It has been just six years since I wrote Defending Marriage: Twelve Arguments for Sanity, warning against the fantasy that two members of the same sex can marry one another, when they cannot even have sexual relations but can only mimic them. I founded my arguments not upon Scripture or the teaching of the Church—indeed I did not … Read more
During a recent eighth-grade trip to Chicago, chaperones and students of Notre Dame Academy in Toledo walked out of a performance of The Nutcracker after learning that lead characters would be portrayed in a gay marriage. This was a courageous and bold move—a correct application of Pope Francis’s well-publicized encouragement of young people “to make … Read more
Last week, presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke said outright that if he is elected president, he will work to eliminate the tax-exempt status for churches that hold traditional views of gender and sexuality. And O’Rourke is not the only candidate taking aim at groups that defend age-old beliefs about marriage and gender. His Democratic rival Cory … Read more
News of the conflict between a Jesuit high school and the midwestern archdiocese under which the school operates spread quickly last week through social media. For news outlets hungry for a story, the narrative wrote itself: a teacher at Indianapolis’s Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School had entered into a same-sex union, the Archdiocese demanded said teacher’s … Read more
Mr. Peter Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and a candidate for the presidency of the United States, has picked a theological quarrel with Mike Pence, the current vice president. The specific focus of the quarrel is not of peculiar interest beyond our times—our peculiar times. The general import is as vast as creation. Political people generally have an outsized … Read more
A few days ago, the Nashua Public Library hosted a Drag Queen Teen Time starring the soi-disant Monique Toosoon, a gay man whom the once-conservative Manchester Union Leader—in a short puff-piece—denominated as “she.” Over 130 people attended, mostly women and teenagers. When one girl asked the transvestite Toosoon whether a girl could be a drag queen, he said … Read more
January 21, 2019, will be the one-hundredth anniversary of the founding of Dáil Eireann, the legislature of an independent Irish state. This legislative body consisted of members of the majority elected from Ireland in the December 1918 national election to the British parliament. This event was an act of secession by a legally elected group … Read more
After Windsor or Obergefell, I cannot remember which, it occurred to me that our best strategy, if only it would not cause scandal or offend truth, might be to extend the reasoning of those decisions and advocate for the most outrageous rights to show the absurdities to which the logic, or illogic, of those decisions … Read more
Scott Hahn is a prolific Biblical scholar with a huge fan-base among orthodox Catholics. He doesn’t need my help promoting his new book, The First Society: The Sacrament of Matrimony and the Restoration of Social Order. But I need some help from him. I need his help convincing my pro-marriage policy-wonk friends that our defense … Read more
June 17, 2018. Why are we celebrating “Father’s Day?” Despite the overwhelming evidence that the presence of fathers in intact families pays incalculable social dividends in terms of future generations and the communities in which they live, fatherhood as such is increasingly marginalized by culture-makers. Case-in-point: I spent time the last two weekends watching the … Read more
What do The New York Times, transgender activists, the German bishops, and liturgy have in common? Let me tell you. Jennifer Finney Boylan, who writes for The New York Times on “family life, parenting, LGBT issues,” launched into a screed against Ryan Anderson’s new book, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment. The … Read more
A colleague told me of an intriguing incident at a conference of accountants that were studying recent changes in tax regulations. One speaker gave a talk on recruiting new staff and how to deal with turnover. An attendee then asked a question remarking that from the context of her presentation, it seemed companies were facing … Read more
When the Church “blesses” someone, it usually does so for one of two reasons: to ask God to protect that person from evil, or to confirm that person in the good. Because our spiritual lives are dynamic—at no point are we “holy” enough to rest on our laurels—those two reasons are usually two sides of … Read more
Earlier this week I published a piece at Crisis for which I owe readers an apology and explanation. In 30 years of commentary writing, I’ve never had to do this, which surely has been God’s grace, given my many bouts of arrogant stupidity, but maybe the good Lord gave me this one for some badly … Read more
The German bishops pushed hard for “accompaniment” of the divorced and “remarried” at the Synods of 2014-15. The new idea percolating in the German Bishops Conference is whether the Church should have a “blessing” for homosexuals who “marry” or have civil partnerships. Bishop Franz-Josef Bode of Osnabrück, the Conference’s Vice President and chair of its … Read more
Question: What do the push to admit those with irregular marriages to communion, the effort by Fr. James Martin to bless same-sex relationships, and the movie Silence have in common? Answer: They all assume that the demands of Christianity are too hard for ordinary people to live out. In the movie Silence, which is based … Read more
An ominous portent haunts the dissenting opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges. Chief Justice John Roberts, relying on the old maxim that it’s valid to infer from what has happened to what will happen, predicts the inescapability of sequels to the legalization of same-sex “marriage.” The SCOTUS, he avers, will be unable to discount future petitioners … Read more
The position of Pope Francis in regard to homosexual “marriage” has not changed since he became a bishop in Argentina, according to John Allen Jr. on the Crux news site last year. Allen writes that, while the pope is against homosexual “marriage,” he is willing to tolerate homosexual acts under the title of “civil unions.” … Read more
The current push for same-sex “marriage” in Australia is threaded with ironies in the social, political and religious spheres. When Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull declared a postal vote—which is now in progress (results will be released on November 15), the “pro same-sex marriage” crowd lambasted the democratic vote as hateful; they prefer an imposed parliamentary … Read more
There are Christians of my acquaintance who are against the legalization of same-sex “marriage” and its threat to religious liberty, but cannot see how their attendance at a gay friend’s wedding would undermine those values and their Christian witness. Quite the opposite, they believe that declining the invitation would be hurtful to their friend and … Read more