The United States is, by far, the world’s largest producer of online pornography, accounting for nearly 25% of all such material. Rounding out the list of the top five porn-producing countries are the United Kingdom (5.5%), Germany (4.9%), Brazil (4.8%) and France (4%). Of the top 15, a dozen are western countries, the three outliers…
Austrian Catholic website kath.net reports that on 7 July, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn published an interview in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, in which he said that Amoris Laetitia is a binding doctrinal document. From now on, says Schönborn, all the previous magisterial texts concerning marriage and the family “have to be read in the light of…
A few pages of Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, by Pope Benedict XVI, has highlighted for me some troubling trends in the Church. He sifts carefully through Catholic thought as it differed historically from extra-ecclesial trajectories, but what must concern today’s reader is that many influential leaders in…
The four marks of the Church are One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. With so many changes having happened within the Church during the past century, many are left wondering: what vestiges remain of the Apostolic deposit of faith? In the era following Vatican II, the two most important evaluations of the four marks of the…
The “logo” designed by Jesuit Father Marko Rupnik for the Jubilee of Mercy has bothered me since the day it was released last year. It’s more than the fact that it’s ugly that bothers me. In short, there’s something wrong here both with the logo and with its stated meaning, and wrong in ways that…
Over the past few years, we’ve all seen articles advising people what to do in an active shooter situation. The advice usually goes, “run, hide, fight.” But many articles point out that the biggest challenge for responding to a crisis isn’t necessarily knowing what to do, but overcoming “normalcy bias.” What is normalcy bias? It…
On the Monday after the Orlando bloodbath, I read in Crux Edward Beck’s scripted recollection of the homily he delivered in church the previous morning. The two did not quite square. Between the spoken address and the published account, something crucial was omitted and something ugly added. Fr. Beck is a visiting Passionist priest who…
Hands up everyone who is a) a woman, b) single, between the ages of 40 and 50 and c) believed she had a vocation to religious life from her earliest memory. Come on, get ‘em up… you know who you are. What happened? Was it something like this? Reaching the age bracket, about 22-35, you…
On 25 June, Catholic News Agency published an article about an interview with Archbishop Georg Gänswein, which was originally conducted on 27 May 2016 by the German veteran journalist and EWTN Rome correspondent, Paul Badde. The German archbishop currently serves Pope Francis as Prefect of the Papal Household, but he has also maintained his duties as the…
In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’ … But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. –…
In July 1655, Poland was invaded by Swedish Protestant forces. Warsaw had fallen, and the Swedish soldiers plundered and pillaged even the churches and religious houses, killing all in their path. A young seminarian named Stanislaus Papczynski, along with a university companion, was walking along the street after studies in the Old City and was…
