVI an admirer of the seamless garment? Evidently he is, and at first sight that’s bad news for conservative Catholics. But hold on: The good news is that he understands seamless-garment thinking in a way that ought to lead conservatives to admire it, too. To be sure, in his new economic encyclical … Read more
The newly launched USCCB Web site on health care tackles the question: “Are the bishops promoting socialized medicine by advocating for universal access?” That’s a good question, since the prospect of a government takeover of health care has created a growing chorus of complaints about the present bills before the Congress.The bishops’ answer to the … Read more
In this Crisis Magazine classic, James Hitchcock says that while the Second Vatican Council was itself orthodox, much of what followed was not. Here’s why. Most Catholics in 1959 probably didn’t even know what an ecumenical council was. And yet, here it was. Pope John XXIII announced that the goals of the Second … Read more
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this.” That’s how divorce starts for the Catholic couples I talked to: hard-core, confession-going, Humanae Vitae-believing Catholic couples. Couples who know exactly what marriage is supposed to be. One man I spoke with, now divorced, took Scott Hahn’s Christian marriage class with his theology-major fiancée. Another couple, now divorced, … Read more
In this Crisis Magazine classic, Mark P. Shea lays out the case against artificial contraception. It’s stronger than you might think. If you had collared me before I was Catholic and asked my opinion of Rome’s teaching on artificial contraception, I would have said something like this: I understand and applaud the Magisterium’s … Read more
In this Crisis Magazine classic, Russell Shaw explains why Catholic dissenters got so far so fast in the years following the council. The Second Vatican Council closed just over 40 years ago, on December 8, 1965. For most people, the postconciliar era had begun. But for me, that troubled time in recent Catholic … Read more