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When Pope Benedict warned about “the Dictatorship of Relativism,” he meant it. Literally.This was hammered home not long ago when I was speaking to a group of students about the issue of same sex marriage. I prefaced the discussion with a description of relativism saying that this non-philosophy was now the mainstream, default setting in our society. “The way you can tell that relativism is mainstream,” I said, “is that there is no such thing as rational debate. In the absence of objective truth, there can be no debate, for a debate is dependent on the assumption that there...

A Hungarian cardinal set to play a key role in the upcoming Synod of Bishops on the family suggested Thursday that no change will result from the summit, either on Communion for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics or on broader matters such as contraception.Cardinal Péter Erdő said that talk of revisions on those fronts is the result of “a pressure with no foundation to change Church teaching.” Erdő was the relator — more or less the chairman — of last October’s synod, and will reprise his role this year. It’s an influential post, among other things giving him the chance...

MIAMI BEACH — Christians who have so far avoided controversial "culture war" issues will likely be pulled into those battles as their religious freedom becomes threatened due to gay marriage, Dr. John Inazu warned Monday. Theologically conservative Christian non-profit organizations, including churches, could face losing their tax exempt status or being shut down, and Christian doctors, lawyers, counselors and other professionals could be forced out of their professions, he explained. Inazu, associate professor of law and political science at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, was delivering a presentation, "Religious Liberty and the American Culture Wars," at the...

Monsignor Charles Pope writes, "The gospel from Sunday (John 15:1-8) presents us with an important meditation on the difference between love and kindness. Perhaps some further reflections from this gospel are in order today. There is an unfortunate tendency in our times to reduce love to kindness. Kindness is an aspect of love, but so is rebuke. It is an immature notion of love that reduces it merely to affirming, or that refers to proper correction as a form of “hate.” We saw in yesterday’s gospel that proper care involves the Lord “pruning” us so that we bear more fruit....

For some time, observers have expected the final outcome for Bishop Robert Finn, former head of the Kansas City-St. Joseph diocese, who was ordered by Vatican officials to tender his resignation last month. The predictable sides have lined up: either condemning and saying, ‘It’s about time,’ or defending him. With all the noise made, it may be difficult for most readers to tease out the truth, but an examination of the facts of the Finn case and that of another high-profile prelate may be enlightening. If Finn, why not the many, and much worse, others? With Finn’s 2012 conviction of...

Many supposed "theological differences" between Catholics and Evangelicals are, I think, founded in semantics rather than in substantial disagreement. For example, when I was an Evangelical one of the periodic arguments I ran across against Catholic moral theology was that the concept of mortal and venial sin is unbiblical. Sin is sin, say Evangelicals, and there's no good in trying to make out some sins as "minor." To us Evangelicals such nice distinctions smelled a great deal like rationalization and looked like an escape clause from the commandment "Be holy, for I, the Lord, am Holy." After all, James wrote,...

Last week I delivered a guest lecture at a Christian liberal arts college entitled “Each Day Dies With Sleep: Literary and Theological Reflections upon Mortality.” As I thought through the topic over the previous weeks, two superficially disparate questions puzzled me. Why is it that the people most vocally committed to causes connected to death (abortion, assisted suicide, euthanasia) are often the same who are committed to progressive sexual causes? And why do abortion advocates frequently see it not as a necessary evil but as a positive good? As to the first question, that the same people often, though not...

LONDON, May 7, 2015 (ChurchMilitant.com) - This Sunday, a cardinal of the Church will hold a Mass specifically for "LGBT Catholics" for the first time in the Church's nearly 2,000-year history. Cardinal Vincent Nichols of Westminster, England will visit a notorious gay-friendly parish in London and celebrate Mass for what's come to be known as the "Soho Mass." This is a Mass consistently catered toward a group of active homosexuals who expressly oppose the Church's teachings on homosexual activity. Cardinal Nichols has a shaky history with the Church's stance toward homosexuality. The group of "LGBT Catholics" in his archdiocese had...

As part of the reforms prompted by Pope Francis, Germany's Roman Catholic Church has decided that lay Catholic employees who divorce and remarry or form gay civil unions should no longer automatically lose their jobs. According to Christian Today, Catholic Bishops have voted to adjust Church labour law "to the multiple changes in legal practice, legislation and society" so employee lifestyles should not affect their status in the country's many Catholic schools, hospitals and social services. It was gathered that the change came as the worldwide Catholic Church debates loosening its traditional rejection of remarriage after a divorce and of...

The author of Why Catholics Are Right has ditched the Catholic Church. Michael Coren is a well-known writer and talk show host from Canada. He's perhaps best known for The Michael Coren Show and The Arena with Michael Coren on Canadian television, where he earned the reputation of being an unapologetic conservative. He's appeared on Church Militant's Mic'd Up program as recently as 2013, and Michael Voris was once a guest on The Michael Coren Show in 2011. When he first became a Christian in his twenties, he joined the Catholic Church. Soon afterward, though, he left Catholicism in favor...

