By Carrie Gress

I was stopped in my tracks recently by details of the latest rape/murder of a 12-year-old girl in Texas by two Venezuelan men. Perhaps it is because I have daughters nearly the same as this child, but the depth of its vileness sunk in deep.

Upon reflection, what is surprising is that such things should still surprise us. Faith and family have been surgically removed right under our noses and replaced with practical atheism and the endless pursuit of pleasure. No one should be surprised by the results of a culture so distracted, disinterested, and disengaged.

In the 1940s, Archbishop Fulton Sheen presciently warned us of what we ought to expect. "Divine ecstasy brings about an elevation of the being, of creative and formative power; the demonic ecstasy brings about weakening of being, disintegration and decay." We are living in the filth of this diabolical disintegration and decay right now.

The ideology behind this development, few people know, was outlined in the 1930s by Marxist thinker Wilhelm Reich in his book called The Sexual Revolution. A blend of Freud and Marx, it promoted the idea of radical individualism, self-expression, and self-discovery pursuant to any sort of sexual desire. The revolution that turned everything upside down wasn't just some accidental concoction of too many drugs, too much free love, and too much societal upheaval. It was planned three decades prior. The net effect has been clear, as my colleague, Noelle Mering, has said: "The ideology of the sexual revolution makes men soft, women hard, and children unprotected."

But how?

Men are naturally going to become morally soft when they have no purpose to pursue, or anyone to provide for or protect. The free love long promoted by feminism made women available sexually, with contraception and abortion voiding its consequences. Who needed a wife? And yet without her and the naturally resulting children, vision evaporates, porn beckons, moral softness ensues.

What about tough women? The hookup culture has made women merely one among many. In such an environment, it seems a luxury few can afford to think that any man might love and cherish her forever. Apps like Tinder and the goal of high body counts packed off the notion of courtship like a mothballed museum piece.

Feminism offers women a protective layer to steel the female heart against vulnerability. With enough cunning, women try to play the game better than men do. It looks like offense, but it is really defense against being hurt and cast aside. No expectations means that one's expectations can never be dashed.

The toughness doesn't end there. The fierceness women previously displayed to protect their children now has a new "child" to project; many women can be stirred up instantly not because of some existential threat to her offspring, but to the existential threat to her capacity to kill her offspring.

And children are paying the price. Those not lost to abortion enter life with a myriad of previously unthinkable issues, generally focused on a type of sexual grooming and abuse: incest, child pornography, human trafficking, and transitioning bodies. The abuse of children has long existed, but the current scale and social acceptance is unrivaled.

It is hard to speak of these three groups - weak men, tough women, and unprotected children - in a cohesive way. They no longer resemble a family but walking wounded. Order has been obliterated.

As Catholics, we speak little about divine ecstasy, associating it with a limited handful of unapproachable saints, like Bernini's St. Theresa frozen in white marble. The divine ecstasy, then, of which Archbishop Sheen speaks seems foreign. But perhaps it is not so far from our grasp?

The word ecstasy comes first from the Greek ekstasis, or "standing outside of oneself." Divine ecstasy, then, is simple. We are pulled outside of ourselves in sacrifice for others. It is our daily call in whatever vocational form it may take. This is why the fruit i...

But first a note from Robert Royal: Happy Fourth of July to all our TCT readers. We bring you two important commentaries about our nation on this day. Luis Lugo explains the proper relationship between the things that are Caesar's and those that are not, and the significance of that distinction for all of us. And Michael Pakaluk, drawing on the wise words of Ronald Reagan, reminds us how we might approach the most significant moral question of the current presidential campaign: abortion.

Now for Luis Lugo's column, "Strangers and Citizens."

As Christians in the United States celebrate Independence Day 2024, we are doing so in what is now an essentially post-Christian society. Though we rightly lament our country's move away from Biblical values, especially as secular forces adopt an increasingly militant anti-Christian posture, our present predicament does have one great advantage - it makes us more conscious of the transitoriness of all our earthly loves, including our love of country.

