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Branford College residence, Yale University Earlier this week, I addressed the national hissy fit over separating children from adults who claim to be their parents at U.S. borders. I noted what happened before the U.S. started doing that. Under Obama, we unwittingly handed thousands of children to slave labor operators or sex traffickers. Because they claimed to be their parents. Even Obama felt constrained to stop doing that. He put in place the policy which Trump is now enforcing. Bush-era laws and crackpot court decisions won’t let the government hold children with their parents while we evaluate their asylum...

Laurence England at "The Bones" blog writes: A source in Argentina has provided me with some perceptive observations on the recent intervention from Pope Francis timed - to many commentator's bewilderment - after the recent vote in Ireland and the more recent parliamentary vote in Argentina on liberalising abortion laws in these respective countries. Perhaps unsurprisingly, 'our man in Argentina' places the sudden papal defence of the unborn in the light of politics surrounding the bill approved at the Deputies House and is about to be voted in the Argentinian Senate. A Little History of Argentinian Politics Firstly, a brief...

(Note that this is from the point of view of a LGBT publication in the U.K.) Pope Francis has condemned same-sex parents and abortion in a series of scathing comments. It had been hoped that the Pope was in the process of softening the Catholic Church’s position on LGBT rights, particularly as it was just last month that he told Juan Carlos Cruz, a gay survivor of sexual abuse by a prominent Chilean priest: “God made you like this and loves you like this and I don’t care.” However, during unscripted remarks at Forum delle Famiglie, an Italian group for...

Forget extreme plastic surgery, tattoos and piercings - a minority are taking body modification to the next level - by voluntarily cutting off their own limbs. A body modifier has exclusively revealed how his "extra" limbs feel alien, and has resorted to the drastic measure of self-mutilation - because he actually want to be disabled. Dr. Michael First, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, has led investigations into this bizarre and extremely rare psychiatric condition which he is calling body integrity identity disorder (BIID). Also known as amputee identity disorder, it gives people a fierce desire to rid themselves...

Pay close attention to your life and your teaching. Persevere in these things, because if you do so, you will save both yourself, and those who listen to you. 1 Timothy 4:16 Dear fellow catechists, How do you feel when you read headlines like these? "Purge" at Vatican Doctrine Office Are We Still "One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic"? Parish Displays Banner for "Pride Month" Divorce - Remarriage: the New Normal? Doctrine Chief Sees "Well-Defined Attack on Doctrine" USCCB Fires Doctrine Chief Humanae Vitae to be Revisited, Revised Vatican Spokesman: No Comment Church Should Apologize on Sex, Gender Last Rites for Voluntary...

Against a grim backdrop of rising suicide rates among American women, new research has revealed a blinding shaft of light: One group of women — practicing Catholics — appears to have bucked the national trend toward despair and self-harm. Compared with women who never participated in religious services, women who attended any religious service once a week or more were five times less likely to commit suicide between 1996 and 2010, says a study published by JAMA Psychiatry. [snip] Among devout Catholic women — those in the pews more than once a week — suicides were a vanishing phenomenon. Among...

Climate change is over. [snip] Judged by deeds rather than words, most national governments are backing away from forced-marched decarbonization. ...President Trump’s ostentatious withdrawal from the Paris Agreement merely ratified a trend long becoming evident. [snip] Climate alarm is like a car alarm—a blaring noise people are tuning out. This outcome was predictable. Political scientist Anthony Downs described the downward trajectory of many political movements in an article for the Public Interest, “Up and Down With Ecology: The ‘Issue-Attention Cycle,’ ” published in 1972, long before the climate-change campaign began. ...Mr. Downs discerned a five-stage cycle through which political issues...

Pope Francis has urged Chinese Catholics on Wednesday to show they are in full communion with the Holy See. The appeal is coming amid what appears to be another stall in the Vatican’s longstanding attempts to reach a deal with Beijing over bishop nominations. Francis made the comments during his general audience, noting that many Chinese Catholics will be marking a feast day dedicated to the Virgin Mary this week in Sheshan, near Shanghai. Francis prayed that all Chinese faithful “can live their faith with generosity and serenity, and can make gestures of fraternity, harmony and reconciliation in full communion”...

At Vatican Insider I spotted something interesting. Each Spring the Italian bishops have a plenary meeting at the Vatican’s Paul VI hall, in the smaller hall where the Synod usually meets. The Pope attends at least part of the meeting. This year was no exception. This year the Pope told them… my fast translation from the Italian original: “If there’s a doubt about homosexuality, it’s better not to have them enter the seminary.” The words of the Pope in the closed door session with the Italian bishops: “Discernment is needed”. Reaffirmed what was in the Vatican documents of 2005 and...

Bias can be detected by what the media report and choose not to report. When it comes to Pope Francis, bias by omission is the most common ideological practice. Earlier this month, the pope met with an alleged Chilean victim of priestly sexual abuse, Juan Carlos Cruz; he is a homosexual. According to Cruz, the pope said to him, “It doesn't matter [whether you are a homosexual]. God made you like this. God loves you like this.” The Vatican refuses to comment on whether this is an accurate account. Last week, the pope met with the Italian Bishops' Conference. When...

