Free Republic

When a new book came out, the great C. S. Lewis would first seek out an old one on the same subject. That’s good advice for embattled Americans. In fact, two old books address what is happening today with rare perception. Regent College Publishing has reissued The Green Stick and The Infernal Grove, the two volumes of Chronicles of Wasted Time by Malcolm Muggeridge. Paul Johnson called it one of the great autobiographies of our time, which might be an understatement. Wisdom and wit leap off the pages, and there’s even a news hook: Russia has invaded Ukraine and that...

Activists gathered at the risibly renamed Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C. last night, protesting the death penalty for Alfred Bourgeois. Because of course liberals and race-baiters would take the side of a man who sexually tortured and then brutally murdered his own two-year-old child. Bourgeois, 55 at the time of his execution this week, was convicted in 2004 for physically and emotionally torturing, sexually molesting, and beating his daughter to death. ACTIVISTS LAMENT THE DEATH OF A PEDOPHILE MURDERER. CBS reminds us of his grisly actions: …Bourgeois whipped the girl with an electrical cord, burned her feet with...

Too few Americans are qualified for the jobs available. Male working-age labor-force participation is at Depression-era lows. Opioid abuse is widespread. Homicidal violence plagues inner cities. Almost half of all children are born out of wedlock, and even more are raised by single mothers. Many college students lack basic skills, and high school students rank below those from two dozen other countries. The causes of these phenomena are multiple and complex, but implicated in these and other maladies is the breakdown of the country’s bourgeois culture. That culture laid out the script we all were supposed to follow: Get married...

In the recent opinion article “Paying the price for breakdown of the country's bourgeois culture,” published in The Philadelphia Inquirer, law professors Amy Wax and Larry Alexander lament the loss of the “bourgeois cultural hegemony” of the 1950s. They claim that erosion of commitment to marriage, hard work, patriotism, civic-mindedness and respect for authority has produced low male labor force participation, high rates of nonmarital childbearing, subpar educational attainment, an underqualified workforce, substance abuse and rampant urban violence. The downward spiral started in the late 1960s, they argue, with “identity politics” and “multicultural grievance polemics.” This is bad history. Like...

It seems that University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax—who took her own turn melting the snowflakes at Middlebury College a few years ago —again has liberals in a lather. On August 9 of this year, professor Wax, along with law professor Larry Alexander—currently the Warren Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of San Diego—penned an Op-Ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer lamenting the breakdown of our nation’s “bourgeois culture.” ... To further liberal angst, in a follow-up interview with the Daily Pennsylvanian the day after her Op-Ed ran, professor Wax doubled-down in her defense of the bourgeois culture. Declaring...

A law professor at Jesuit-run Fordham University in New York is appealing for an end to the institution of marriage in America, which he describes as “religious, gendered, and bourgeois.” Ethan J. Leib published his essay in the Fordham Law Review. The article, titled “Hail Marriage and Farewell,” says Leib was “elated” when the U.S. Supreme Court made same-sex marriage the law of the land on June 26, 2015, a ruling he described as “a victory for rights, for open-mindedness, for love, and for the future.” The decision, in fact, made him feel, at least for a moment, as if...

Roy Bourgeois is becoming the Pete Rose of Catholicism. He got booted for bad behavior and now he's trying everything he can to weasel his way back in. Bourgeois, you might recall, is the priest who was excommunicated for his public approval of the ordination of women and was subsequently stripped of his priestly duties. Not only did he publicly approve of female ordination, he reportedly took part in one such ceremony. And he's reportedly "working with an attorney" to appeal his status because he's thinking that Pope Francis might be a little more amenable to his point of...

Roy Bourgeois, the former priest who was excommunicated in 2008 and dismissed from the Maryknoll society last year, has been formally notified of his laicization. Bourgeois received a letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, relayed through his former Maryknoll superiors, notifying him of his dismissal from the society and from the priesthood. The Vatican asks Bourgeois to sign the letter, acknowledging receipt—which he says he will refuse to do. Bourgeois was excommunicated in 2008 after he participated in a ceremony in which women claimed ordination. He had repeatedly refused to reconsider his stand, and had remained...

MARYKNOLL, NY, November 21, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has canonically dismissed Roy Bourgeois from the priesthood because of his public dissent from the Catholic Church’s teaching on the ordination of women. Bourgeois’ dismissal was announced by the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America, also known as the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, in a Nov. 19 statement. As a Maryknoll priest during 2008, Bourgeois participated in a mock ordination of a woman and a simulated Mass at a Unitarian church in Lexington, Kentucky. The radical feminist group Roman Catholic Womanpriests staged the ceremony....

In another post, I wrote about Sr. Maureen Fiedler’s Fishwrap column about Mr. Roy Bourgeois and the grave injustices done to him by the Vatican’s male oppressors and their Maryknoll minions. I was so moved by her piece, so disturbed by her litany of injustices, that I am now forced to ask myself -and you, dear readers – some hard soul-searching questions.Why won’t Sr. Fiedler help Mr. Bourgeois with deeds and not just easy words at NCR?Fiedler must help Bourgeois to join her order and become a nun.The sisters in favor of women’s ordination should throw the doors of their...

