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Pope Francis should resign, and Catholics should demand it, so the Church can begin recovering from the havoc his ill-advised and arrogant papacy has wrought.

Pope Francis' catastrophic remarks of June 16, 2016 - Part I of Commentary. 1. Pope Francis says that "great majority of sacramental marriages are null", but some cohabitations are real marriages. 2. How Amoris Laetitia and Mitis Iudex paved the way for Francis' statement. 3. Throwback: when Bergoglio welcomed his niece's defiance of Church teaching on marriage In a short but already overheated papacy littered as no pontificate before with an avalanche of papal words, Francis' remarks during his Q & A on June 16, 2016 are surely among the worst that he has spoken. Our commentary is divided into...

In the context of adjudicating annulments, Polish Bishop Antoni Stankiewicz said that any view that dismisses so many unions as invalid reflects an “anthropological pessimism” that would hold that “it’s almost impossible to get married, in view of the current cultural situation.” If the pope’s view is that 50 percent of Catholic marriages are invalid, it is not just an insult to our natural human ability to marry, but also an insult to St. Paul, who said that the moral law is written on men’s hearts. And it’s an insult to God’s grace to imagine that our own age is...

The Supreme People’s Court of China today passed legislation that will ban Chinese women from marrying non-Chinese men, with the law coming into effect at the beginning of 2018. The policy had been fiercely debated for a number of months before it finally won approval from the required number of legislators earlier today. Civil rights groups in China have condemned the restriction, pointing out that it discriminates against women by still permitting males to enter into interracial marriages.

I’m going through life without ever having hit a home run. To hit a ball perfectly and round the bases, touching home: That must be a pleasure. Once I came close. Just turning 26 and finishing my dissertation, I played on the American Culture team in the University of Michigan graduate school coed softball league, one of the weakest leagues imaginable. Susan had finished her undergraduate career there and was technically ineligible, but we were short of women who didn’t -- to use a phrase from those sexist days -- throw like girls. Here’s the scene, one week before our...

During Pope Francis’s first Angelus address after ascending to the chair of Peter, he approvingly cited Walter Cardinal Kasper’s book Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life (2012), saying that he had read it recently and it had done him “much good.” Since that papal audience, Francis has spoken frequently about God’s mercy, even calling an Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy and issuing a book-length interview, The Name of God is Mercy: A Conversation with Andrea Tornielli (2016). Cardinal Kasper has also played a prominent role in discussions about how to extend mercy in the...

Amber Heard's dire financial situation has been revealed after court documents showed the actress is losing money at an alarming rate. The 30-year-old filed for divorce from husband Johnny Depp last week requesting he pay her spousal support of $50,000 (£34,500) a month plus her legal costs. She cited irreconcilable differences for the split, which has triggered a battle over Depp's huge $400million fortune.

[Liam Fee]'s mother Rachel and her lesbian partner Nyomi were able to carry out two years of sustained attacks on the toddler and two other boys as social services repeatedly failed to act. The pair’s depraved abuse included: * Imprisoning one boy in a cage made from a fire guard, using cable ties to bind his hands behind his back; * Tying another boy naked to a chair in a dark room with nine snakes and several rats, forcing him to eat his own vomit and telling him a boa constrictor ‘ate naughty little boys’; * Forcing the youngsters to...

"Changing the definition of marriage to entrench motherless and fatherlessness in public policy and teaching our kids their gender is fluid should be opposed...The cowardice and weakness of Australia's 'gatekeepers' is causing unthinkable things to happen, just as unthinkable things happened in Germany in the 1930s." Mr Shelton began the post by declaring he loved to read obituaries in The Economist, specifically one published last week on the late German-born historian Fritz Stern. According to the obituary, Stern argued the rise of Adolf Hitler owed less to the Fuhrer's personality cult and more to the failure of Germany's 'gatekeepers' to...

Children whose parents are married have significantly higher self-esteem, according to research unveiled yesterday. Teenagers of married couples were more confident than those in single-parent families or youngsters whose parents lived together in a stable long-term relationship, it found. Overall, boys with married parents had the highest self-esteem, while girls with cohabiting parents had the lowest. […] The study, from the Marriage Foundation, was based on data from 3,822 children polled in British Household Panel Survey. Harry Benson, research director at the foundation, said: “Conventional wisdom has it that child outcomes depend on parents staying together rather than marital status....

