Why The World Hates the Catholic Church

Jody Bottum, peerless essayist and editor of the indispensable First Things, has a brilliant exploration of anti-Catholicism in the Weekly Standard. It is a long piece of work but well worth reading every word: Anti-Catholicism, Again

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Communion with the Church by Degrees of Fullness

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Irish pagans rejoice in the freedom to kill unborn children. In October 2014 I preached about a decision by the US Supreme Court which was a preview of the Obergefell decision that came in June 2015, and in part this is what I said: "It has been many decades, some would say centuries, since the Gospel of Jesus Christ was the primary engine for the formation of culture in the West, and now we are seeing the rapid abandonment of the Gospel as a source of law in the West. For fifty years and more the trajectory of law and culture in Europe and the United States has been away from the Christian worldview and towards a new paganism, particularly in regard to sex, marriage, reproduction and family life: no fault divorce, birth control, abortion, in vitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood, embryonic stem cell manipulation, assisted suicide, multiple remarriages, and now same sex marriage. These changes in law and custom are but a reflection of the post-Christian character of...
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On 12 October 2014, I preached at St. Mary's, Greenville about the wider theological and pastoral context of the legal and cultural debates over same sex marriage. Here is the text of that homily: As I explained last Sunday, the Synod of Bishops is meeting right now in Rome to discuss challenges to marriage and family life in the context of proclaiming the Gospel in our time, so it seems particularly appropriate that the Supreme Court of the United States announced last week that they would not accept appeals to several decisions by federal district courts which struck down laws against same sex marriage in five states. And by their refusal to hear those appeals, the nine Justices were declaring that the disputed decisions of the lower courts would stand, thus allowing same sex marriage to become law both in the five states which had appealed and in the other states which are included in the geographical areas of those district courts. Though isolated court battles will con...
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