Disobedience and preaching against the teaching of the Catholic Church about women's ordination led to his excommunication, dismissal and laicization. Then Fr. Bourgeois engaged in an obstinate crusade which involved public and direct defiance of the Holy See and a repudiation of the unbroken teaching of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church concerning sacred ordination. MARYKNOLL, N.Y. (Catholic Online) - The short Press Release from the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers confirmed some sad news on Monday, November 19, 2012. The priestly ministry of Roy Bourgeois has come to an end: ***** FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEThe Congregation For The Doctrine Of The...

President Rafael Correa of Ecuador received Fr. Roy Bourgeois, founder of Surveillance in his office June 27 2012 in Quito. Credit: Santiago Armas-Presidency of the Republic. Vatican City, Nov 19, 2012 / 03:52 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Vatican canonically dismissed Roy Bourgeois from the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers on Oct. 4, for disobedience and preaching against Church teaching on women's ordination. The decision, made by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, dispenses him from both the bonds of priesthood and religious life. On Aug. 8, 2008, Bourgeois preached a homily at the simulated ordination of a woman...

Obama bemoans ‘people hurting out there’ at Sarah Jessica Parker’s $40,000-per-person fundraiser Mark Knoller ✔ @markknoller At the 4-story brownstone that is the home of Sarah Jessica Parker & Matthew Brokerick, Pres Obama addressed 50 ppl paying $40K per. 14 Jun 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller reported from the glitzy $40,000 a person Obama fundraiser at the home of Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick. Yes, you read that right, $40,000 each.  Ponder that as you read this next tweet: Mark Knoller ✔ @markknoller Pres Obama said he knows there are "still a lot of people hurting...

The Rev. Roy Bourgeois, who refused to renounce his increasingly public campaign to see women ordained as priests in the Roman Catholic Church, has been notified of his dismissal by his religious order, the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers. A letter to Father Bourgeois, signed by the superior general and the general secretary of the Maryknoll order in the United States, said the dismissal was necessary because of his “defiant stance” in opposition to church teaching. “Your numerous public statements and appearances in support of the women’s priests movement continues to create in the minds of many faithful the view that...

So now openly gay soldiers get to fight and die in neocon-imperialist wars, too? David Brooks saw such ironic progressive victories coming. In his book "Bobos in Paradise," he wrote that everything "transgressive" gets "digested by the mainstream bourgeois order, and all the cultural weapons that once were used to undermine middle-class morality . . . are drained of their subversive content." Two decades ago, the gay left wanted to smash the bourgeois prisons of monogamy, capitalistic enterprise and patriotic values and bask in the warm sun of bohemian "free love" and avant-garde values. In this, they were simply picking...

The most dangerous of hypocrites come from the middle class. These are the middle-class "intellectuals" who openly despise other members of the bourgeoisie. They are ubiquitous in academia, the arts, and in much of the mainstream media. They are smugly satisfied to bite the cultural hand that feeds them -- a hand that rarely retaliates. The Tea Parties have begun the arduous process of taking back one portion of our society, the state, from the pseudo-intellectuals who have overwhelmed our political ranks. If Western culture is to survive, however, the middle class must also recapture the educational systems, the media,...

WESTON - A prominent priest whose support for women’s ordination has him in trouble with the Catholic Church ratcheted up his confrontation with the hierarchy yesterday, calling the church’s refusal to ordain women a “scandal’’ and “spiritual violence.’’ “I will not be silenced on this issue,’’ said the priest, the Rev. Roy Bourgeois, to about 100 people in Weston at an event hosted by the congregation of Jean Marchant, a former staffer for the Archdiocese of Boston who claims she was ordained as a priest in an unsanctioned ceremony four years ago. The Catholic Church views Marchant and Bourgeois as...

I was alerted to this sad news.... Fr. Bourgeois has been excommunicated A reader sent me this: Dear Ms. , As stated in an earlier communiqué from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in Rome, Father Bourgeois was given 30 days to recant his actions regarding the ordination of women as priests, or endure the penalty of excommunication. Since he has said he cannot recant those actions, he has been excommunicated by the CDF. Betsey Guest

The founder of SOA Watch, Father Roy Bourgeois is being excommunicated from the Catholic Church. The Maryknoll brother tells News 3 he's been notified by the Vatican that the excommunication is taking place because he recently participated in a ceremony ordaining a woman priest. He says he's not sorry for what he did, and feels it was morally right. “I have a deep love for my church. I have been a minister for 36 years but at the same time there's what we call conscience that is very sacred, Bourgeois said. Bourgeois says he has 30 days to recant his...

David Brooks asserts there is a new upper class. He claims this "upper class" is an amalgam of bourgeois and bohemian values. He describes this alleged new class with the neologism "bobo." It seems like the same old bourgeoisie to me, but Mr. Brooks does persuasively describe the many changes that have occurred in the upper-middle class. Not only is Mr. Brooks a master, erudite wordsmith, but he is also entertaining. This is not surprising since he is a conservative public intellectual who is senior editor at The Weekly Standard and a contributing editor for both Newsweekand the Atlantic Monthly....