Center

A Catholic charity at the center of a recent video from conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has strongly condemned the accusations they are involved in “smuggling children” at the U.S-Mexico. The Infowars host uploaded a video in which he confronts a driver outside Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley in the city of McAllen, Texas, while repeatedly accusing him of trafficking the migrant children he is transporting. At one point, Jones steps in front of the car to stop it from driving away after noticing the children do not have seatbelts in the back of the vehicle. “You are violating Texas law,” Jones yells. “We know you’re smuggling these kids. You’ve got them in the back of [the car] without children’s seats.” Jones and other membe...

As we all know, this was perhaps the strangest Easter that any of us have experienced  at least collectively. The liturgical calendar shouts new life and victory over the grave, and yet throughout the world, many are hunkered down in the fear of death. Despite the Easter glow these are dark days for many who suffer illness or economic stress. But, to be sure, the first Easter was experienced in great uncertainty and danger.  Recent readings from Scripture have this theme. The readings in daily Mass this past week (from the Acts of the Apostles) show the joy of a poor, lame man healed by Peter and John at the Gate called Beautiful. By week’s end Peter and John were arrested for the “dangerous” act of glorifying Jesus and forced to appear before the Jewish court...

ROME – Yesterday morning, I found myself in the check-out line at our local Roman supermarket. I like to do the weekend shopping fairly early on Saturday, because the stores here won’t restock again until Monday morning and, if you wait too long, they’ll run out of a few basics. Thus it was that I was next in line to pay, with a groaning full cart, when an old lady hobbled up holding just a few items. I waved her ahead, and, now on friendly terms, we began chatting. At one point she asked what I do for a living, and when I told her I’m a journalist covering the Vatican, it was off to the races. “The Vatican?” she scoffed. “What a joke.  The monsignors always have their hands out when they’re not looking for little boys, the bishops get fat while people suffer, and the cardinals are st...

With our archives now 3,500+ articles deep, we’ve decided to republish a classic piece each Sunday to help our newer readers discover some of the best, evergreen gems from the past. This article was originally published in January 2014. When I was a young man, I would scoff at well-intentioned adults who would sometimes offer up little aphorisms when I got in trouble or had a problem. Little nuggets like, “This too shall pass,” generally went in one ear and out the other. They sounded too simple and too cliché to really mean anything. But as I’ve become a grown man, I’ve had experiences where these little bits of wisdom have come back to me and have revealed their value and deeper truth. I’ve come to really agree with the poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who argued that “The l...

“The strongest man is weak to his own conscience.” —G.K. Chesterton I have an old ratty easy chair next to a bookcase, next to a small side table with a candle on it. I call it my brooding spot. Every morning, I shamble downstairs, grab a cup of coffee (if I remembered to set the Mr. Coffee the night before), and then settle into my brooding spot to, well, brood. Often, I just plop down and scowl at the world for a bit until the coffee perks me up. Eventually I’ll light the candle, say my morning prayers, and then reach for a missalette to see what the Lord has for me in the morning’s readings. Right in front of me as I sit is another table — almost a credence table or a little home altar. There’s an icon of the Holy Spirit, a statue of the Blessed Mother, and a riot of holy cards at her f...

ROME — Despite his profoundly dissenting views that included questioning the divinity of Christ, rejecting papal infallibility and undermining doctrines on the Virgin Mary, warm tributes were paid yesterday by some prominent Church leaders to Swiss theologian Father Hans Küng, who died Tuesday at age 93. Father Küng never repented of his positions, which caused him to be formally censured more than 40 years ago by the Vatican as an individual whose views are so contrary to key Church teachings that it was impermissible for him to be considered as a Catholic theologian at all.  Father Küng was ordained to the priesthood in 1954 and came into international prominence at the Second Vatican Council, where he served as a theological adviser, but immediately afterward he began to clash open...