Our situation is not unlike that which the Church experienced during the first three or four centuries of its existence, when it lived in the midst of a pre- rather than a post-Christian culture. That's why the theme of exile loomed so large in those early days. St. Peter, for example, urged his readers to live as "sojourners and exiles." (First Peter 2:11) And St. Paul explained to the Church in Philippi why this is so: because "our citizenship is in heaven." (Philippians 3:20)

We are told that those great heroes of the faith inscribed in the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews all had this in common: they "acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth;" as pilgrims, they desired "a better country, that is, a heavenly one." (11:13, 16)

This may help explain those strange-sounding salutations we sometimes read in the writings of the early Apostolic Fathers. For example, Clement of Rome's Epistle to the Corinthians, written around the year 100, contains this: "The Church of God which resides as a stranger in Rome to the Church of God which is a stranger at Corinth."

The danger of sacralizing the temporal becomes less of a temptation when the values of the earthly city stand in sharp contrast to those of the heavenly city. Truth be told, when the values of these two realms were much more closely aligned in our own history, we Christians perhaps were too prone to blur the lines between Church and country and rely too heavily on politics to advance a Christian vision of life.

However congenial the previous arrangements may have been, and however rightly appreciative we were for them (grateful immigrants like me, especially), we must acknowledge the temptation of a "God and Country" patriotism to assign an almost quasi-redemptive mission to the United States. As Msgr. James Shea has forcefully reminded us, however, "The Blessed Mother was immaculately conceived, not the American Republic."

As for unduly elevating the importance of politics, we'd all do well to heed the wisdom of the late Chuck Colson's advice to his politically active fellow Evangelicals that "The Kingdom of God does not arrive on Air Force One."

But we must not push this point too far. For the same apostles who addressed the early Christians as strangers and foreigners also reminded them that they were also citizens of their earthly country. St. Paul, for instance, writing in a decidedly pagan context, instructs Timothy: "I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all peoples, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way." (first Timothy 2:1-2; ESV)

It's clear that for St. Paul this did not mean simply being willing subjects. His instructions to Titus, for example, included the admonition that the latter should remind the Christians under his charge "to be ready for every good work." (Titus 3:1) This was essentially the same message that G...

By Francis X. Maier

Like a lot of people, I watched last week's presidential debate and found it disturbing. Others have analyzed the event in granular detail. That's not my purpose here. After a few early minutes of restraint, Trump lapsed into campaign stump mode, with a special guest appearance by his aggressive, exaggerating self. Biden's performance was captured best by a London Daily Mail headline: "The leader of the free world is away with the fairies. Biden is toast."

Both men accused each other of lying, which was a bit like two pots calling the kettle black. Trump did seem genuinely troubled by the idea of late-term abortions. Biden said the same. But Biden, now a vocal champion of Roe v. Wade, was clueless - in fact, flatly wrong - about what Roe actually permitted.

Simply put: For faithful Catholics, neither man is "our guy." Neither is fully and convincingly pro-life in his convictions. So how should we think about the next four months of pre-election bickering? Three observations:

First, some context: If last week's debate was disturbing, it was also "apocalyptic" in the original sense of the Greek word apokalyptein, meaning to uncover or reveal. The debate showed us an accurate portrait of our current leadership class in action. It's a strange day when the Bill Clinton years start to look good. Despite his many flaws, Clinton had the prudence to compromise and tack to the center in the face of principled resistance. Those days are gone.

American politics has always been bruising, but our public life has usually proceeded within certain legal, or at least assumed and broadly shared, guidelines of propriety. Now it's an ongoing cage fight driven by deep demographic, economic, moral, and technological changes - which then produce confusion and anxiety, which then result in a generalized virus of anger.

The top 10 percent of our country's households, for example, command more than two-thirds of our national wealth. The bottom 50 percent of America's households have a mere 2.5 percent of the wealth. And the gulf between the two is widening. Everyday people aren't stupid, despite what the Boston-Washington corridor may think. They sense something is very wrong.

