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In 1925, the lawyers Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan duked it out in front of a packed courthouse over evolution. This has often been portrayed as one of history’s ultimate science-versus-religion fights in which science, of course, won. Except, it wasn’t, and it didn’t. What “Inherit the Wind” and all the other dramatizations about the “Scopes Monkey Trial” leave out is that the textbook used by John T. Scopes, Civic Biology, contained some science gone seriously wrong. It claimed that evolution “explained” the so-called natural superiority of certain races and nationalities, and it promoted eugenics—creating better human beings through “good breeding.” And the book describes the poor, the handicapped and the insane as “true parasites,” adding, “If such people were lower animal...

…let us run like madmen! July 5, 2023 by Amy Welborn Today is the memorial of St. Antony Mary Zaccaria, founder of the Barnabites. More on the origins of the order, from the Barnabite website: The very first religious family inspired by St Paul was founded in 1530 in Milan by Sant’Antonio Maria Zaccaria (1502-1539). Rated today for his work of reform together with Saint Gaetano de Thiene and St Ignatius of Loyola, Zaccaria developed deep Eucharistic spirituality and particular devotion to St Paul the Apostle, in the years of preparation for the priesthood. Having obtained a degree in medicine, he began to care for the poor sick people and only later at the age of 26 chose the priestly life.… The programme of Sant’Antonio Maria Zaccaria foresaw radical reform of the Church in Lombardy,...

Fernández, who has over 10,000 followers on Facebook, said there are “anti-Francis groups that are outraged [at my appointment], and they get to use unethical means to harm me.” Attacks against the 79-page book on kissing, the archbishop said, “come from Catholics in the United States” who do not know Spanish and mis-translate one of the text’s poems. In the poem, the word “witch,” he said, has been mistakenly translated into English as “bitch.” “In the end, they will continue to say a lot of things, and they will ally with whomever to attack Francis for nominating me. But those who know me closely know who I am. Thank you for the trust and love forever,” he said. Fernández explained that the book in question was written by a very young pastor trying to reach the young, and that it “no lon...

COMMENTARY: As it turns out, the French de Tocqueville had plenty to tell us Catholics about life in 1840 America, but he has much more to say to us about life in 2023. In 1831, a French aristocrat named Alexis de Tocqueville was commissioned to travel to the United States of America and report back on its prison systems. Once he arrived, however, Tocqueville became broadly fascinated with the upstart nation. Spending nine months in the U.S., Tocqueville richly observed American people and America’s political system. His observations were published in two volumes, in 1835 and 1840, titled Democracy in America. Many things intrigued Tocqueville about America, and one of those was the practice of the Catholic faith in early America. Tocqueville’s insights ring true even today. When John F. K...

Located in the village of Borgund, roughly three hours by car from Bergen, the construction of this medieval wooden church began in the late 12th century. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the church in Norway is considered one of the best-preserved stave churches in the country. (The name comes from the staves, or vertical wooden boards, used to form its walls.) During the 19th century, many historic wooden churches were neglected and others were intentionally demolished to make way for newer buildings. The great Romantic landscape painter Johan Christian Clausen Dahl is credited with highlighting these churches’ beauty and historic significance, assuring that many survived to this day.  Cadet Chapel, United States Air Force Academy (United States) Photo: John Elk III/Getty Images Opened...

11 hours ago 11 hours ago “(In my new book) I analyze the crisis of the self, that as our Christian patrimony has been lost, many of our contemporaries have become slavishly obedient to political or ideological or sexual doctrines which make the parting of the Red Sea or the Resurrection of Christ seem perfectly logical by comparison,” said Gil Bailie, Founder of the Cornerstone Forum and author of the forthcoming book, The Apocalypse of the Sovereign Self: Recovering the Christian Mystery of Personhood, (2023). “We’re in a civilizational crisis because our culture depends entirely on the health and vitality of our Christian patrimony and today Western Civilization is hanging by a thread.” Bailie continues, “I’m not an optimist by any means but I a...

Chances are you or someone you know is failing to follow the warning Jesus gives on the 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A. And chances are, this doesn’t feel like a failure at all. It feels like the loving, righteous thing to do. But what Jesus warns about in Sunday’s Gospel is one of the greatest threats the Church faces in any age, and failing to listen to his warning has literally laid waste to the Catholic faith in large parts of the world today. What Jesus warns about is loving your family more than you love him. “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me,” he says. The first place we see the impact of this is in daily routines — morning, noon and night. In the morning, we have the intention to ...

The Overseas Highway actually started as the Over-Sea Railroad, and it was the brainchild of visionary developer Henry Morrison Flagler (known as “The Father of Modern Florida”). In 1870, Flagler co-founded the Standard Oil Company alongside business magnate John D Rockefeller, and it became one of the world’s largest and most powerful corporations at the beginning of the 20th Century. After visiting Florida and recognising “The Sunshine State’s” tourism potential, Flagler poured much of his wealth into the region, building luxury resorts that transformed one of the US’ poorest states into a winter paradise for Gilded-Age travellers from the Northeast US. Yet, there was no way for guests to get to Flagler’s opulent-but-remote resorts. So in 1...

Skip to content For most people, the name of Sir Alec Guinness is associated with his playing of Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars trilogy. Such an association is understandable enough but it does scant justice to Sir Alec’s true legacy as one of the greatest actors of the twentieth century. He was a fine Shakespearean actor, standing shoulder to shoulder with Sir Laurence Olivier and Sir John Gielgud as the most illustrious and successful of those who made the transition from stage to film in the years following World War Two. Prior to the war, he had made his way up through the billing, from minor roles, such as Osric in Hamlet, which he played as a twenty-year-old in 1934, to playing the role of Hamlet himself in 1938 and Macbeth the following year. Throughout his life, he contin...

(Image: Piotr Łaskawski/Unsplash.com) At their June 2023 gathering, the United States bishops voted to revisit a section of Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, the latest edition of which was published in 2016. The bishops will review Part III of the document, which offers directives on patients’ rights, the responsibilities of health care professionals and specific areas of potential concern. Not included in the present version are issues related to purported treatments and remedies for gender dysphoria. Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, the head of the committee on doctrine, proposed -and the bishops voted to approve—the incorporation of a doctrinal note issued in March of 2023 that addresses these matters: These interventions differ in the magnitude of...

Octopuses are among the smartest animals on the planet—and some of the strangest. They have about the same number of neurons as dogs, but more than half of those cells are distributed across the slippery cephalopods’ eight arms rather than contained in a central brain. As researchers report on June 8 in Cell, the neural anomalies only get more bizarre from there. Octopuses, they found, have the ability to recode their neurons in response to temperature shifts so those cells produce different proteins. Like people adjusting their clothing to match the weather outside, octopuses edit their RNA, which is a genetic molecule that carries DNA’s instructions to produce proteins—the workhorses of cells. The researchers suspect those “brain edits” help octopuses adapt to heat or cold when the seaso...