Pope Joan is one of the most tenacious myths of the Middle Ages, told and retold by Catholics and anti-Catholics alike since the 13th century. It is said that beautiful young Joan, an Englishwoman born in Mainz, Germany, disguised herself as a man to gain higher education beside her scholarly lover. Her brilliance won her … Read more
In May 1964, in the middle of the Second Vatican Council, I published a book, The Open Church, an optimistic assessment of the changes in the Catholic Church that I believed the council would produce. I had written it in white-hot haste in my room at the Pensione Baldoni in Rome during a six-week period … Read more
Rudy Kos, former Catholic priest and convicted molester of altar boys, just spent another hot summer in the unair-conditioned Texas prison where he is serving four life sentences for hundreds of incidents of sexual abuse of minors during the 1980s and early 1990s. While Kos, 56, was hardly the first Catholic priest to sexually abuse … Read more
The Jesus Seminar, so-called, has been running out of steam. Its two flagship projects on the words of Jesus and the deeds of Jesus recently have been completed. The chairman, Robert Funk, has great agendas for reconstructing the whole of the first five centuries of Christianity, showing that the creeds and theology of St. Paul … Read more
Fatherhood is coming back into favor. For most of us, it never went out. However, in today’s climate of absurd perversions of biology, we can expect — and have seen in certain academic circles as, for example, Peter Singer’s Princeton — that even such natural, normal beings as fathers have been deemed unnecessary and cumbersome. … Read more
Biblical scholarship is usually granted instant credibility today because it is considered “scientific.” Thus, the findings of the Jesus Seminar, however ill-founded, nevÂertheless quickly become front-page news. The assumption is that “science” has once again exploded claims about the Jesus found in the New Testament and preached by the Church. On the other hand, the … Read more
The Church canonized only four Gospels. However, Robert Funk, the leader of the Jesus Seminar, wants to add the Gospel of Thomas and the Sayings Gospel Q to our canon. This poses the question: Why did the Church canonize four Gospels and no more? The answer is that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the … Read more
Many like to pretend that abortion is a matter of no grave consequence to a woman. Abortion simply removes an obstacle to the real purpose of a woman’s life, whatever she takes that purpose to be. Yet as my friend’s experience suggests, women rarely take the experience of having an abortion lightly. For most, the … Read more
Tobacco is dirty weed. I like it. It satisfies no normal need. I like it. It makes you thin, it makes you lean, It takes the hair right off your bean, It’s the worst darn stuff I’ve ever seen. I like it. —Published in the Penn State Froth, 1915. The above poem, quoted by … Read more
One of the most durable and endearing images of my father was his figure bent over our den desk, writing weekly letters to his three sisters. Trinidad natives, they moved to the United States as young adults, losing closeness on a small island to gradual separation in a larger land. Distance, however, was only in … Read more
The fraudulence of much that currently masquerades under the name “multiculturalism” results from gross perversions of what, in 1972, I called the new ethnicity. Multiculturalism is a profound betrayal of the fundamental principles of the new ethnicity. In the current culture wars on campus, however, an explicit indictment of the perversions of multiculturalism may be … Read more