In effect, both Trump and Biden are creatures of the breakdown in a shared American identity. And the result is a version of late-stage Roman Republic turmoil. As the historian Edward Watts noted here:

When politicians working within the framework of the Republic failed to reach a consensus about how to respond to their citizens' concerns, some of their rivals opportunistically exploited their inaction by pushing for radical policies in ways that breached the boundaries of acceptable political behavior. The quest for consensus that had made Rome's republic so stable in previous centuries was quickly replaced by a winner-takes-all attitude toward political disputes.

Elsewhere Watts adds a vindictive misuse of the law and "constitutional trickery" to punish political opponents to his Roman list. And that might sound familiar. The unhinged malice directed at recent Supreme Court decisions by "progressive" elected officials and media outlets is a sign of just how irrational our political discourse has become.

Second, despite - or rather because of - the bitter antagonisms in our country's public square, Catholics have a duty to be engaged in civic life and to work to improve society in whatever way we can. We can't simply withdraw from the duties of citizenship. And we can't abandon public life to those with destructive, radically opposed beliefs to our own. To do so betrays our baptismal call to witness Jesus Christ and serve as leaven in the world.

But in an election year when both major candidates are very far from perfect, how do we do that? How should we vote?

There's no easy answer. Each of us needs to follow his or her own conscience. But conscience isn't a free-floating personal opinion machine. It needs to be formed in the truth of Church teaching and a...

By Fr. Thomas G. Weinandy, OFM, Cap.

I was in Vienna recently, speaking at a Thomistic symposium celebrating the 800th anniversary of the founding of the Dominican House of Studies there. From my room in the priory, I could view a park about a hundred or so yards away. On one of the days, there was a Gay Pride event in that park with a Gay Pride parade. Tens of thousands of people participated in this event and parade. The parade went on for over four hours! The participants were - to put it mildly - provocatively dressed and brazenly chanted militant gay mantras.

Moreover, during Pride Month, which only ended yesterday, it seemed that the whole of Vienna was festooned with Gay Pride flags and banners - government buildings, libraries, museums. The entire metropolis gave the impression of celebrating and affirming members and supporters of LGBTQIA+. I can only assume that since June is now Gay Pride Month, that what I witnessed was replicated in other countries and cities.

It is a strange time. Much of the world appears to be fixated on and obsessed with homosexuality, and very much in a fanatical and addictive manner. The very air of these gatherings and parades conveys an implicit but fierce anti-Christian prejudice; an arrogant declaration that "We have commandeered the culture, and we will not be hindered or stopped." And society, particularly Western society, has readily acquiesced.

What troubles me almost as much as this gay-pride militancy is the Church's ambiguous response. Pope Francis has bemoaned the "air" of homosexual culture within the Vatican and seminaries. He has even employed derogatory, inflammatory, and insulting words in referring to homosexuals and acts of sodomy - terms like "faggots" and "faggotry."

Over the years, however, I have learned, as have many others, that one should not give much credence to what Pope Francis says. It is what he does that reveals his true intentions. What he has done in relationship to homosexuality bears clear testimony to this hermeneutical principle.

For example, he appointed Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich as general rapporteur of the XVIth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops - i.e., the Synod on Synodality. Hollerich once stated, though later he somewhat mitigated his stance, that the Church's magisterial and perennial teaching concerning the intrinsic sinfulness of homosexual acts is wrong and needs to change. "I think it's about time we did a fundamental revision of the doctrine here."

Robert McElroy, the bishop of San Diego, who was made a Cardinal by Pope Francis while the archbishops of San Francisco and Los Angeles were passed over, has also issued revisionist statements about homosexual acts, implying that, given from what we have now learned from the social sciences concerning human nature, homosexuality needs to be doctrinally and pastorally reconsidered.

Likewise, Fr. James Martin, S.J., a close confidant of Pope Francis, has for many years been a supporter of gay culture. Pope Francis has met with and even applauded the leadership of New Ways Ministry, a group condemned by the Vatican decades ago and further criticized by the USCCB in 2010 for its pro-gay advocacy.

