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One of the reasons baseball is America’s pastime is it usually exists far outside of contentious debates, political rancor and cultural divides. At least that’s how it’s supposed to be. But that image has come crashing down at the iconic Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. The controversy has been centered for some weeks now on the Dodgers’ June 16 celebration of “Pride Night.” The existence of such Pride Nights and other celebrations of LGBTQ activities and agendas is profoundly flawed, as the Church makes clear via its teachings about the truth and meaning of human sexuality. Not only that, but the elevation of pride is the exact opposite of our calling as disciples and imitators of Christ. It’s no coincidence that the day the Dodgers decided to honor the first of the deadly sins, the Church ...

My friend Bobby Winters, who is both a mathematician and a Methodist, was in the capital of Paraguay doing something academic, and discovered that the place he’s staying had no street number. The address people there use relates his street to another, like “On Smith Street near the corner of Jones Avenue.” This must be hard for someone with the mathematician’s insight into the value of numbers, but he says it works. It’s a big city, of a million people, but a cabbie who picked them up in downtown knew exactly where to go. Bobby walked around Asunción and called it an adventure. This must be his Methodist side, as his church began with ministers riding around England on horseback. In any case, Bobby’s walking tells us something about the Catholic life. Looking carefully “Street signs are ra...

A while back, I wrote an in-depth piece of investigative journalism on Alexis Bugnolo and his various organizations. As my piece still comes up high on searches for him, I think it is worth noting a few updates. After summarizing my prior piece, I will note the revocation of his charity’s tax-exempt status, a questionable Ukraine charity called Cross Azure, a “papal election,” a feud, and a political party. Summary of the Old Piece If you remember this or know the background, just skip ahead to the updates below. This is all taken from the piece on my old blog on Patheos. Brother? Bugnolo claims to be a brother but, Bugnolo does not seem to qualify under any normal category of the Church as a “brother,” so should not use the term so as to not confuse Catholics. Reliable Source? Bugnolo is ...

Lost and by themselves, four children managed to survive 40 days in the wilderness of the Amazon jungle before they were rescued. The four children — Lesly, 13; Soleiny, 9; Tien Noriel, 4; and Cristin, 1 — were found thin but very much alive Friday after a rescue operation that combed through more than 1,600 miles of dense forest. Colombian special forces airlifted them to the capital, Bogotá, sparking scenes of jubilation across the country and news headlines around the world. But the rescue — code-named Operation Hope — poses many questions. The four children were discovered in the Solano jungle Friday. Colombian Armed Forces Press Office / via AP Gen. Pedro Sánchez, who led the search operation, told NBC’s “TODAY” show Monday that the children’s survival was down...

A recent edition of The Spectator carried an article by Dan Hitchens in which he quoted the Cambridge historian Richard Rex as saying that there have been three great crises in the history of the Church. The first was over the nature of God (all those fights about Christology in the early Church), the second over the nature of the Church herself (all those Protestant splits during the sixteenth century) and now, a battle over the nature of man (all those fights about what we may or may not do with our bodies). This “nails it”, as it were, but beneath the crisis over the nature of man there is a crisis over the nature of Catholic theology. At this moment in the life of the Church divisions over fundamental theological issues are tearing communities apart. One of the reasons why Benedict XVI...