Nine years ago I helped found a pro-life pregnancy center and discovered, in the process, that doing so successfully was very slow going. Through that experience, I gained a very useful personal insight: because saving lives is something worth doing,...
Following the 1976 US presidential election, conservative political fundraisers Paul Weyrich, Richard Viguerie, and Terry Dolan saw an opportunity: according to one poll, 70% of “evangelical Christians”—fifty to sixty million people— had not voted.[1] Jimmy Carter snagged the Oval Office...
Today, as we honor the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the United States, we can be certain that Pope Francis is joining with us in spirit from the Vatican. Over the weekend, the Atlanta Hawks of the National...
Last summer, I had an opportunity to address the small Catholic campus ministry of Western Carolina University (WCU) on the topic of racism and my perspectives as a Black Catholic in the United States. Hoping to talk about the heartbreaking...
“There are ancient limitations from which fairy-stories offer a sort of escape, and old ambitions and desires (touching the very roots of fantasy) to which they offer a kind of satisfaction and consolation. Some are pardonable weaknesses or curiosities: such...
My Christmas was odd, and not just because of lockdown. After three weeks launching Let Us Dream, Pope Francis’s remarkable book on the pandemic that I helped him put together, I was quoted in a UK tabloid news site forecasting...
Perhaps last week’s news that EWTN had reshuffled its radio lineup, dismissing several longtime on-air voices including Gloria Purvis (who was outspoken this year about the US Church’s failure to address racism) and Fr. Larry Richards (who has been a...
There is a picture by the Russian painter Nicholas Roerich called “The Mother of the World.” First executed in 1924 and then painted again in 1937, the image shows a haloed woman enthroned on some sort of mountaintop, wearing a...
In recent months we’ve heard dramatic warnings from figures in Catholic media regarding an alleged plan for post-COVID global change called “the Great Reset.” Some of these warnings are based upon reasonable concerns, while others are examples of outright conspiracy-mongering....
Editor’s note (December 30): Sadly, the Senate of Argentina voted 38-29 earlier today to legalize abortion on demand in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy. Please pray for the people of Argentina and for our society. May we experience a conversion...
Once again, Pope Francis delivered his annual Christmas address to the Roman Curia. In the first several years of his papacy, particularly in response to his 2014, 2017, and 2018 addresses, the media widely interpreted the annual speech as a...
On December 12, 2020, an open letter signed by a handful of bishops asserted that the Church’s moral justification (based on the principle of “remote material cooperation”) for licitly receiving a Covid-19 vaccination produced or tested using fetal cells is...
The year 2020 has revealed much division among Catholics in the United States. Members of the Church—clergy, hierarchy, and laity—demonstrated numerous rifts in their incongruent and contradictory responses to three significant lighting rods: the coronavirus pandemic, racial injustice, and the...
Last Saturday, the Vatican unveiled this year’s nativity scene in St. Peter’s Square. Like we have seen so many times during this papacy, a controversy erupted over the artistic decisions made by Vatican personnel. Yes, the presepe is carved in...
I don’t think Pope Francis is recognized enough for his skill as a theologian. It is the Pope Emeritus who is, rightly, widely recognized as possessing a brilliant theological mind. Francis, on the other hand, is seen as the great...
In 2016, just before Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, Fr. Frank Pavone, the founder of Priests for Life, published an article entitled, “Cardinal Bernardin’s Consistent Ethic of Life – The Myth and the Reality.” It turns...
Pope Francis is often accused by his critics of being a leftist, a Marxist, a Communist, a liberal. Not surprisingly, many have argued that Fratelli Tutti is a “leftist” document, inspired by the ideas of Freemasonry, Liberation Theology, and socialism....
In 2020, racial violence and police brutality towards Black persons have profoundly marked this tragic year beset by the Coronavirus pandemic. We’re concluding Black Catholic History Month today. Various Catholic organizations noted the celebration in some way. For example, the...
The McCarrick Report details Theodore McCarrick’s rise through the ranks of the Catholic Church while he sexually abused young men and minors and successfully covered up his crimes. The Report captures the horror of Theodore McCarrick’s sins in a glaringly...
In a few hours, the McCarrick Report will be released. This document is understood to be around 400 pages long, and it is the result of a two-year investigation into the former prelate’s career in the Church. McCarrick rose to...
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