In the wake of the African bishops' rejection of the blessing of gay couples (as allowed by the recent document Fiducia supplicans), Pope Francis downplayed their opposition by stating that homosexuality is not part of their culture. But the acceptability of sodomy has nothing to do with one's culture - at least for a Catholic. It's objectively a serious sin in itself, no matter in what culture it is committed.

Recently, as well, Pope Francis appointed Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça as a member of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of Faith. De Mendonça has written a preface to a book by Sister Maria Teresa Forcades i Vila in which she advocates for abortion, arguing that it is compatible with the Gospel. The Cardinal praised her "courage." She is also the author of a book entitled: ...

By Robert Royal

Jesus said (Matthew 7:1): "Judge not lest ye be judged." And many people since, including many Christians catechized by modern culture, have translated this to mean that the whole law and the prophets - indeed, the whole teaching of Christianity, is that Christians should simply refrain from assessing what others are and do. Especially, it seems, if what they are and do contradicts Christianity. It's devilish madness, of course. And even as a matter of sheer logic, so obviously impossible and self-contradictory, that it's hard to believe such nonsense has become so widely accepted as the very essence of what it means to be Christian.

And yet it has. And has been reinforced - intentionally or not - even within the Church. It's become tiresome to have to point out how even the current pope and others close to him feed these confusions. But let us gird up our loins and, once again, try to make sense about this crucial matter.

The root of the recent problem began, of course, with the pope's infamous remark - "Who am I to judge?" - on a plane back from Brazil early in his pontificate. A reporter asked about Battista Ricca, a prelate with a notoriously homosexual past in Uruguay, whom Francis had just appointed as director of the Casa Santa Marta, the Vatican guest house where the pope has chosen to live. (Francis's remark actually wasn't a judgment about homosexuality in general. It was - properly - conditional: "If someone is gay and is searching for the Lord and has good will, then who am I to judge him?")

The smart-aleck response to "Who am I to judge?," however, has been given for all time: "Who do you need to be?" And anyway, the reporter hadn't asked what Francis thought about homosexuality. If you're the pope, you're the one who has to decide who is suitable, and not, for many sensitive positions serving God's faithful people in the Church - like the place where you and many of your colleagues will be living. You're not, at the moment, being asked about someone's eternal destiny. So why pivot to a current cliché?

There's no avoiding making such judgments, which may prove to be wise - or, as in this case, not, given the predictable misinterpretation of the pope's words. And in the Church, as in all human institutions, such judgments inescapably involve not only competence, but morals.

Jesus did not prohibit making decisions about such matters because it's a sheer impossibility. We can't help judging, for instance, that a child abuser or wife beater or crooked politician is doing "wrong" in earthly terms - whatever it may say about the state of a person's soul. In fact, it would be wrong not to view them as doing something wrong. It would be an abdication of our moral sense as human beings. Can anyone who is not morally blind not make such judgments?

And yet, prominent churchmen defend such absurdities. Paolo Ruffini, prefect of the Vatican's Dicastery for Communication, grew notably agitated in Atlanta recently when he was asked whether Marko Rupnik's artwork - artwork linked with the blasphemous sexual perversions he visited on more than two dozen women religious - should be removed: "Well, I think you're wrong. I think you are wrong. I really think you are wrong." He added, of course: "Who am I to judge the Rupnik stories?" (Who asked you to?) "As Christian(s), we are asked not to judge. . . . [such removals are] not a Christian response."

Really? Ruffini doesn't seem aware that his own (thrice-expressed) judgment that calling for such removals is "wrong" and "non-Christian" stands in logical contradiction with his blanket condemnation of judging. In this, he's sadly following the example of his boss, who also often speaks of not-judging, but tirelessly condemns - from a distance - the rigid, the backwardists, seminarians who like a bit of finery, TLM lovers, opponents of increased immigration, etc.

On the specific question of removing Rupnik's art, decisions are probably best left to authorities who can ...

By David G Bonagura, Jr.

