Francis X. Maier is a senior fellow in Catholic studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. A number of lessons can be drawn from a recent Washington Post story. On March 9, the Post published a nearly 4,000-word story on the work of Catholic Laity and Clergy for Renewal (CLCR), a nonprofit based in Colorado. CLCR meticulously – and legally – collected publicly available data on clergy usage of Grindr and other hetero and same-sex hookup dating apps. It then provided the information to bishops for corrective action. Similar data reported on by The Pillar forced the resignation of former USCCB general secretary, Msgr. Jeffrey Burrill. In …
Category: Apologetics
The false binary between progressive accommodators and “rad trad” restorationists
Dr. Larry Chapp is a retired professor of theology. He taught for twenty years at DeSales University near Allentown, Pennsylvania. He now owns and manages, with his wife, the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker Farm in Harveys Lake, Pennsylvania. Dr. Chapp received his doctorate from Fordham University in 1994 with a specialization in the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar. He can be visited online at “Gaudium et Spes 22”. Many formerly conservative Catholics have been red-pilled by the current papacy, which has, sadly, led to extreme and wrong positions about Vatican II and the Church at large. Much ink has been spilled …
Martin Luther: True reformer or defender of erroneous conscience?
R. Jared Staudt PhD, serves as Director of Content for Exodus 90 and as an instructor for the lay division of St. John Vianney Seminary. He is the author of How the Eucharist Can Save Civilization (TAN), Restoring Humanity: Essays on the Evangelization of Culture (Divine Providence Press), and The Beer Option (Angelico Press), as well as editor of Renewing Catholic Schools: How to Regain a Catholic Vision in a Secular Age (Catholic Education Press). He and his wife Anne have six children and he is a Benedictine oblate. The key issue in debating Luther’s legacy on conscience in the Catholic Church entails whether the teachings of the Church …
Conscience and leadership in the lives of Saints Thomas More and John Fisher
Bishop Thomas John Paprocki is Bishop of Springfield in Illinois and is Chairman-elect of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Canonical Affairs and Church Governance. Conscience does not act in isolation on some sort of personal or individual intuition disconnected from someone or something else. For a Catholic, a properly formed conscience means to share God’s knowledge and the Church’s teaching about right or wrong. Editor’s note: The following 2023 Chelsea Lecture was delivered by Most Reverend Thomas John Paprocki at Chelsea Academy, in Front Royal, Virginia, on February 7, 2023. It is good to be with you to deliver …
“God wants us to be holy as he is holy”: A conversation with Scott Hahn
Paul Senz has an undergraduate degree from the University of Portland in music and theology and earned a Master of Arts in Pastoral Ministry from the same university. He has contributed to Catholic World Report, Our Sunday Visitor Newsweekly, The Priest Magazine, National Catholic Register, Catholic Herald, and other outlets. Paul lives in Elk City, OK, with his wife and their four children. “We need to know holiness not only by its effects on human beings. We need to know it for what it is in itself,” says Hahn, author of Holy Is His Name: The Transforming Power of God’s Holiness in Scripture, …
Veronica’s Image and the True Mission of Jesus
Donald DeMarco, Ph.D., is a Senior Fellow of Human Life International. He is a professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario, an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College in Cromwell, Connecticut, and a regular columnist for St. Austin Review. His latest works, How to Remain Sane in a World That is Going Mad; Poetry that Enters the Mind and Warms the Heart; and How to Flourish in a Fallen World are available through Amazon.com. Some of his recent writings may be found at Human Life International’s Truth and Charity Forum. He is the 2015 Catholic Civil Rights League recipient of the prestigious …
Naaman, the Nazarenes, and the Germans
George Weigel is the distinguished senior fellow and William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington. COMMENTARY: As the Scriptural Syrian found out, and the German bishops haven’t yet, pride is a supreme obstacle to faith in God. To vary Oscar Wilde, the Church’s liturgical life often imitates art by being strikingly appropriate to a particular moment. That was certainly true on Monday of the Third Week of Lent, 2023 — a day when the Scriptures of the Eucharistic liturgy invite us to ponder the greatest of the capital sins, pride, through …
The Ruinous Rhetoric of ‘Synodal Interpretation’
Robert Royal is editor-in-chief of The Catholic Thing and president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. His most recent books are Columbus and the Crisis of the West and A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century. Long, long ago, on a planet far, far away, I organized a conference on religion and the public square in a city on the Potomac that I increasingly find hard to recognize. There were sessions on Catholicism, Protestantism, and Judaism. During the last, a rabbi who was also a lawyer working at the White House was challenged by a trio of Jewish …
Can the Eucharist save civilization?
R. Jared Staudt PhD, serves as Director of Content for Exodus 90 and as an instructor for the lay division of St. John Vianney Seminary. He is the author of How the Eucharist Can Save Civilization (TAN), Restoring Humanity: Essays on the Evangelization of Culture (Divine Providence Press), and The Beer Option (Angelico Press), as well as editor of Renewing Catholic Schools: How to Regain a Catholic Vision in a Secular Age (Catholic Education Press). He and his wife Anne have six children and he is a Benedictine oblate. Our revival will be successful if Jesus’s sacramental presence in the Church truly does become the source and summit of …
Seal of Confession under attack? Delaware, Vermont bills draw Catholic criticism
By Kevin J. Jones for CNA Denver, Colo., Mar 9, 2023 / 09:30 am (CNA). Two state legislatures are considering ending any legal protections for a priest who learns about sexual abuse in the confessional. In response, Catholic leaders warned that the laws are unconstitutional, put priests in legal jeopardy, and endanger confidentiality with penitents. Delaware’s House Bill 74 is among the proposals to end clergy protections in mandatory sexual abuse reporting laws. “This act abrogates the privilege between priest and penitent in a sacramental confession relating to child abuse and neglect,” says the bill summary on the Delaware General …