In this April 24, 2018 photo, demonstrators protest in honor of those who have died during anti-government protests in Managua, Nicaragua. Since protests directed at the Sandinista government in Nicaragua began in April, the Jesuit-run University of Central America has been a hub of student activism and, as a result, a target of violence. On Sunday, Father Jose Alberto Idiaquez, S.J., the rector of U.C.A., condemned the latest attack on his university as government-sponsored. In a statement addressed to the Nicaraguan people, Father Idiaquez announced that U.C.A.’s campus in Nicaragua’s capital city of Managua was attacked on May 27 at...

Dr Ali Selim: “The Eighth Amendment protects pregnant women against taking a hasty decision.” Repeal of the Eighth Amendment “is not compassionate. It is cruel. It gives licence for murder,” Dr Ali Selim of the Islamic Cultural Centre in Dublin’s Clonskeagh has said. Abortion without restriction up to 12 weeks was “abortion for no reason,” he said. “Bearing in mind their difficult circumstances, the Eighth Amendment protects pregnant women against taking a hasty decision,” he said. “ The right decision is the decision that one takes when one is not under pressure of any type. That said the women’s...

Archbishop Charles Chaput 222 North 17th Street Philadelphia, PA 19103 Dear Archbishop Chaput, I just read your First Things essay "What Happens in Germany",which was forwarded to me by Fr. Thomas Weinandy. It certainly justified his recommendation: very clear, very much on-target, very important. Thank you for writing this. I have been on my parish RCIA teaching team for over 15 years, and I sincerely strive to “adhere with religious submission of will and intellect” to everything Christ authoritatively teaches through His Church. This is how I raised my sons, how I teach my students, and how I live my...

(April 26, Two days before Alfie Evans' death, an Italian newspaper recounts the moral failure of the Catholic Hierarchy of Britain) Doctors and judges have already denied Alfie's right to life and his parents' freedom of movement. Now the Archbishop of Liverpool and Cardinal Nichols have expelled from the hospital Father Gabriele Brusco, the Italian priest who had run to Alfie's bedside on April 16th, given the unavailability of any local priest. The Archbishop of Liverpool goes to Rome to reassure the Pope about the bravery of the doctors of the Alder Hey Hospital and the correctness of the British...

Ross Douthat has written perhaps the most important Catholic book in the era of Pope Francis, which began in 2013. To Change the Church is thoughtful, penetrating, and graced with an ironic touch and gentle humor. It is also terribly difficult for a faithful Catholic to review, as it is acutely critical of the pope. A disclaimer, then: Pope Francis is a holy man, for Catholics his teaching authority is infallible, and nothing contained here should be taken for filial impiety or disloyalty. Yet as Douthat notes, the principal duty of a Catholic isn’t to the pope but “to the...

ROME, April 5, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) — Pope Francis is “increasing the confusion” in the Church, and the College of Cardinals constitutes a de facto check against papal error, Cardinal Raymond Burke has said in a new interview. Speaking to the Italian Catholic news agency La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, Cardinal Burke said the alleged ‘interview’ on hell with Pope Francis, published on Holy Thursday by his 94-year-old atheist friend, Eugenio Scalfari, “went beyond what is tolerable.” Burke also called the Vatican’s response to the “scandalized reactions” from across the globe “highly inadequate,” because it failed to reassert the Church’s teaching on...

Holy Saturday Mass at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, a government-approved church in Beijing. BEIJING — China will not allow any foreign interference in religious affairs in the country, a senior official said on Tuesday, dousing expectations of an imminent deal with the Vatican over control of the Roman Catholic Church here. “I think there is no religion in human society that is above the state,” the official, Chen Zongrong, said during a briefing on religious affairs in China, underscoring the government’s intention to maintain strict control over all religious organizations and their believers. Mr. Chen’s remarks came...

March 29, 2018 (Society for the Protection of Unborn Children) – New statistics show that 21.7% of all conceptions in England and Wales led to legal abortion in 2016. The Office of National Statistics' report Conceptions in England and Wales: 2016 found that the percentage of conceptions leading to a legal abortion in 2016 increased for women in all age groups since 2015, apart from women aged 40 and over. Women aged 30 to 34 years had the lowest percentage of conceptions leading to legal abortion (14.2%) in 2016, whereas women aged under 16 years had the highest percentage (61.5%)....

This letter was written and sent a few days before a diocesan conference centering on "The Legacy of St. Pope John Paul II". Dear Bishop -------- Please allowed me to ask a few questions which are urgent to me and others of the faithful. 1. The Legacy of Pope John Paul II is being replaced by a New Paradigm being taught by such highly-placed teachers at Cardinal Cupich of Chicago. They claim that previous teaching about Faith, Morals, and Sacramental practice are pastorally unhelpful. They deny that there are acts that are intrinsically wrong. They propose that God has given...

On the day when Christians commemorate the massacre of the ‘holy innocents’ by King Herod, Pope Francis prayed for “all the children who are not allowed to be born,” in reference to the millions of victims of abortion. In his daily posting on Twitter, the Pope also offered prayers for all the children “who cry with hunger,” or “who hold weapons in their hands instead of toys”: This is not the first time Pope Francis has likened the systematic slaughter of unborn children through abortion with the massacre wrought by King Herod some 2,000 years ago, in an effort to...