The Church of Scotland voted Saturday to allow its ministers to be in same-sex marriages, following years of deliberation. The national church’s general assembly in Edinburgh voted to extend a law passed last May that permits its ministers to be in same-sex civil partnerships.

Friday morning I sent this text message to Pat Brady who sits on the Illinois GOP Platform Committee that proposed removing the marriage plank that defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman: “Do not replace the marriage plank with the proposed RINO/Libertarian plank that disrespects the view that marriage has an intrinsic nature, [and the view] that children have an intrinsic right to be raised by a mother and a father whenever possible. The language in this pernicious plank necessarily endorses the legal recognition of plural unions. Evidently, RINOs/Libertarians on the committee have no understanding of...

If you’ve been living under a rock and still question whether we’re seeing a breakdown of the traditional family, you won’t after this. A new Gallup poll released Thursday shows while fewer Americans are getting married – or are waiting much longer to get married – than in past decades, they feel little to no compulsion against having kids in the meantime. But rather than simply stating the numbers -- which are depressing enough -- Gallup felt compelled to throw in its two cents on how businesses – and society as a whole – should respond to the shift in...

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I’d earn the ire of a character named Turd Flinging Monkey, the nom de plume of a popular online activist. A leader in the Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW) movement, which encourages men to avoid romantic relationships with women, Monkey did not take kindly to my new Prager University video talking up the benefits of marriage for men. In the video, I noted, among other things, that married men work harder (about 400 more hours), smarter (they’re less likely to quit without having found another job), and more successfully (they make...

Alice C. Linsley Gay activist Jonathan Charles Rauch describes himself as "an unrepentantly atheistic Jewish homosexual" which is to say that he has completely rejected the traditional wisdom of his ancestors. Jonathan Rauch is so lacking in critical thinking skills as to be dangerous. Rauch’s “Case for Gay Marriage” is full of fallacious arguments, as I have demonstrated to my Ethics students. J. Rauch’s First Premise: Marriage is necessary to providing reliable caregivers. This assumption is not true. It is, in fact, verifiable false since we are able to observe that reliable caregivers exist who are not married to the...

Since the Supreme Court decision on marriage, the government has put many religious universities on the "shame list" if they seek waivers that allow them to teach traditional values of marriage and sexuality without being stripped of grants or funding. "It is sad to think how far things have come where religious institutions are now being targeted for disfavor from the government because of their views on marriage," religious liberty attorney Roger Severino said at the Heritage Foundation on April 13, 2016. Dr. Derek Halvorson, the President of Covenant College, on the panel with Severino, said "Christian colleges and universities...

state agency wants to remove a small-town judge in Wyoming from two posts because she told a reporter that her religious beliefs would prevent her from solemnizing same-sex marriages. In her full-time responsibilities, Municipal Judge Ruth Neely isn’t authorized to preside over marriages. In part-time duties on the local Circuit Court, though, she could be asked to do so. Now supporters across Wyoming and the nation are siding with Neely as she asks the Wyoming Supreme Court to prevent the state Commission on Judicial Conduct and Ethics from ending her 21-year career as a municipal judge in Pinedale, a town...

Roy Moore might be Alabama's most notorious drama queen, but does that make him the most interesting judge in the world? Alabama's two-timer suspended chief justice doesn't ALWAYS break the law, but when he does he blames it on God. 'The Ascension of Roy Moore' ... again Roy Moore is pretty handy at using the Lord's name to levitate himself above the law. Sweet guy, right? What's your take? Got a most interesting "Roy Moore doesn't always ..." joke? Doesn't matter if you're a fan or a foe. Spin it however you want. Let's see what you got. Would especially...

Lots of women look forward to motherhood — getting to know a tiny baby, raising a growing child, developing a relationship with a maturing son or daughter. All over the world, people believe that parenting is the most rewarding part of life. And it’s good that so many mothers treasure that bond with their child, because the transition to parenthood causes profound changes in a woman’s marriage and her overall happiness … and not for the better. Families usually welcome a baby to the mix with great expectations. But as a mother’s bond with a child grows, it’s likely that...

Some current and former Wyoming lawmakers as well as national religious groups are supporting a municipal judge who faces a dismissal petition before the Wyoming Supreme Court for saying she would not preside over same-sex marriages. The Wyoming Commission on Judicial Conduct and Ethics is recommending the court remove Municipal Judge and Circuit Court Magistrate Ruth Neely of Pinedale. The commission started investigating Neely after she told a reporter in 2014 she would not perform same-sex marriages because of her religious beliefs.