By Fr. John A. Perricone Fr. John A. Perricone, Ph.D., is an adjunct professor of philosophy at Iona College in New Rochelle, New York. His articles have appeared in St. John’s Law Review, The Latin Mass, New Oxford Review and The Journal of Catholic Legal Studies. Attention to one’s duties to state in life prevents normal Catholics from keeping track of the latest depredations of cancel culture. That is as it should be. Staring at the societal collapse only leaves one’s soul depleted, while engendering a sterile rage. Reliable sources such as this one should be sufficient in fulfilling one’s obligation to be informed, preventing …
Author: Manuel Xavier
Defense of the Common Good or Collaboration with Evil?
By Stephen Sammut, PhD Stephen Sammut, BPharm, PhD, is a Professor of Psychology at Franciscan University of Steubenville. Dr. Sammut received a BPharm from Monash University in Victoria, Australia and a PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Malta. For more than 20 years Dr. Sammut has conducted varied research in animal models to investigate questions related to psychopathology, including depression, schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease, and drug abuse. One thing can be stated for certain—the COVID-19 scar on humanity will be clearly visible for many years to come. If immediate steps are not taken to counter the narrative of misinformation as well …
Lord David Alton Is Not Remaining Silent on China and Human Rights
K.V. Turley is the Register’s U.K. correspondent. He writes from London. LONDON — On March 26, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) imposed sanctions on the British Catholic parliamentarian Lord David Alton. The reason? He had highlighted widespread human-rights abuses in the Chinese province of Xinjiang. The Chinese authorities imposed these measures on Alton and eight other British citizens, as well as on four institutions, all deemed critical of China’s human rights’ record. Alton told the Register April 20, “These sanctions have been imposed as a crude attempt to intimidate and silence parliamentarians.” He added, “Those who have been sanctioned have been …
Fetal-Tissue Research: Bioethicists Weigh in on Biden Administration’s Removal of Restrictions
Experts outline the costs of disregarding the ethical considerations of such research. Lauretta Brown is the Register’s Washington-based staff writer. WASHINGTON — Former members of the Trump-era National Institutes of Health (NIH) Human Fetal Tissue Research Ethics Advisory Board and a pro-life expert on the topic are speaking out against the Biden administration’s recent decision to remove the requirement that the board review human fetal-tissue research from elective abortions. In addition to highlighting the importance of ethical considerations, they also pointed out past ethical violations on the part of researchers that demonstrate the continuing need for such a review board. …
To Rise With Christ, We Must Die With Christ
Prof. Michael Ogunu is the Coordinator of the World Apostolate of Fatima in Africa “No slave is greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.” (John 15:20) Throughout the history of the Church, from the time of the Roman persecutions until the present, Christians have been called upon to suffer and die for the Faith if situations demand it. The martyrdom of the Apostles and their contemporaries is proof of the historical reality of the Gospel story. For the Apostles were willing to attest in their blood what they had seen, what they had heard, …
The Pro-Life Argument of ‘The Guns of Navarone’
John M. Grondelski (Ph.D., Fordham) is the former associate dean of the School of Theology, Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey. He is especially interested in moral theology and the thought of John Paul II The Guns of Navarone is the epic adventure of six Allied saboteurs dispatched to knock out two large caliber German guns positioned within a natural rock fortress on the fictional Greek island of Navarone. The mission is undertaken so that British warships can safely pass the island to rescue British troops stranded on a neighboring island, Kheros (also fictional). The movie, based on the Alistair …
How might the pandemic affect religious practice? A look at the current data
Filip Mazurczak is a journalist, translator, and historian. His writing has appeared in the National Catholic Register, First Things, Tygodnik Powszechny, and other publications. There is much pessimism across the West about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on religious practice. Luxembourg’s Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, for example, has grimly predicted that the disruption of normal religious life may have accelerated the secularization of Europe by a decade. If this proves true for Europe, the same phenomena will likely occur, in some way and to some degree, in North America, Australia, and other outposts of Western culture. A close look at some sociological research from …
Five reasons to read Dei Verbum—and five things you’ll learn in doing so
Dr. Leroy Huizenga is Administrative Chair of Arts and Letters and Professor of Theology at the University of Mary in Bismarck, N.D. Dr. Huizenga has a B.A. in Religion from Jamestown College (N.D.), a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. in New Testament from Duke University. During his doctoral studies, he received a Fulbright Grant to study and teach at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt, Germany. After teaching at Wheaton College (Ill.) for five years, Dr. Huizenga was reconciled with the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil of 2011. Dr. Huizenga is the author of The New Isaac: …
The Church Should Not Return to “Normal”
By Thomas Griffin Thomas Griffin teaches apologetics in the religion department at a Catholic high school on Long Island. Read more at www.EmptyTombProject.org. The decline of the Catholic Church in America was happening rapidly before COVID-19. Returning to the methods that produced the radical decline in Sunday Mass attendance along with the low numbers of marriages, baptisms, catechumens, and overall members practicing their faith would be both ignorant and fatal. What we need now is a shift that runs away from the patterns of the previous decades and runs toward the apostolic fervor of the early Church. Now that COVID-19 restrictions …
It’s Time to Brainwash Our Children
By Philip Martin Philip J. Martin is a graduate of both Auburn University and the Franciscan University of Steubenville and is currently residing in beautiful Daphne, AL with his family. He is an award-winning fiction author and has published numerous pieces of non-fiction, fiction, and poetry in various publications. I’ll never forget the look in that engineer’s eyes when he interrupted the professor. “Wow,” he exclaimed, “I get it, I get it!” I know what he was feeling because I felt it too. It was as if the final nail in a bridge between islands in my mind had been hammered …