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Q. My wife and I, once lapsed Catholics, have returned to the faith and seek to live according to Church teaching. Years ago, after struggling with infertility, we turned to IVF and conceived our now 10-year-old son, who is the joy of our lives. We have repented, understanding the Church’s teachings on this, and we find especially repugnant the fact that many embryos often die or languish in frozen storage for every successful IVF birth. Are we morally obligated to tell our son that he was conceived through IVF, or would doing so cause unnecessary distress? — Thomas, Virginia A. The Lord’s kindness and mercy are incalculable, and you can be confident that your repentance and humble reception of these gifts are very pleasing to him.  And you are right not to lose sight of the many live...

Today in Papal History marks the death of Pope Gregory I, known better to those in his hometown of Rome as San Gregorio Magno – St. Gregory the Great. Only three other popes in the history of Christendom bear that moniker – Pope St. Leo I, Pope St. Nicholas I, and (according to a growing number these days) Pope St. John Paul II – so just what sort of greatness are we talking about with Gregory? The image of Pope St. Gregory the Great that adorns the high altar of S. Gregory al Celio in Rome, the church that is built over his ancestral home and (later) monastery. Photo taken by the author. The man we now know as St. Gregory the Great was born in Italy around the year 540 AD. His family was one of great wealth and status, but also one of profound holiness. In fact, his own mother (...

On March 9, Mark Carney was elected to replace outgoing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as the new leader of Canada’s governing Liberal Party. He won by an overwhelming margin, securing more than 85% of the total votes cast by party members. As a result of the victory, Carney will become Canada’s prime minister as soon as he is sworn into office on Friday by Canadian Governor General Mary Simon. Throughout his professional life Carney has been regarded as a proponent of globalism, which advocates for international economic and political institutions and strategies rather than an exclusive or primary reliance on national actions. Now installed as Canada’s national leader, political pundits predict he will call a snap election before the end of the month, in hopes of capitalizing on t...

Have the U.S. bishops united behind McElroy? Skip to content The installation of Cardinal Robert McElroy as the eighth Archbishop of Washington went off with a bang on Tuesday. Cardinal Robert McElroy at his Mass of installation for the Archdiocese of Washington DC. Credit: Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. The basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception was full, and the entrance processional snaked around the nave, as thousands of Catholics and hundreds of clerics from across the country arrived in fleets of buses to see the cardinal take possession of the capital see. While episcopal installations in Washington tend to draw a full house, McElroy’s arrival was especially well attended — more than 80 bishops, archbishops, and cardinals conceleb...

The late great Henry Ford famously argued that “history is bunk.”  The past, so the reasoning goes, is a millstone around humanity’s neck, a depressing, Old World obstacle to progress.  And that’s clearly one of the conceits buried deep in the American psyche. We Americans are different.  We’re a “city upon a hill,” the kind mentioned in the Sermon on the Mount.  We’re an entirely “new order of the ages” – words, in their original Latin, that are stamped right on our nation’s Great Seal. We haven’t had a war on our home soil in 160 years.  We’re the wealthiest, most successful republic turned de facto empire in, well, history.  We’re also the greatest toolmakers.  The result is predictable: Optimism is baked into our national assumptions.  It drives ...

By Phil Lawler ( bio – articles – email ) | Mar 11, 2025 | In Reviews The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas Kuhn, had an enormous influence on academic discourse in the 1960s and 1970s, introducing the concept of the “paradigm shift” into common usage. Kuhn argued persuasively that scientific progress occurs not steadily, but in leaps and bounds, as new discoveries and/or new theories force researchers to abandon old assumptions and look at the world in entirely new ways. The new paradigm is accepted if it explains that world more successfully—in other words, if it produces better results. Hold that thought. In 1980, the historian George Marsden used the concept of the “paradigm shift” to explain a 20th-century development among Protestants, in his book Fundamental...