In some Catholic media settings, there are people you’re advised not to talk to, or topics that you’re told in no uncertain terms not to write or speak about. “The audience really doesn’t like this source because he/she is too liberal.” “The last time we wrote about this, we got angry letters to the editor for weeks. Stay away from it.” “Our listeners are complaining. Stop talking about racism already.” On that last point, just ask Gloria Purvis, who paid... Read more
A basic life lesson my wife and I are teaching our preschool-aged daughter is that actions have consequences. If she behaves disrespectfully, she knows there is a good chance she won’t be able to watch TV or have a dessert that evening. Some people in our political and commentariat classes, including some Catholic social media personalities, seem to have never learned that principle, given how they conflate natural consequences for bad behavior with “cancel culture,” especially when the “cancel” target... Read more
As expected, President Joe Biden this past week reversed the Trump Administration’s expanded Mexico City Policy that prohibited federal funds from going overseas to nongovernmental organizations that perform abortions or refer clients to abortion providers. That Biden signed the executive order on the eve of this year’s virtual March for Life was “a deeply disturbing move,” as Jeanne Mancini, president of the March for Life Defense and Education Fund, tweeted. Rescinding the Mexico City Policy on the eve of the... Read more
Donald Trump leaves the White House today. His chaotic, dysfunctional administration will be gone. Now what? Americans – including 50 percent of Catholics – voted for Joe Biden because they wanted some semblance of normalcy and stability after the dysfunction and turmoil of the Trump era. But America, post-Trump, is in a different place in 2021 than what the country was when Trump became the 45th president of the United States in January 2017. We’ve seen a dramatic change... Read more
The U.S. Capitol Building was sacked last week by an angry mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters. Let that sink in. The U.S. Capitol was sacked, on live television. Rebel insurrectionists carrying Confederate flags and fascist paraphernalia – some of them armed with explosives and flex cuffs – stormed the Capitol grounds, smashing windows, ransacking congressional leaders’ offices, stealing lecterns and smashing a display dedicated to the late Congressman/Civil Rights activist John Lewis. The fall of the U.S. Capitol is... Read more
The dust is still settling at the Eternal Word Television Network with its recent programming lineup changes, but a couple of its former journalists who just left the company have already turned the page. JD Flynn, the former editor in chief of EWTN’s Catholic News Agency, and his former CNA colleague Ed Condon, heretofore the wire service’s Washington bureau chief, have launched a new initiative called The Pillar. In his first post today, Flynn describes his vision for The Pillar... Read more
The Eternal Word Television Network didn’t come out and say it outright. “EWTN drops Gloria Purvis’ Morning Glory radio show.” People who read the Catholic News Agency’s rewritten press release Wednesday on EWTN’s new lineup of programming for 2021 were only told toward the end of the third paragraph that a newly expanded Son Rise Morning Show “will replace Morning Glory in the radio lineup.” In newsroom parlance, that’s called “burying the lede,” or putting the most newsworthy item further... Read more
I come home from running a quick errand and, for a second, I expect Zoe to greet me at the door, begging for a treat. Before retiring for the night, per my routine for the last 12 years, I remind myself to take Zoe out one last time. But then I remember my beloved Terrier mix is no longer with us. Old age caught up with her this month, forcing my wife and I to say a tearful goodbye to... Read more
The Electoral College is meeting today across the country to formally cast the ballots to make it official: Joe Biden will be the 46th president of the United States. President Donald Trump, who lost his bid for a second term, is not going to concede, and will continue to cry foul and yell “RIGGED ELECTION!” to anyone who will listen. But none of that changes the fact that Trump’s presidency will end at noon on Jan. 20, when Biden takes... Read more
It was a perfect headline. “The media is not the church’s enemy.” That simple sentence, which headlines National Catholic Reporter Executive Editor Heidi Schlumpf’s Dec. 3 column, captures an essential truth that too many Catholics, bishops included, do not seem, or want, to grasp. “The media are not the enemy. We are professionals, trying to do our jobs, in the service of the truth,” wrote Schlumpf, who focused much of her column on how some bishops at last month’s USCCB... Read more
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