By Gerald J. Russello Gerald J. Russello is a Fellow of the Chesterton Institute at Seton Hall University and editor of The University Bookman. He is also the editor of the 2013 edition of Christopher Dawson’s Religion and Culture from Catholic University of America Press. Q: Thanks for joining us. Tell us the thesis of your new book. A: How the West Really Lost God opens with a review of the conventional arguments for Western secularization and observes that those arguments don’t adequately explain the decline of Christianity in certain parts of the Western world. If that’s correct—if, pace the …
Category: Apologetics
Researcher Links Abuse Crisis to Influx of Gay Clergy
In November 2018, Christian nonprofit the Ruth Institute, a group dedicated to researching the ruinous effects of the sexual revolution, published a groundbreaking study of the role homosexual clergy have played in precipitating the clerical sex abuse crisis in the United States. Authored by senior research associate Fr. D. Paul Sullins, Ph.D., the report titled “Is Catholic Clergy Sex Abuse Related to Homosexual Priests?” revealed a striking correlation between the rise in the number of homosexual priests and the explosion of clerical sex abuse. Analyzing data from the John Jay Report on sex abuse of minors and a Los Angeles Times survey reporting the number of …
Buttigieg Says God Made Him Gay: A Retort from South Bend
By Adrian Reimers Adrian Reimers is an adjunct instructor at Holy Cross College. For seventeen years he taught philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He has written extensively on the thought of Karol Wojtyla (St. John Paul II) and is the author of Hell and the Mercy of God (CUA Press, 2017) and co-author (with Miguel Acosta) of Karol Wojtyla’s Personalist Philosophy (CUA Press, 2016). Rebuking our former governor (and current Vice President), our mayor in South Bend tells us that it is his Creator who made him gay. Although he cites neither Scripture nor philosophical argument, Mayor Buttigieg …
Catholic Socialism Isn’t Catholic
My readership and the traditionalists in my parish exploded at the recent Catholic Herald article, titled “The Catholic turn to socialism is something to celebrate.” I am surrounded by socialists at work and have a lot of time for those with their hearts in the right place, especially regarding social justice. That said, I thought I would give Jose Mena, the “young Catholic socialist” who is mainly known on Twitter, a fair hearing and a brotherly critique. My political views have been described as a sort of medieval libertarianism, so I was delighted when I could say that I was …
Finish the Transgender Argument
By Robert B. Greving Robert B. Greving teaches Latin and English grammar at The Heights School in Potomac, Maryland. Mr. Greving served five years in the U.S. Army J.A.G. Corps following his graduation from Dickinson School of Law. After military service, he returned to Dickinson to study Latin and Greek. Originally from North Dakota, Mr. Greving earned a B.A. in history at Louisiana State University. Yogi Berra said, “It ain’t over till it’s over.” It’s a logic that would be refreshing these days. Here’s a variation that may help with some current controversies: If you want to end an argument, …
Bishop Paprocki Calls on Catholic Politicians to Take Sides
By John M. Grondelski John M. Grondelski (Ph.D., Fordham) is former associate dean of the School of Theology, Seton Hall University, South Orange, NJ. All views expressed herein are exclusively his own. Thomas Paprocki, the bishop of Springfield (the state capital of Illinois), has issued a decree barring the Illinois State Senate President and House Speaker—both ostensibly Catholics—from receiving Communion in the diocese. The June 2 decision took place in response to enactment of abortion legislation codifying in state law an unlimited abortion liberty through birth, in the event that Roe et al. v. Wade was judicially modified. Paprocki’s decree …
Twelve Things to Know about the Blessed Trinity
Francesco Cairo (1607-1665), “The Holy Trinity” 1. Where does the word “Trinity” come from? It comes from the Latin word trinitas, which means “three” or “triad.” The Greek equivalent is triados. 2. When was it first used? The first surviving use of the term (there may have been earlier uses that are now lost) was around A.D. 170 by Theophilus of Antioch, who wrote: In like manner also the three days which were before the luminaries, are types of the Trinity [Τριάδος], of God, and His Word, and His wisdom. And the fourth is the type of man, who needs light, that so there may be God, the …
Why Catholicism is the True Religion
I recently met a man, about sixty-five years old, who, after I told him what I do, related this story: “When I was in Catholic high school, I asked one of the brothers, ‘How do we know that of all the religions in the world Catholicism is the right one?’ This question had been bugging me, and I was anxious to hear his answer. He replied, ‘We don’t know. We have to take it on faith.’ His response completely deflated me.” After we parted, I wondered how I would have answered that question. Of course, there is no external, rational …
Why The Catholic Religion is the Best
St. Georg Ochsenhausen (By Thomas Mirtsch, via Wikimedia Commons) Some religions are superior to others, and Christianity is the best. And of the Christians, Catholicism is the best. Fr. Dwight Longenecker I know. I know. This is not really politically correct. You’re supposed to pretend that all religions are equal. The comparative religions professor (who often has comparatively no religion) teaches that all religions are human inventions based on interesting and unique historical circumstances and cultures. The theory is that religions developed from animism when cavemen grunted at the sun, moon and stars and made up stories about the people …
Fewness of Those Who are Saved
This sermon is logically divided into two parts. The first, demonstrates that most Catholics are damned, and is based on revelation, tradition, the opinion of learned theologians, as well as “reason, experience and the common sense of the faithful”. The second is more speculative, in which St. Leonard advances the proposition, which I have not infrequently heard, (and which I have, indeed, stated myself,) that people are only damned if they want to be. I consider that to be possibly erroneous. The second also contains an evidently false proposition, at least in an obvious reading. Therefore, although it contains much …