Cecile Richards: “Hey, yeah, sorry for that ‘tone'”

July 16, 2015 By Elizabeth Scalia

Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards wants you to know a couple things: She’s really sorry for the “tone and statement” of a salad-munching abortionist. So gauche. Abortionists are too close to what they do to entertain euphemisms, though. Planned Parenthood’s interests are as vapidly vague as a politicians: “we support millions of people, as they build their futures and pursue their goals.” She’s really mad that some scum outfit “secretly recorded, heavily edited video” (as Allah points out, “the full... Read more

A Rare Book Generating Real Discussion Between Generations

July 16, 2015 By Elizabeth Scalia

Don Michel Remery’s Tweeting With God is a book I heartily recommended in my recent Summer Reading Recommends post, where I called it, “a great book if you have a long drive before you and curious, bored teens in the back of the car.” It is that, but it’s also a great book to keep around the family room, for your kids to pick up and read; it’s a great book for the nightstand, when you’re looking for something entertaining... Read more

SUMMER SYMPOSIUM: The Future of Catholicism

July 15, 2015 By Elizabeth Scalia

Way back in 2010 Patheos spent a summer looking at the Future of Religion and asking people where they thought the churches, and faith itself, was headed. Our collection of Catholic writers and thinkers looked at issues like the rise of the digital faithful, the possibility of married priests, the vocational numbers and what they mean, and much more. It was only five years ago, but upon re-reading some of those pieces, they seem to be from a wholly different... Read more

Climate Change, Planned Parenthood and Importance of Laudato Si’

July 15, 2015 By Elizabeth Scalia

It’s a now-infamous video: a female doctor contentedly munches on her salad while describing her method of carefully using “grabbers” to insure that, when she is crushing the limbs of a baby in utero, valuable organs like the heart and liver are not shredded, because people will pay good money for those. “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know [that they are marketable], so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below,... Read more

Catholicism’s Future: Love and Mercy, with Scoldings

July 15, 2015 By Elizabeth Scalia

“It is a fearsome thing, to fall into the hands of the living God.” (Hebrews 10:31) Who are people more likely to call a “scold”, Pope Francis or Pope Benedict? I don’t know the answer to that question. Perhaps someone, somewhere has the energy to study papal speeches and — possibly by comparing the number of times a pope said “Jesus Christ” to the number of times he said “capitalism” or “the poor” or “sin” or “the environment”, or “mercy”... Read more

Yes, the Pope’s Speech Should Bother Us, But…

July 14, 2015 By Elizabeth Scalia

A Prophetic Pope and the Tradition of Catholic Social Teaching by Very Rev. Robert Barron In the wake of the publication of Pope Francis’s encyclical letter Laudato Si’ and of the Pope’s recent speeches in Latin America, many supporters of the capitalist economy in the West might be forgiven for thinking that His Holiness has something against them. Again and again, Pope Francis excoriates an economy based on materialism and greed, and with prophetic urgency, he speaks out against a... Read more

NYTimes Bestsellers and 3 Pinpricks of Fascism

July 10, 2015 By Elizabeth Scalia

Okay, I’m not a Ted Cruz fan, (I’m not an anyone fan, at the moment), but that doesn’t mean I am not curious as to the NY Times so-called “standards”, here: The New York Times informed HarperCollins this week that it will not include Ted Cruz’s new biography on its forthcoming bestsellers list, despite the fact that the book has sold more copies in its first week than all but two of the Times’ bestselling titles, the On Media blog... Read more

Old Altar Boys at Mass: A Bold Witness

July 9, 2015 By Elizabeth Scalia

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 6:25 AM: In the palest light, I follow footprints left in the season’s first frost, just a few minutes behind the regulars. The church’s glaring overhead lights are softened by the flame-glow of a few dozen candles –real wax, seven-day candles that burn a constant supplication –and by the shimmer of one gloriously large and eye-catching Icon of the Crucifixion scene. I wait to stand my candle as a slope-shouldered older man first places his own and... Read more

Wuerl: “Disagreement is not discrimination”

July 9, 2015 By Elizabeth Scalia

This is from April, but I only saw it last night, and the sentiments bear noting, so… Cardinal Donald Wuerl, joined here by John Garvey, President of the Catholic University of America, makes an important and perfectly true distinction, here: Disagreement is not Discrimination: Recent laws enacted by the D.C. Council would have us believe otherwise. The Reproductive Health Non-Discrimination Amendment Act and the Human Rights Amendment Act purport to address “discrimination” by institutions such as ours, the Archdiocese of... Read more

2 Men Might Make a Lady, but Never a Woman

July 9, 2015 By Elizabeth Scalia

Colonel Pickering and Henry Higgins might have made a lady out of Eliza Doolittle, but together they could not have made the woman. Guest post by Russell Shaw Does Henry Higgins hold the key to settling the same-sex marriage debate? Not quite. But in the wake of the Supreme Court decision declaring a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, it’s well worth considering what Higgins has to tell us. In “My Fair Lady” Professor Higgins sings a song called “Why Can’t... Read more