St. Ignatius Loyola, in his Spiritual Exercises, gives us three questions to ask. Have you heard of this book? So I’m Dead—Now What? There are many popular versions of it. In brief, if you can’t afford a lawyer to write up a will, you can fill in this book with your final instructions to give to your loved ones. The title of the book gave me an idea for taking a look at Easter. How about this? Christ Is Risen—Now What? That title is incomplete. Let’s add a little more: Christ Is Risen and Reigning—Now What? Better. Now let’s try this: Christ Is Risen and Reigning and Returning—Now What? We have to answer that question, and we should come up with something better than, “Look busy!” Christ is risen indeed! Sin and death do not have the final word! Therefore we are to live and die as Christia...

DIFFICULT MORAL QUESTIONS: When a married couple is called upon to make heroic sacrifices in order to practice conjugal chastity, what must they do, and what must they never do? Q. My wife and I have eight children. Our last two were born premature and needed to spend time in the NICU. We were told by the doctors not to have any more children because my wife could die. The problem now is what to do about our sexual relations. One priest advised us to practice the withdrawal method and said we would not be required to abstain from Holy Communion. Another priest said withdrawal was not permissible. My wife is very hesitant to place her trust in NFP. She is scared. And I am afraid that abstinence is going to hurt us. Maybe it will help us. Either way, we are both very concerned. — Keith A. Yo...

On March 30, at a press conference announcing the release of the U.S. State Department’s annual human rights report, Secretary of State Antony Blinken pointedly “repudiated” the report of the Commission on Unalienable Rights that his predecessor, Michael Pompeo, had appointed. Why this repudiation?  Blinken called the report “unbalanced” and complained that it promoted “a hierarchy that makes some rights more important than others.” He did not elaborate on where the imbalance or what the hierarchy was, but did claim to be fulfilling “decisively” his earlier promise to repudiate the commission at his Senate confirmation hearing on Jan. 19. He had voiced this promise together with a pledge to pursue the “LGBTQI” cause zealously if confirmed.  A further clue to Blinken’s repudiation...

It’s time for Godzilla vs. Kong—a classic battle between two impossibly giant creatures. I’ve only seen the trailer, and it looks like a fun movie. But movies aren’t just for fun, they are also for physics. In particular, this is a great chance to consider the physics of scale—what happens when we make small things into big things? For instance, what happens if you take a normal gorilla and make him into a giant gorilla and then you name him King Kong? How Tall Is Kong? If we want to see what happens when you have a giant gorilla, the first thing is to find out how tall he is. Oh sure, I could just look this value up somewhere—but that’s not fun. Instead, I’m going to see if I can estimate his size based on just what I can see from the trailer. I love the chal...

As they face a shortage of episcopal candidates and the challenge of supporting expensive infrastructure with a dwindling number of priests and practicing Catholics, my colleague JD Flynn suggested yesterday that the Vatican may soon need to take a serious look at merging smaller and rural American dioceses. That might well be the approach of the Apostolic See. But merging dioceses is a massive administrative and canonical challenge, and not one that Rome will likely reach for hastily. In the meantime, there are two other ways to potentially address the challenges facing underfunded and understaffed rural dioceses: developing new models of ministry, and divesting some large metropolitan dioceses of their auxiliary bishops to fill an upcoming spate of vacant sees. Credit: Catholic Church of...

WASHINGTON — “For many today, religious liberty is not a cherished freedom,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. told the Federalist Society, the conservative legal group, in November. “It pains me to say this, but, in certain quarters, religious liberty is fast becoming a disfavored right.” Those quarters do not include the Supreme Court, which has become far more likely to rule in favor of religious rights in recent years, according to a new study that considered 70 years of data. The study, to be published in The Supreme Court Review, documented a 35-percentage-point increase in the rate of rulings in favor of religion in orally argued cases, culminating in an 81 percent success rate in the court led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. “Plainly, the Roberts court has ruled in favor of religiou...