The Pope emeritus, Benedict XVI, has published a 6,000-word essay blaming clerical sex abuse on the “all-out sexual freedom” of the 1960s. Cultural and historical change have led to a “dissolution” of morality in Catholicism, he claims. As an example, he says despite allegations of clerical sex abuse of children dating back to decades before Read more
Hegel famously wrote that the owl of Minerva flies only at dusk, meaning that history’s unfolding is most plainly seen in retrospect. With all due respect to Herr Doktor, some moments are so transparently situated at a cultural crossroad that they illuminate history even in real time. Improbably enough, the #MeToo movement seems to be Read more
A new documentary Sexual Revolution: 50 Years Since Humanae Vitae was shown in Rome in early October in conjunction with Blessed Paul VI’s canonisation. The NZ premiere of the documentary, sponsored by the Catholic Enquiry Centre, will be shown as part of the Family Banquet Conference next month. The documentary seeks to explain the fallout of Read more
This coming July, we will mark the 50th anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s deeply controversial encyclical letter Humanae Vitae. I won’t bore you with the details of the innumerable battles, disagreements, and ecclesial crises that followed upon this text. Suffice it to say that this short, pithily argued letter became a watershed in the post-conciliar Catholic Read more
When German writer and public speaker Gabriele Kuby talks about the effects of the West’s student revolution of 1968 she knows her stuff. She was there, at the Free University of Berlin, studying sociology and gung-ho with the anti-authoritarianism of the era. There has been a revolution in her own life since then and she Read more
In early April 2014, German author Gabriele Kuby visited the Czech Republic to give a number of public presentations promoting her new book, The Global Sexual Revolution: The Destruction of Freedom in the Name of Freedom, recently translated to Czech. During her visit to Brno, I had a chance to interview Kuby about her book Read more