The Roman Catholic Church’s clergy sex abuse crisis has come roaring back to life as if it were the worst days of 2002, when the scandal tsunami out of Boston seemed to inundate the entire church. The shock waves this time came from substantiated sex abuse allegations that a well-known cardinal, Theodore McCarrick, a retired Read more
I’ve been teaching at Emory University for over 20 years, and every new year I begin to obsess about a question (mostly as I’m frantically trying to get my syllabus together for the new term) that’s at the center of my intellectual passion and personal livelihood: how do you convince people to study religion? For Read more
As children are put to death, Belgium’s experience shows the ‘slippery slope’ is real. One striking thing about modern Western societies is how quickly bioethical practices that would once have been shocking quickly become unremarkable. It happened with abortion, it happened with embryo selection, and now it is happening with euthanasia. Last week it emerged Read more
In the past four decades Ireland has become a different country, but you wouldn’t know it in Knock. In the small west of Ireland town that is home to the huge Marian shrine complex, it was hard to find a space on the tightly packed pews at 11am mass last week. The rows of the Read more
Some stories have the power to take us beyond words and break us open to new awareness. We call such stories parables because the telling sits on layers of deeper meaning, much of which cannot be put into language. Not all parables are in sacred scripture, but they can become sacred with reflection. I like Read more
A kid can pick up some handy information in Catholic school. The words to heartening songs. An understanding that human worth is inherent, unyoked to public accolades. The power of service over the power of self-gratification. A kid can pick up some not-so-handy information in Catholic school, too, but let’s save that discussion for another Read more
It’s often said that when America sneezes, the world gets a cold. In the time of Trump, it means we might worry that when America gets a little crazy, the rest of the world might go mad. In years past, New Zealand’s geographical isolation provided a measure of natural immunity to foreign viruses. Today, however, Read more
Last night I discovered that the Archdiocese of Washington, DC appears to have commissioned some PR help and created a website meant to support and/or protect the prelate’s reputation. You can find it at The Wuerl Record. * This is the sort of action we usually see being taken by a Chairman of the Board, Read more
I have noted with interest the recent correspondence from some of our retired bishops about how to respond to the dramatic decline in vocations to the priesthood. I celebrated my 48th anniversary of ordination at the end of July and am happily caring for two large parishes in south Liverpool. For most of the 1970s Read more
Early in the morning of Aug. 9, Argentina’s Senate soundly defeated a measure to legalize abortion through 14 weeks of pregnancy. (Their current law permits abortion in cases of sexual violence and to protect the mother’s health.) The intense debate—both in the culture at large and in the Senate chamber—often invoked a similar process that Read more