In a side chapel in Rome's Saint Mary Major Basilica, the mortal remains of Cardinal Federico Cesi (1500-1565) rest beneath a fabulous funerary monument. Cesi had a storied career in the Church: he served as bishop of multiple dioceses, held high-ranking offices within the College of Cardinals, participated in three papal conclaves, was friends with the future saints Philip Neri, Charles Borromeo, and Ignatius Loyola. He commissioned the creation of the side chapel, now named for him, where his bones rest, opposite his brother, who was also a cardinal.

Countless other cardinals, the most illustrious leaders of the Catholic Church, line the walls of other churches throughout Rome with similar monuments. Some cardinals commissioned their monuments themselves while they were still alive. Others, such as Federico Cesi, were given monuments after their deaths by friends and family. In either case, these monuments were sculpted to communicate the grandeur of a past life to posterity. In the sculpture, it is hoped, the deceased will find some form of immortality.

Yet, with the passage of time, these once renowned cardinals have been forgotten, and their monuments catch only fleeting glances as visitors peruse other, more interesting adornments in the churches where they rest.

The cardinals' vain attempts at achieving lasting fame here on earth warn us that only God will remember our lives. And that should be all the motivation we need for our actions.

Funerary monuments are the grandest examples of the complex interplay between our innate desire for earthly immortality and the supernatural promise of eternal life. Though we believe in faith that the latter is the only goal that matters, too often we operate, to our own diminishment, as if eternal life on earth is our true end.

The desire to live on after death follows from our instinct for self-preservation. We shudder at death and the seeming oblivion it brings. So, we constantly seek ways to prolong life and to secure a place in this world after death. The latter, notes Joseph Ratzinger in Introduction to Christianity, we pursue chiefly through having children and through fame.

The desire to reproduce is natural; the stain of Original Sin generates the drive for fame, which can fast become a rabidly self-consuming exercise. In longing to be known, to be remembered, to be honored, we turn inward into ourselves - and away from God. Hence working for fame brings not eternal life, but a form of eternal punishment. "Self-made immortality," Ratzinger writes, "is really only a Hades, a sheol: more nonbeing than being."

Catholic piety, following the commandments of our Lord to "go and sit in the lowest place" and to "not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth," offers a remedy to overcome the errant desire for fame: the Litany of Humility, whose every petition lands like a punch in the gut:

From the desire of being honored, deliver me, O Jesus. From the desire of being praised, deliver me, O Jesus. From the fear of being forgotten, deliver me, O Jesus. That others may be praised, and I go unnoticed, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

Prayers do not work like weedkiller, however. These abhorred desires never disappear, and we can add to the complexity we feel in combatting them: certain pursuits of fame and of lasting immortality - donating items in a church or school that bear our names, erecting or extending buildings, endowing institutions, writing books, creating art, establishing programs - can bestow charity and opportunity for posterity that would not have existed otherwise.

Ironically, while backing ourselves into a self-created Hell in pursuit of what cannot be satisfactorily obtained, we can somehow give others a touch of Heaven.

Such charitable works also provide posterity with culture, with history, with an awareness of place among the great cloud of witnesses. If every lasting human achievement were composed anonymously, each succeeding age wo...

We honor St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More as models of lonely courage during "Religious Freedom Week," which comes to a close today. As Kipling would put it in another context, they kept their heads "when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you."

Fisher and More kept their heads spiritually and morally. They lost them literally in 1535 on Henry VIII's orders; Fisher first on 22nd June, their joint feast day, and More on 6th July.

Yet even as we honor them, their example is difficult for us to fully appreciate.

What made Fisher and More's fidelity stand out was precisely that it was lonely; the vast majority of their peers went along with Henry's usurpation of Rome. Fisher was the only English bishop who resisted. More was singular amongst his friends and colleagues; even his family doubted his stand.

Had we lived in the early sixteenth century, we would have seen that bending to Henry's will was the norm. It was Cardinal Thomas Wolsey of York, Lord Chancellor, who was England's senior cleric, not Fisher, the bishop of Rochester. Wolsey was vigorous in advancing "the king's great matter" before Henry lost confidence in him.

Fisher only got the red hat of a Cardinal when already imprisoned; Henry greeted the news by observing if the pope sent the red hat to London there would be no head to wear it.

