By Donald DeMarco Donald DeMarco is a professor emeritus of Saint Jerome’s University and an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College and Seminary. He is a regular columnist for the Saint Austin Review and the author, most recently, of Reflections on the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Search for Understanding. The Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals (U.K.) have issued a new set of guidelines that introduces an assortment of “trans-friendly” terms. The concern is to avoid offending people who have been transgendered by insisting that there is such a thing as distinct sexes. The guidelines instruct doctors, nurses, and midwives to use gender-neutral terms. Thus, “chestfeeding” should …
Category: Current Issues
The Betrayed Church
By Eric Sammons Eric Sammons is the editor-in-chief of Crisis Magazine. His upcoming book Deadly Indifference (May 2021) examines the rise of religious indifference and how it has led the Church to lose her missionary zeal. Today is the Wednesday of Holy Week, also known as Spy Wednesday, when we remember the most infamous act of betrayal in human history: Judas agreeing to deliver Christ to His enemies for 30 pieces of silver. This act of betrayal is still shocking to the Christian; we cannot imagine how an apostle, so close to Christ, could betray Him. Yet today the Body of Christ, the Church, …
The Threat of Christianity
By Regis Nicoll Regis Nicoll is a retired nuclear engineer and a fellow of the Colson Center who writes commentary on faith and culture. He is the author of Why There Is a God: And Why It Matters. Some time back, I was engaged in an online forum with some religious skeptics. Under discussion were the usual: the existence of God, the divinity of Jesus, evidence for the resurrection, and so on. For the most part, the participants were civil and without the animus that has been far too typical of these exchanges. After one of the discussions was gaveled, a person …
Resisting Abortion-tainted Vaccines and the Culture of Death
By Bishop Athanasius Schneider Bishop Athanasius Schneider is auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of St. Mary in Astana, Kazakhstan. Anti-Christian world powers that promote the culture of death are seeking to impose on the world’s population an implicit—though remote and passive—collaboration with abortion. Such remote collaboration, in itself, is also an evil because of the extraordinary historical circumstances in which these same world powers are promoting the murder of unborn children and the exploitation of their remains. When we use vaccines or medicines which utilize cell lines originating from aborted babies, we physically benefit from the “fruits” of one of the greatest …
A World in Crisis Needs Good Friday
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 story of Holy Week recounts the historical events surrounding Jesus’ Passion, Death, and Resurrection; but it also pinpoints common failures of humanity while providing the antidote that ultimately saves us. A suffering world needs to dive into the causes of darkness that surround it and investigate deep within itself to ask how we ought to move forward toward the light of the empty tomb. Surveying the past year in our Church, nation, and world allows for easy access …
The Cross and Cancel Culture
By Fr. Dwight Longenecker Father Dwight Longenecker is the pastor of Our Lady of the Rosary parish in Greenville, South Carolina. His upcoming book, Beheading Hydra: A Radical Plan for Christians in an Atheistic Age, will be published by Sophia Institute Press in the Spring. Read more at www.dwightlongenecker.com. When faced with Christian slogans like “Jesus died to save you from your sins” or liturgical commonplaces like “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” the 21st century twenty-something with virtually no understanding of Christianity might well ask, “What does the execution of a criminal two thousand years …
Ireland in Exile
By Patrick J. Walsh Patrick J. Walsh is a writer in Quincy, MA. He holds a graduate degree in Anglo-Irish literature from Trinity College, Dublin and has written for The Weekly Standard, Modern Age and several other publications. Peter Kavanaugh, brother of Ireland’s last great poet Patrick Kavanaugh, used to say that “Ireland was a racket centered in Dublin.” Today, it is a racket centered in Brussels. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of the European Union. It is no longer a Catholic country. After struggling for hundreds of years for their own independence, the Irish put their own constitution in mothballs. Ireland …
Darkness Falls: One Year Later
By Eric Sammons Eric Sammons is the editor-in-chief of Crisis Magazine. His upcoming book Deadly Indifference (May 2021) examines the rise of religious indifference and how it has led the Church to lose her missionary zeal. One year ago today, darkness engulfed the United States. On March 18, 2020, the final holdout American dioceses suspended public Masses, making it impossible (or at least disobedient) for a lay Catholic in this country to attend Mass. I followed the shutting down of public Masses closely, creating maps on Twitter so Catholics could see which dioceses had shut down, and which remained opened. Although looking back it …
The USCCB Immigration Stance Does More Harm Than Good
By Declan Leary Mr. Leary is the Collegiate Network Fellow at The American Conservative and a graduate of John Carroll University. Though the politics of the USCCB are rather more complex than we are often led to believe, there is at least one issue on which the bishops’ conference is reliably (and disastrously) left-wing: immigration. Who can forget the image of El Paso’s Bishop Mark Seitz physically escorting a family of five Honduran nationals across the U.S. border and into his diocesan territory? The act was an explicit protest against the Trump administration, which had been working diligently to curtail endless waves of such …
Awakening Consciences About Abortion-Tainted Vaccines
By Stacy Trasancos, PhD Stacy Trasancos, Ph.D. is the executive director of Bishop Joseph Strickland’s St. Philip Institute. She has a doctorate in chemistry and M.A. in dogmatic theology. She is the author of Particles of Faith: A Catholic Guide to Navigating Science. Bishop Joseph Strickland (Tyler, TX), along with Dr. Catherine Ruth Pakaluk, myself, and two others, recently released the statement “To Awaken Conscience” regarding the scandal given by Catholic leaders’ widespread acceptance of abortion-tainted COVID-19 vaccines. Since then, the statement has received extensive support—more than 3,000 co-signers to date. It has, however, also elicited controversy in the Catholic world. Many people have …