By George Weigel George Weigel is the Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., a Catholic theologian and a Baltimore native. As the names Ambrose, Augustine, Athanasius, and John Chrysostom suggest, the middle centuries of the first millennium, the era of the Church Fathers, were the golden age of the Catholic episcopate. The Catholic Church recognizes 35 men and women as exemplary teachers; 14 of them – 40 percent of the entire roster of the “Doctors of the Church” – were bishops who lived in that epoch. Theirs were not tranquil times. But even as …
Category: Current Issues
The Perils of Pandemic Parenting
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. All great parents discern what is best for their children by weighing what keeps them safe and what is best for their development into adulthood. This has been a year when countless families have spent more time together than ever before. An opinion column for The New York Times entitled “I Hate the Mom That Covid Has Made Me” sheds light on the casualties inflicted on the family, particularly parents, over the last year. Lockdowns involved parents being around their children more …
Politics Cannot Save Anyone
By Regis Martin Regis Martin is Professor of Theology and Faculty Associate with the Veritas Center for Ethics in Public Life at the Franciscan University of Steubenville. He earned a licentiate and a doctorate in sacred theology from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome. Martin is the author of a number of books, including Still Point: Loss, Longing, and Our Search for God (2012) and The Beggar’s Banquet (Emmaus Road). His most recent book, also published by Emmaus Road, is called Witness to Wonder: The World of Catholic Sacrament. He resides in Steubenville, Ohio, with his wife and ten children. There is a section …
The Temptations of Milo Yiannopoulos
By Jerome German Jerome German is a retired manufacturing engineer, father of eleven, and grandfather of a multitude. His parochial activities have included music ministry, faith formation, and spiritual direction/talks for men’s retreats. Before retirement, Jerry’s writing was largely in the technical realm and he is a late-bloomer to writing for faith formation. The Wisconsinite and his wife spend summers in Wisconsin and winter on the Riviera Maya where they own a small vacation rental business. In recent years, social/political pundit Milo Yiannopoulos has been an insufferable pain in the backside for the politically correct. His traditionalist views, coupled with his blatantly …
Do COVID-19 Restrictions Serve the Common Good?
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. We’ve been told since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic that significant restrictions in the form of lockdowns, social distancing, quarantines, and mask mandates are necessary for the “common good.” This refrain has been heard …
“Just Call Me Father Bob”
By Deacon James H. Toner Deacon James H. Toner, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus of Leadership and Ethics at the U.S. Air War College, a former U.S. Army officer, and author of Morals Under the Gun and other books. He has also taught at Notre Dame, Norwich, Auburn, the U.S. Air Force Academy, and Holy Apostles College & Seminary. He serves in the Diocese of Charlotte. In the past few decades, a number of people contend, we have made great progress in no longer being stuffy and pompous. We have, for example, finally scrapped many of those old-fashioned titles. A cardinal may still be …
USCCB, Don’t Beat Around the Abortion Bush
By Sean Fitzpatrick Sean Fitzpatrick is a senior contributor to Crisis and serves on the faculty of Gregory the Great Academy, a Catholic boarding school for boys in Pennsylvania. A death-dealing industry and a death-dealing illness are the horns of a dilemma that many Catholics feel caught up in, and the new Johnson & Johnson vaccine has brought new heat to the debate. Of course, as Catholics, we heed the battle cry, “death before sin,” and refuse to participate in the evil of abortion (i.e., murder), an evil from which the Johnson & Johnson vaccine derives its existence. And it would be a very good …
Is Racial Disparity Evidence of Racism?
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. If you’ve scratched your head over the latest of the ever-growing number of things (like algebra and Beethoven) that has “become” racist, you can blame your confusion on radical leftist Saul Alinsky. Alinsky once said, “He who controls the language controls the masses.” Today, the masses are being played by some novel concepts derived neither from Webster nor Scripture but straight from the lexicon of …
How Will the Vatican Defend Its Saints?
Paul Kengor Paul Kengor is a professor of political science at Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania. His books include A Pope and a President, The Divine Plan and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Communism, The Devil, and Karl Marx: Communism’s Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration. COMMENTARY: What is being done to try to change the hostile public perception being fomented by St. Junipero Serra’s posthumous persecutors? I recently wrote a piece for the National Catholic Register on the angry attacks on memorials to St. Junipero Serra throughout California, from San Francisco down the coast to Santa Barbara, Ventura, Los Angeles, and more. St. Junipero was a …
The New, Anti-Catholic Iconoclasm
Michael Warsaw Michael Warsaw is the Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of the EWTN Global Catholic Network, and the Publisher of the National Catholic Register. In the midst of a painful and challenging cultural moment, a series of attacks on Catholic churches and religious symbols around our country is cause for grave concern. As our nation grapples with issues of racism in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd, an impulse to remove lingering Confederate imagery from places of honor has, in some quarters, escalated to mob violence and wanton vandalism — but this vandalism didn’t stop …