Opinion

Canon 915, the modern (yet resting on ancient roots) norm that prohibits ministers of holy Communion from giving that sacrament to Catholics who “obstinately persevere in manifest grave sin” does not expressly name divorced Catholics living in […]

Yes, that’s a somewhat snarky headline. And, yes, it plays on the common (and not entirely incorrect) notion that Catholics tend to be rather lacking in their knowledge of Sacred Scripture. Of course, Catholics should […]

In recent months, some prominent Catholics have taken pains to emphasize the supposedly special ties between Islam and Catholicism.  In an editorial for The Angelus, the Los Angeles archdiocesan newspaper, Fr. Ronald Rolheiser called for […]

For a very short time, Puritanism was the dominant religion in America. The need to populate a large continent led to lots of immigration of lots of people from different religions. Since then, we Americans […]

“I am not a Roman Catholic, let alone a canon lawyer,” writes First Things contributor Carl Trueman, “but I am reliably informed that the bishop of the diocese to which [Vice President Joseph Biden] belongs […]

America is experiencing an unprecedented “flight from the family,” with a growing number of women neither marrying nor having children. Simultaneously over the past fifty years, the welfare state has experienced a gigantic expansion, and […]

I grew up in what you might call a genetically-Democratic family, but one in which partisan heterodoxy was not uncommon. My parents voted for Dwight D. Eisenhower twice, for Richard M. Nixon in 1960, and […]

It is very instructive indeed to watch people burst out of the closet in the Latin Church to announce their inner struggles with liturgical orientation, and to denounce others for insufficient sensitivity to their occidental […]

Cardinal Robert Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments (CDW for short), gave a beautiful barnburner of a speech last week at the Sacra Liturgia conference in London. […]