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 …
The New Ultramontanism and the Dissing of Vatican II
George Weigel is a Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies. He is the author of over twenty books, including Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II (1999), The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II—The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy (2010), and The Irony of Modern Catholic History: How the Church Rediscovered Itself and Challenged the Modern World to Reform. His most recent books are The Next Pope: The Office of Peter and a Church in Mission (2020), Not Forgotten: Elegies for, and Reminiscences of, a Diverse …
On Cardinal McElroy’s misguided “clarifications” on sin, sex, and conscience
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”. When I was a young seminarian I studied moral theology under the tutelage of the late, great Germain Grisez (1929-2018). I did not agree with all aspects of his “new natural law” theory, …
The Cardinal’s Lament: A Reply to His Reply
Dr. E. Christian Brugger is a moral theologian living in Front Royal, Virginia Cardinal Robert W. McElroy, in defending the morality of some instances of sex between LGBT and divorced and remarried Catholics, misrepresents conscience and proposes a non-Christian understanding of conversion, accompaniment, and discipleship. In his recent response to “critics on sexual sin, the Eucharist, and LGBT and divorced/remarried Catholics” Cardinal Robert W. McElroy defends the morality of some instances of sex between LGBT and divorced and remarried Catholics. I reply here to four problems with his defense: it proposes 1) a misleading conception of conscience; 2) a misrepresentation of the …
Preaching in a Time of Misdirecting Shepherds
Fr. Robert McTeigue, SJ, is a member of the US Eastern Province of the Society of Jesus. A professor of philosophy and theology, he has taught worldwide and is known for his classes in both rhetoric and medical ethics. He is a member of the National Ethics Committee of the Catholic Medical Association. His book on preaching, I Have Someone to Tell You: A Jesuit Heralds the Gospel is now available at Amazon in both paperback and electronic form. His latest books from Ignatius Press are Real Philosophy for Real People: Tools for Truthful Living (2020) and Christendom Lost and Found: Meditations for a Post-Post-Christian Era (2022). He is the …
Are Conservatives Embracing a New Kind of Welfare?
Anne Hendershott is a Professor of Sociology and Director of the Veritas Center for Ethics in Public Life at Franciscan University of Steubenville, OH. She is the author of The Politics of Envy (Crisis Publications, 2020). Claiming that “in the post-Roe World” a growing number of conservative lawmakers are “embracing a new kind of welfare,” the New York Times recently reported on the attempts by a few conservative members of Congress to promote new tax benefits for parents. Describing an influential group of conservative intellectuals “with a direct line to elected politicians” like Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, as well as Senators Marco Rubio of Florida, Josh …