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 …
Category: Apologetics
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 …
Bishop Schneider: The Christian Faith Is the Only Valid and the Only God-Willed Religion
Bishop Athanasius (Anton) Schneider is the author of two books: Dominus Est – It is the Lord!, and Propter Sanctam Ecclesiam Suam (not yet available in English.) He was born of German parents on 7 April 1961 in Tokmok, Kirghiz SSR in the Soviet Union, where his family received the pastoral care of Fr. Oleksa Zaryckyj, later to become a beatified martyr for the faith. Bishop Schneider himself received his first holy communion in secret, since the practice of the faith was outlawed under the communist regime. In 1973, he left with his family for Germany. He later joined the …
Go Ask Your Father
For the first forty years of my life, it never crossed my mind that I needed anything else but the Bible to know what I needed to believe to be a faithful Christian. When I was in seminary and preparing to become a Protestant pastor I studied the history of Christianity, but with a certain slant that skirted any acknowledgment of the historical importance of the Catholic Church. For me, as well as most of my fellow seminarians, the important history essentially ended with the closure of the New Testament and picked up again with the sixteenth century Protestant reformation. …