November 3, 2015
by John P. McCarthy
The fact that more than sixty percent of the Irish electorate supported an amendment to the nation’s constitution recognizing same-sex “marriage” caught many people by surprise last spring. They may have been clinging to an outdated image of Ireland as a bastion of devout Catholicism. Unfortunately there further disturbing changes that are being advanced. One [...]
September 11, 2014
by Fr. George W. Rutler
The staircase in my rectory is lined with pictures of the twelve pastors who preceded me in my parish, which is called Hell’s Kitchen. I hope that thirteen is a benign number. While the neighborhood now is experiencing the most promising real estate development in the history of the nation, it did not get its nickname for [...]
October 24, 2008
by Joan Frawley Desmond
Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession Anne Rice, Knopf, 256 pages, $24 A decade ago, Anne Rice -- the best-selling author of gothic tales of nocturnal bloodsuckers -- found herself "Christ-haunted." Statues of the saints, half-ruined Catholic churches, and the crucified Christ reignited the long dormant piety that suffused her New Orleans childhood. Flannery [...]
December 17, 2007
by Fr. George W. Rutler
There were two political Henry Hydes, and until the second lived his life's span (1924 - 2007), no historian would have imagined the Clarendon Papers of the mercurial Jacobite (1638 - 1709) being eclipsed in social importance by a Hyde from Chicago. In his Irish Catholic family, Henry Hyde had virtually no political option: To [...]