Until his recent conversion to Anglicanism, the broadcaster and author Michael Coren was one of Canada’s best known Catholics. He has a Catholic wife and four Catholic children and is the author of books that include “Why Catholics Are Right.” So when he was formally welcomed into an Anglican congregation in Toronto the other day, after worshipping with them privately for a year, the news caused a stir in the Catholic world. False rumours were circulated about his motives. Old scandals from a career in punditry were dredged up. The uproar cost him several speeches to conservative American Catholic groups,...

Jimmy King, a Dallas Theological Seminary graduate who now serves as senior pastor of Proclamation Church in Orlando, accused the school said to be one of the top 20 seminaries in the U.S. of not providing him and other black graduates with enough support in finding employment, and further asserted that he was once told, "we've never placed a black graduate to a white church." King, who graduated from Dallas Theological Seminary in 2006 with a master of theology in pastoral ministry and leadership degree, according to his church's website, revealed during The Reconciled Church: Healing the Racial Divide Summit...

This past weekend, noted progressive-Christian writer Rachel Held Evans published a widely shared and widely read piece in the Washington Post decrying the Evangelical church’s shallow attempts to appeal to Millennials by trying to make church “cool.” Ms. Evans critiques hashtag campaigns, young-adult groups with names like “Prime” and “Vertical,” and concert-style worship services. She mocks talk of “market share” and “branding,” and in so doing sounds every bit as traditionalist as those who despise the praise choruses of the typical Evangelical megachurch and long for the simple “old-time religion” of their grandparents.But that’s not really her point. Evans...

By the Grace of G-d 25th of Shevat, 5746 Brooklyn, N.Y. Greeting and Blessing: This is to acknowledge receipt of your letter of Jan. 26th, in which you write about a serious problem. As requested, I will remember you in prayer for the fulfillment of your heart's desires for good. While all blessings come from HaShem [G‑d], a Jew is expected to do what is necessary in the natural order. In the matter of the said problem, you surely know that there are doctors and psychiatrists who treat it, and have been successful in many cases. I know of a...

The persistent problem of the so called Amendment to “Local Law 2” has been plaguing some people for several years. Although this problem has much wider national and international ramifications, the New York version of this problem has taken on a strange political hue. During the Purim Farbrengen (gathering) of 5746, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Shlita, addressed this issue. He touched upon the fundamental problem, its social, emotional and health risks, its psychological manifestations and its actual threat to society and individuals.1 At the same time, the Rebbe suggested clear-cut remedies and proposed a humane therapeutical approach, which takes account of...

Papal Efforts against Slavery:How the popes combated slaveryIntroduction There has not been an institution that has done more for the abolition of slavery as we know it than the Catholic Church. This is specifically true in regards to the constant efforts and admonitions against what is known today as chattel slavery, the unjust form of servitude which has existed ever since the time of the Age of Exploration, and which Pope Pius III once called a slavery “never before heard of.”1 Ever since the Early Church, the Catholic Church has done a great deal for the cause for human dignity,...

559 122 1 Total: 682 In a recent article in The Harvard Crimson, a student shared her story of having an abortion after her boyfriend broke up with her. She writes, “All I desperately wanted was to have my boyfriend back. I wanted him to hold me and let me cry into his chest, for him to tell me that everything was okay even though it wasn’t. But by the time I found out the truth, it was too late to get him back. He had started dating another girl two months after we broke up. I couldn’t tell him....

When it comes to the issue of abortion, does prayer work? The answer from the folks at 40 Days for Life and Bound4Life is a resounding yes. The folks at Bound4Life have profiled one story of a little girl who thanked a rally of 15,000 people for their prayers, which saved her from abortion. here, 40 Days for Life leader David Bereit is talking about the effectiveness of prayer and the 40 Days campaigns: In our work, unlike in pregnancy care centers, we rarely get to directly meet the lives saved. Bryan and Matt, you hear stories – I’ve heard...

Question: “Pastor John, what should a church council or board do if one of their pastors asks to officiate a same-sex wedding?” I don’t feel like I can answer that question without dropping one level down. This is so sensitive and explosive and politically agitating that I want to go down to the bottom, and then come back up to the practical question. The practical question is relatively easy once you get the other things, which are not easy, sorted out. The emotional and physical sensations that we call same-sex attraction are disordered emotions and disordered sensations. And that disordering...

Brethren, Peace be with you. Back in 2011 I wrote Do We Need to Use a Different Word for Marriage in the Church? and, Should Catholic Clergy Cease Signing Civil “Marriage” Licenses? I say Aye!, in which I supported the idea of getting the Church out of the business of issuing marriage licenses, an idea originally put forward by Monsignor Charles Pope of the Archdiocese of Washington, DC. Today, Father (Protopresbyter) John Whiteford, an Orthodox priest from Houston, TX formulated on his blog a slightly different proposal which has the state, not the churches, get out of the business of licensing...