Our experience of tyranny in the last century is not principally that of the lonely witness, but tends toward the white-robed army of martyrs. We are more likely to know about confessors of the faith, not collaborators with the regime.

Consider the honor roll of the twentieth century, only counting Cardinals:

Sigitas Tamkevičius of Lithuania,

Blessed Stefan Wyszynski, primate of Poland,

Adam Sapieha of Kraków,

Kazimierz Swiatek of Minsk,

Blessed Aloysius Stepinac of Zagreb,

Josyf Slipyj of Lviv,

Josef Beran of Prague,

Alexandru Todea of Romania,

Jozef Mindszenty, the primate of Hungary,

Ernst Simoni of Albania,

Francis Xavier Cardinal Nguyen van Thuan of Saigon,

and Ignatius Kung of Shanghai, to whom we shall return.

Those are only the most prominent red-robed prelates. Entire national episcopates stood firm. Groups of martyrs from Mexico, Spain, Italy and Poland have already been raised to the altars.

The prominent collaborator, as played by Wolsey and later Thomas Cranmer, has not been our recent experience. While detracting not at all from the lions of the last century, they had, in large measure, the encouragement that comes from solidarity with others.

Courageous Chinese witnesses today are undermined by their peers who go along with the regime.

There is the heroic Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong publisher and faithful Catholic. Jailed since 2020 under China's new "national security" law, Lai's trial is currently underway. There is little doubt about how it will end.

Lai made his billions in retail before turning to journalism, and could easily have gone abroad when Beijing started turning the screws on Hong Kong. He is not one to flee the storms; he remained, a man for all seasons.

Lai, like More, knows the added pain of being persecuted a regime that has the cooperation of his fellow Catholics, John Lee and Carrie Lam. Lee is chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region; Lam is his predecessor in a role which now consists of enforcing Beijing's erosion of civil liberties in Hong Kong.

No doubt Lai's jailers taunt him with the fact that his fellow Catholics have seen their way clear to support the very regime that is incarcerating him.

Jimmy Lai was baptized in 1997 just as the British handed Hong Kong back to China. He was baptized by Joseph Zen, the new coadjutor bishop of Hong Kong (wisely appointed by St. John Paul the Great before Chinese control took effect).

Zen would become bishop of Hong Kong in 2002 and was created a cardinal in 2006 by Pope Benedict XVI. Zen plays the role of Fisher today.

He has not been imprisoned, but his strong voice against collaboration with the Chinese Communist r...

By David Warren

"There are nights when you can't even give it away," said the young woman, laying on the drollery.

She was of course indulging in fierce satire; being colorful, "rhetorical," rather than bad. She had no reputation for acting louchely. But thanks to the political correctness pathogen, the language has been spayed.

You can, in practice, give "it" away, though you may not, ever, give "it" away, according to the consensus of Western, which is to say Christian, which means Catholic par excellence, thinkers.

It might be to your advantage, at least temporarily, or you might believe it is to your advantage, to become a slave. The alternative might be to be slaughtered by the Barbary pirates, as American sailors discovered in the years just following the Declaration of Independence.

And verily, it is inconvenient to be murdered.

Yet even to some non-Catholic observers, too, death is preferable to slavery. "Give me liberty, or give me death," according to the high secularist Patrick Henry, about the same time. It was the British, rather than the Arabs, who were inspiring his "phobia."

But death seems - for some poor souls - also preferable to pain, including the psychic pain of depression. For instance, in Canada today, and in several U.S. states, the citizen may opt for the "MAID," meaning "medical assistance in dying," or euthanasia, as it used to be called.

If, as in my own case, you have had close friends choose this manner of departure, who were desperately ill and close to death anyway, you may be tempted to excuse them, as we excused the office workers who leapt out the windows of the World Trade Center, rather than be fried on 9/11. It just makes your life a fraction shorter.

Should Christ have opted for the Roman sword to be inserted into his side while he was still quite conscious on the Cross? I would guess that any Christian would answer NO, on behalf of Jesus. For Christ, who was God, understood "inalienable"; and we understand it, when applied to Him.

