By Fr. George W. Rutler Fr. George W. Rutler is pastor of St. Michael’s church in New York City. He is the author of many books including Principalities and Powers: Spiritual Combat 1942-1943 (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press) and Hints of Heaven (Sophia Institute Press). His latest books are He Spoke To Us (Ignatius, 2016); The Stories of Hymns (EWTN Publishing, 2017); and Calm in Chaos (Ignatius, 2018). Truths become truisms by being true. Shakespeare may have got some of his Aristotle through Ben Jonson; but, in any case, he has Polonius quoting the philosopher’s truism about night following …
Category: Apologetics
Thomism and Political Liberalism, Part 1
Joseph G. Trabbic is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Ave Maria University and is the assistant editor of Thomistica.net, a website for the academic study of St. Thomas Aquinas. Professor Trabbic earned his doctorate from Fordham University in 2008. Why do we – or better: why should we – live together in communities, make laws, and appoint leaders to govern us? The Catholic debate about the value of political and economic liberalism ebbs and flows. In the past few years in the U.S. it has become particularly public and intense. One of the highlights of this latest phase of the …
How about Catholic defenses of slavery, Nazism, and pornography?
Carl E. Olson is editor of Catholic World Report and Ignatius Insight. He is the author of Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead?, Will Catholics Be “Left Behind”?, co-editor/contributor to Called To Be the Children of God, co-author of The Da Vinci Hoax (Ignatius), and author of the “Catholicism” and “Priest Prophet King” Study Guides for Bishop Robert Barron/Word on Fire. He is also a contributor to “Our Sunday Visitor” newspaper, “The Catholic Answer” magazine, “The Imaginative Conservative”, “The Catholic Herald”, “National Catholic Register”, “Chronicles”, and other publications. Why did Dettloff and America Magazine think that a system—an anti-Christian …
Heaven, Hell, C.S. Lewis, and Hans Urs von Balthasar
Father Joseph Fessio, Vivian Dudro, and Joseph Pearce discuss Michael Barber’s Salvation: What Every Catholic Should Know. This partial transcript is from the FORMED Book Club discussion of Salvation: What Every Catholic Should Know by Michael Barber, July 8, 2019. Participants were Father Joseph Fessio, S.J., founder and editor of Ignatius Press; Vivian Dudro, senior editor at Ignatius Press; and the author Joseph Pearce, who edits titles produced jointly by Ignatius Press and the Augustine Institute. Click here to see the full discussion, or watch the embedded video at the bottom of this page. And click here to visit the …
Two Paths to Hell
By Regis Nicoll Regis Nicoll is a retired nuclear engineer and a fellow of the Colson Center who writes commentary on faith and culture. His new book is titled Why There Is a God: And Why It Matters. Dear Swillpit, The sure way to Hell is by a series of incremental adjustments so small, and seemingly innocuous, that earthlings never notice they are woefully off course until they find themselves aboard Charon’s skiff heading for the opposite shore. A believer who turns against our Adversary in a moment of anger or doubt is just as likely to turn back when …
Why Women Don’t Need to Preach at Mass
On the feast day of St. Mary Magdalene, an online debate broke out amongst Catholics about women giving homilies. This stemmed from a tweet by Jesuit priest Father James Martin who wrote, in part: “It is stupefying to me that women cannot preach at Mass.” The tweet linked to an America magazine article written by a woman who used to preach at Mass before restrictions were enforced. The Church, according to canon law, teaches that “the diocesan bishop may never dispense from the norm, which reserves the homily to the sacred ministers.” As a Catholic woman, albeit not standing behind …
U.S. Bishops Approve the Pope’s Capital Punishment Ban
Sæva indignatio. Few writers in the history of English letters could express “savage indignation” at human folly as did Jonathan Swift who wrote those words for his own epitaph. Our times give ample opportunity to empathize with him, and that is never more so than when clerics get together in large numbers. Bishops have many daunting responsibilities and, if they are reasonable, they are not fleet of foot to beat a path to synods and conferences and plenary sessions and other impositions on their august office. Their patience in such meetings is exemplary, and so lesser souls should be patient …
Bastille Day and Other Convenient Myths
Centenarians are not as rare as they used to be and one can profit from their memories. In California, I spoke with a woman who had traveled there from Missouri in a covered wagon. I visited another woman in a retirement home who was the first to hear her English professor at Wellesley College, Katherine Lee Bates, read a poem she had written on her summer vacation in Colorado: “America the Beautiful.” These good women were blessed with active minds, and their memories were acute. Because “God is in the details,” what they considered commonplace was most revealing: The Missouri …
The Political Left is Running Sports
As expected, the U.S. Women’s National Team won the Women’s World Cup. As also expected, members of the women’s team, led by chief spokeswoman Megan Rapinoe, were known as much for their politics as for their play. Rapinoe got it going with her comment that she wouldn’t visit the “f–ing” White House if she was invited, which was seconded and thirded by players Alex Morgan and Ali Krieger. Rapinoe, who is openly gay, has also refused to sing the national anthem. Then there is the claim that the women’s team is paid less than the men’s team. It turns out, …
How to “Dialogue” Truthfully on Gender Ideology
If the Church invites dialogue about gender ideology and homosexuality, does this signal a possible compromise of Catholic doctrine? This question lies at the heart of the controversy over the Vatican Congregation for Catholic Education’s recent document, “Male and Female He Created Them”: Towards a Path of Dialogue on the Question of Gender Theory in Education. Overall it’s a valuable, courageous, and necessary statement to Catholic educators, but there are some serious concerns which I will briefly summarize. As for the debate that has gained the most attention—about the appropriateness of “dialogue” on gender ideology—the proposal is probably much less …