Ever since I was a child, I wanted to become a priest. My mother, a devout Catholic, was the one who taught me about the faith, the sacraments, and the Church. She brought me to daily Mass since I was an infant, and my earliest memories are of being held in her arms as she…
Yesterday, we reprinted an essay by Peter Mitchell at The American Conservative about his experiences with the seminary culture in Lincoln, Nebraska under vocations director Msgr. Leonard Kalin. Mitchell, a heterosexual priest who accepted laicization after his own admitted failures in keeping his vow of celibacy, spoke of an environment of “totally inadequate and abusive formation” for the…
Just as the latest round of homosexual network and sex abuse allegations in the Church are reaching a fever pitch, Pope Francis – who has been eerily quiet of late – dropped a nuclear theological bomb into our midst. From Crux: According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the death penalty now is no longer…
In light of today’s news that the pope has “changed the Catechism of the Catholic Church about the death penalty, saying it can never be sanctioned,” we are reprinting this as a reference point for concerned Catholics. –SS, 8/2/2018 When the first version of this column was originally published in March 2015, it was occasioned…
I’ve spent every one of my 40 years on this planet as a Catholic with no direct contact to the sexual abuse crisis that is currently dominating the headlines in every Catholic publication, and not a few non-Catholic ones besides. I was an altar boy for many years, starting at a young age. I befriended…
The Diocese of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania has just released the names of over 70 members of its clergy who have been accused of sexual abuse in cases spanning back to the 1940s. At a news conference this morning, Bishop Ronald Gainer of Harrisburg released the list, revealing that since becoming bishop in 2014, he has overseen an…
The following guest essay is from Peter Mitchell, a conservative Catholic and former priest. Mitchell was ordained in 1999 and laicized in 2017. He says he “is grateful to be a baptized and practicing Catholic.” The essay originally appeared at The American Conservative on the blog of Rod Dreher and has been reprinted with both Dreher’s and…
I’ve been sitting at my desk for the better part of three hours, skimming through news and social media, trying to get a sense of things this week. It’s not entirely clear to me what I should say. In my entire lifetime as a Catholic, I don’t think I’ve ever seen or felt anything like…
In a statement from the Vatican this morning, it has been announced that the resignation of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick from the College of Cardinals has been accepted in the wake of a rising tide of sexual abuse allegations. The full statement, as translated by Edward Pentin of the National Catholic Register, reads: Yesterday evening the Holy…
By now, Catholics the world over are sick of hearing about the not-so-secret life of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. Stories that involve unwanted touching of minors and seminarians, strange costumes, familial nicknames, and the Cardinal demanding that young men share his bed. Stories that involve “gay sex parties at the bishop’s residence”, and other things we’d…
American Founder and second U.S. president John Adams once extolled his era. Some called it The Age of Reason. It was a time in which people were beginning to know more about their world than they ever had before. Knowledge was increasing at an exponential rate, and this filled the air with excitement. The Old…