Indeed, the suicide of Judas Iscariot may have been his most self-destructive act; a more grievous sin than turning in Jesus to the authorities. For Judas could still confess and regret this latter decision, and plead for absolution, as it were. But arguably, this possibility lapsed when he hanged himself.

I will not enter into theological controversy on the question of post-mortem confession; leave this to the liberals. We have enough to consider within the boundaries of our lives.

No confession is actually needed from the unborn, whose right to life, as human beings, is nevertheless inalienable.

The notion of what is inalienable is known to most of us only from its appearance in American founding documents. Thomas Jefferson used "unalienable" in early drafts of the Declaration of Independence, the opposite of "alienable," which has gone out of style. It wasn't a Catholic concept, but a Christian and rational, legal word, though now it is perhaps understood only by Catholics.

Your rights, your freedoms, are inalienable. This is because they were bestowed by God. And there is a difficulty with all divine gifts, as even the pre-Christian, pagan Greeks realized, with frightening clarity.

From the moment when you came to be, you were stuck with them. There is no escape.

You CAN'T give them away, because they are not yours to give. You can't abandon this birthright, just as you can't abandon the sex with which you were created. Or rather, you can, thanks to the latest medical technology, which allows you to override God's judgment - for a while.

By submitting to other popular fashions, or to a government's tyrannical demands, you are verily abandoning, often selling, your birthright. And you do this whether or not your American citizenship papers were in order.

Of course, one might take this too far. One might decide that many fluffy and imaginative whims were one's birthright, that have nothing to do with God. You know they don't.

It is, for instance, an open ...

By Stephen P. White

When a priest has been credibly accused of the physical, psychological, spiritual, and sexual abuse of several dozen women over the course of more than three decades, simply moving him to another jurisdiction and returning him to ministry might seem like an obviously bad idea. This is true even - perhaps especially - when the priest in question is a world-famous artist.

If the same priest, while further investigations into mounting abuse allegations are ongoing, has been excommunicated for attempting to absolve an accomplice in sins against the Sixth Commandment, it might not be prudent to invite him to preach retreats at the Vatican.

And if this priest (if you haven't already guessed, we're talking about Fr. Marko Rupnik) has also been expelled from his religious order (the Jesuits) for "stubborn refusal to observe his vow of obedience" specifically in refusing to comply with restrictions placed on him in light of those numerous "very highly credible" abuse allegations, one might think it unwise to continue to promote his work through official Church outlets.

One might even be tempted to think that, given the Church's decades-long struggles to combat the scourge of clerical sexual abuse - vows of greater transparency, legal reforms, apologies, and professions of closeness to victims of abuse, billions of dollars spent on legal settlements, scores of diocesan bankruptcies, millions of faithful scandalized, credibility squandered with generations of Catholics, and incalculable harm done to the evangelical witness of the Church - given all that, one might think that deciding to use some other religious art - any other art - as the background to news stories and the liturgical calendar on a Vatican website would be a no-brainer, the lowest of low-hanging fruit.

One might think all of these things, but apparently one would be wrong. Somewhere along the way, the presumption of Rupnik's innocence in a legal context has transmogrified into an obligation of promotion, at least in the realm of Vatican communications.

This, at least, seems to be the considered view of Dr. Paolo Ruffini, the prefect of the Vatican Dicastery on Communications. Ruffini made that clear last week when, in remarks to the Catholic Media Conference in Atlanta, he responded to questions from journalists about his dicastery's continued use of Rupnik's art with a question of his own:

"Do you think that if I put away a photo of [Rupnik's] art from. . .our website, I will be closer to the victims?" Ruffini asked. "Do you think so?" The question wasn't rhetorical and, receiving an affirmative response, Ruffini flatly disagreed, "I think you're wrong. I think you are wrong. I really think you are wrong."

Not just wrong, it seems, but judgmental. Un-Christian, even.

