It is hard to believe that Franciscan University at Steubenville demoted Stephen Lewis from his English Department chairmanship over a single porny book about the Blessed Mother that he assigned to students. You might suspect there was more to it than that, and so your mind turns to Lewis’s judgment over time and from there to [...]

In the American Catholic Church and in the Church worldwide under the Francis papacy, we’ve entered the Cupich Moment. With his appointment to the Archdiocese of Chicago, and with his being selected as the primary American organizer of the gathering of bishops this coming February for the purpose of addressing the sexual abuse crisis (which [...]

Last month, I discussed the tendency among prominent supporters of Pope Francis to speak as if he had very special and even divine qualities. Where does it come from? Some possibilities seem obvious. Any argument looks good if it favors the desired outcome, meaning that people who are convinced the pope’s new initiatives are right [...]

Catholic Church employee Aaron Bianco says he has “endured physical and emotional violence” at the hands of Catholic laymen, watchdog groups, and media outlets. Specifically, he charges Church Militant and LifeSite News with slashing the tires of his car, making death threats, and physically attacking him outside of Mass. Announcing his resignation after what he [...]

It took a while, but writers Melinda Selmys and Damon Linker have finally owned up to the thing gnawing at their consciences for years; they no longer believe the claims of the Catholic Church and have left. Selmys is a blogger at Patheos who calls herself “queer.” Linker is a columnist at The Week noted [...]

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 [...]

Your Excellency: As a young Catholic I write to share my grave concerns about the looming youth synod. I am grateful for your repeated efforts to promote orthodoxy at this event and your attempt to ask Pope Francis to presently cancel it in light of the sexual abuse crisis. “Right now, the bishops would have [...]

Anyone who wonders why the Catholic Church is in its present crisis need only read Dr. Scott Bruce’s “Do We Still Need to Believe in Hell?” The Wall Street Journal article (9/15-16/2018) recently appeared in its popular weekend review section. It was a rather typical yet brutal appraisal of the notion of Hell. The author [...]

“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 [...]

Dignitatis Humanae, the Vatican II declaration on religious liberty, appeals to what it says is a growing awareness of human dignity. More recent Vatican pronouncements, including the new language in the Catechism on the death penalty, have done the same. In some ways, it’s easy to see why. The Church holds that God created man [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Having followed from afar the discussion on the meaning and wisdom of Professor Robert George’s new alliance with Fr. James Martin, I came upon Austin Ruse’s article, "James Martin and the Question of the Kiss." I ventured a comment. The comment got out of control (lengthwise). But to my surprise, Crisis Magazine deemed it worthy [...]

October’s youth synod is about finishing the old business of the St. Gallen mafia. It will mark four years since Archbishop Bruno Forte crafted a manipulated synodal report on the “precious support” found in same-sex relationships—released the very day that two Italian political parties backed homosexual unions. Pope Francis approved the text before it was [...]

Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick was ordained a priest in 1958 in the Archdiocese of New York. He was made an auxiliary bishop in 1977 and went on to become bishop of Metuchen, N.J., then archbishop of Newark, N.J., and finally archbishop of Washington D.C. He was made a cardinal in 2001 and retired a few [...]

Let’s be honest: We do not have a “homosexual priest” problem within the Church. Rather, we have a homosexualist priest problem within the Church. Priests who might experience same-sex attraction at least have the possibility of addressing that issue effectively in order to live their priestly vocation as a true icon of the Church’s Bridegroom, [...]

On a recent book review TV interview program called Q/A, Ross Douthat, author of To Change the Church, was asked about his own beliefs. He responded quite frankly that he was a Catholic. When asked why, Douthat replied that, as far as he could see, a divine intervention did take place in this world around [...]

Previously in this publication I raised serious questions about whether sexual harassment is the crisis that some have alleged. The first problem—which the “#MeToo” movement and feminists in general never seem to address—is what is meant by the term. At times, they seem to conflate it with outright sexual assault; at other times it seems [...]