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A California state senator told a gathered crowd of parents at the California Senate Judicial Committee to flee the state on June 13 during a hearing on a bill which would put parents who don’t affirm their child’s “gender transition” in danger of child abuse charges. Sen. Scott Wilk, R-Santa Clarita, is one of the two lone Republicans on California’s Senate Judiciary Committee, and he has served in the California Legislature for 11 years. He was also the lone voice warning against language in AB 957, which a Democratic senator had amended on June 5 to rewrite the California Family Code to list “gender affirmation” alongside a child’s need for “health, safety, and welfare.” I’m now in year 11 in the state legislature, and all the time we’re proposing policies to protect children. After 11 ...

COMMENTARY: I have spent nearly 30 years as a father. As the decades go by, I increasingly realize that while virtue can be expressed in words, it is virtuous deeds that create maps for children… Historical periods are commonly differentiated into various features that define them, such as the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, or the Age of Discovery. Our day may come to be known as the Age of Confusion. Our society may come to be defined by its refusal to define anything. The mere attempt to define words like person, baby, truth, conscience or woman often results in personal accusation and reprimand. Nevertheless, it is this society in which we fathers must raise and educate our children. Specifically, we must instruct our sons and daughters in virtue. Not only is our society confused, but ...

The Gospel reading is a plea for help from a world that longs for the Church this Sunday, the 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A. You can tell the words are inspired by the Holy Spirit, because what St. Matthew wrote two millennia ago expresses precisely what is missing from parishes in America today. In the Gospel, the Holy Spirit describes for Americans the people whose homes fill our parishes. “At the sight of the crowds, Jesus’ heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd,” it says. Isn’t this a description of our own neighborhoods? All around us, people are suffering and even dying due to precisely the problems we have powerful answers to. Sex and personal identity issues are at crisis levels. STDs are at record highs. Gi...

The author of this article is a convicted criminal. I was lured into a “life of crime” beginning in 1978 by someone who himself was once charged with federal racketeering. I have been called by judges “a dangerous person from whom society needs to be protected,” a “recidivist,” and, most recently, by the Attorney General of New York, even a “terrorist.” I have spent time in jail for my “crimes.”  Just last month I concluded a 45-day jail term at the Oakland County Jail in Pontiac, Michigan, out of which I served thirty-four days. On March 31st, I was booked into cellblock F1. One of the first things I wanted to do, which is the case with most inmates, was make “contact” with the “outside world.” So, I took a seat in a line of chairs to make a phone call on one of four phones available...

(OSV News) The Society of Jesus has dismissed Father Marko Rupnik from the order. According to Father Johan Verschueren, his superior in Rome, Father Rupnik was turned out by the decree of Jesuit Superior General Father Arturo Sosa June 9; he has 30 days to appeal that decision. This was done, as Father Verschueren put it in a report from Catholic News Service Rome, “in accordance with canon law, due to his stubborn refusal to observe the vow of obedience.” Well good. But I have questions. The most urgent concerns Father Rupnik’s status as a priest. He remains one, of course. Dismissal from a religious order does not laicize a priest. Canonically, though, he is not able to function as a priest unless his faculties and ministerial duties are first approved by a bishop receiving him into a d...

We call St. Benedict of Nursia the father of monks, and his teaching on spiritual fatherhood drew me, in part, to become a Benedictine oblate. Thirteen years ago, as a father of a growing family, I was looking for greater focus and direction in my spiritual life, especially in integrating prayer, work and family life. I thought back to a Cistercian monastery where I had made some retreats in high school, where I first encountered St. Benedict’s great Rule for monks, which he wrote while serving as abbot of the monastery Monte Cassino in the 6th century. The monastery seemed to fit as a model for the kind of life and culture I sought to build within my home and through my work as a theologian. For a father, St. Benedict’s teaching on the role of the abbot stands out the most, particularly c...

The zen of the river, the synodality of the nuncio, and the soul of golf Skip to content Happy Friday friends, And a very happy feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to you all.  Unless you’re a Dodgers fan — you should reflect on your life choices today. Consider switching to the Angels, they have two obvious first ballot hall of famers on the team and are barely staying above .500. For an ’80s Cubs fan like me, that’s basically the golden ratio. I’m not going to go on about that particular event scheduled in LA, I’m just going to note that today is, and has been for a lot longer than there has been baseball, a deeply beautiful feast — the history of which we have a great explainer on here. The bishops have called for all Catholics to pray a Litany of the Sacred Heart today in reparatio...

Father Johan Verschueren, SJ, Rupnik’s superior whose name the statement was in, said no further comments will be made until after this period has concluded. In February, the Jesuits said they had opened a new internal procedure against Rupnik after receiving accusations against him spanning from 1985 to 2018. The “highly credible” accusations, they said, included claims of spiritual, psychological, and sexual abuse, and abuse of conscience. The latest statement said the team investigating the accusations delivered its dossier the same month. Rupnik’s superiors imposed certain restrictions on his ministry at the recommendation of the investigators. The restrictions, according to the Society of Jesus, were “to change communities and accept a new mission in which we offered him one last chan...

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 ...