Ruffini argued that the ongoing canonical processes against Rupnik make it presumptuous to stop using his art until a final verdict is in. "Who am I to judge?" he mused, as though the "processes" by which Rupnik was excommunicated (subsequently - and surprisingly - lifted) and dismissed from the Jesuits over these matters count for nothing. Ruffini also saw fit to mention that Rupnik is only accused of having abused dozens of adult women, not children. "We are not talking about abuse of minors," a point not lacking in legal relevance but of questionable moral significance to the question of whether or not to continue displaying his artwork.

Ruffini maintains that removing Rupnik's art - physically removing it from chapels and churches, but also, presumably, from the Vatican website - is "not a Christian response." "The closeness of the Church to any victims (of clerical abuse) is clear," he insisted.

Clear to whom?

I don't know if, at this point, deciding to no longer feature Rupnik's art on the Vatican website would show closeness to victims of abuse, but I do know that continuing to feature it over any and all objections communicates callousness, if not outright contempt.

I also kno...

By Msgr. Charles Fink

Let me be perfectly clear, as the politicians like to say: I have no vested interest in promoting the traditional Latin Mass. In fact, I was brought up Episcopalian and so, if overcome by a fit of nostalgia, I would pine for the King James Version of the Bible and liturgy modeled on the unsurpassably elegant English of the old Book of Common Prayer. Moreover, I entered the Catholic Church after the close of the Second Vatican Council and didn't experience a Tridentine Mass until I was thirty or so years into my priesthood, serving as Director of Spiritual Formation in a seminary.

That Mass was offered once a semester, as I recall, so that the seminarians would be familiar with it. I can't say how many were transported by the experience. I wasn't. I sometimes joke that the Holy Spirit's primary motive in permitting the almost complete abandonment of Latin liturgy in favor of the vernacular was to make possible my ordination, for I have grave doubts that I could ever have mastered Latin. And even now, if suddenly Latin Masses were restored and mandated, I would probably have to slip into invisibility and seek permission to offer private Masses in English.

I am certainly, then, no strident advocate or promoter of the traditional Latin Mass and even more certainly no questioner of the validity or efficacy of the Mass I've been celebrating daily for nearly fifty years. That said, I can affirm without hesitation that some of the finest, most dedicated, most pastoral, most faithful priests I have known over the course of these many decades, priests of all ages, have loved the traditional Latin Mass and have wished, and continue to wish, that it were made available to the faithful whose experience of it has been very different from my own.

Many of these faithful are young, and among them quite a few feel the tug of a religious vocation. Some few of these may be extreme in their criticism of the Novus Ordo and in their desire, should they be ordained, to serve only those whose liturgical vision coincides with theirs. But they are the exception, not the rule.

So I ask myself, how is that in a Church of multiple approved liturgical rites and many cultural adaptations of liturgical practice, a Church that is willing to reach out without reserve to Communist China (which brutally persecutes religious minorities), and to the LGBTQ community, which recently showed its utter disdain for all things Catholic by turning a funeral liturgy at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City into a circus, the Vatican cannot find it in its compassionate and accompanying heart to allow Catholics who love the traditional Latin Mass, which existed for centuries, to worship in the way they wish, with the Church's blessing.

Doing so might even contribute to easing the strain of having to celebrate Masses in dozens of languages on any given Sunday in the same diocese.

Years ago, an elderly woman in a parish where I was the pastor approached me with tears in her eyes. I hadn't seen her in quite a while, and she wanted to explain. She loved our parish, she said, but especially after the death of her husband, she was emotionally drained, grieving, and trying to feel as at home with the Novus Ordo as she had with the Tridentine Mass. And so she had found a parish where she did feel at home and comforted. She continued to support our parish, but on Sundays would go off to another church, one I'm pretty sure was not at the time approved by Rome.

What does the Vatican have to say to such a person, "Let her eat cake"? Granted, she was elderly and emotionally attached to something she had actually known and loved most of her life. Granted, this is not the case with most of those currently enamored of the traditional Latin Mass. Nevertheless, many of these Catholics are experiencing God, His grace, and His transcendent love at this Mass in a way they do not at the Novus Ordo (in the way, I repeat, that I do). Why impugn their motives? Why mock the...