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Father George Rutler is a renowned religious figure in the Catholic Church. He has dedicated his entire life to the lessons of God and has remained committed to teaching those lessons to fellow Catholic believers. From obtaining several degrees from numerous universities to preaching the word of the Lord to churches across New York City, Rutler has made a name for himself amongst the community. [snip] In 2020, Rutler was accused of sexual assault by a 22 year old woman. It was announced at the end of May 2021 that those charges have officially been dropped. Crisis magazine reported that...

NOVEMBER 15, 2020 FROM THE PASTOR Several of our Lord’s parables have to do with productivity in one form or another: The Sower, The Mustard Seed, The Tares, and then there is today’s, which is specifically about money (Matthew 25:14-30). In Greek currency, a talanton, as a measure of silver, was the equivalent of 6,000 Roman denarii. Establishing modern equivalences of money is notoriously difficult, but since a single denarius was worth a day’s wages, the value of a talent was great. This parable is about more than wealth management. In English, the word “talent” is an insightful pun, because...

In the margin of a public speaker’s manuscript was the notation: “Weak point. Shout.” Such is the rhetoric of those who place emotion over logic and make policy through gangs rather than parliaments. In Athens 2,400 years ago, Aristophanes described the demagogue as having “a screeching, horrible voice, a perverse, cross-grained nature and the language of the marketplace.” That marketplace today includes the biased media and the universities that have become daycare centers.The recent action of our government’s executive branch to protect our borders and enforce national security is based on Constitutional obligations (Art. 1 sec 10 and Art. 4...

As President-elect Donald Trump's campaign manager, Mrs. Kellyanne Conway helped pull off one of the most stunning political victories in U.S. history. So, why do the feminists hate her? Why isn't she being praised as a feminist icon by CNN or the gals from The View? Could it be because Kellyanne Conway is outspokenly pro-life?  And here's another hopeful sign:  President Donald Trump's top advisor will be an Irish-American, happily married Catholic mother of four who makes breakfast every morning for her kids and then goes to Mass. She's a daily communicant! And there's more: Kellyanne Conway reportedly took Donald Trump to meet Father George Rutler, the Anglican...

The queen consort of George V was consistent in her sense of duty and unswerving in how she expressed it. Crowned with dignity and corseted with confidence, at five feet six inches, Mary of Teck was the same height as the king, but they were called George the Fifth and Mary the Four-fifths. Of her many benefactions to Empire, not least, and perhaps most conspicuous, was her habit of removing climbing ivy from regal residences and public buildings. Her detestation of climbing ivy was a life-long obsession, quite the opposite of Queen AnneÂ’s love affair with boxwood. Even in...

Concerned parishioners gathered outside the residence of New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan on July 23, demonstrating against plans to remove a beloved icon from the Church of Our Saviour. Although Cardinal Dolan was out of town, archdiocesan officials met briefly with a few of the demonstrators, including Ken Woo, the artist who responsible for the stunning Christ Pantocrator. The meeting was described as “productive,” leaving some hope that the archdiocese would intervene to save the artwork. The Christ Pantocrator is the most important of a series of icons done by Woo at the request of Father George Rutler, who...

It was an evening in Manhattan twenty years ago, at the Union League Club, with Fr. George Rutler regaling us with his learning and wit.  At one moment he remarked, in that off-handed way of his, that he was at the keyboard of his piano when suddenly came coursing through his fingers to the keys was. . .the Lithuanian National Anthem.  He would weave together in his talks the most striking leaps and juxtapositions – from St. Anselm to Mark Twain, the Guelphs and the Ghibbelines to the Yankees and the Dodgers. But through it all was a penetrating...

Shortly before he died in Oxford in 1988, the Jesuit retreat master and raconteur, Bernard Bassett, in good spirits after a double leg amputation, told me that the great lights of his theological formation had been Ignatius Loyola and John Henry Newman, but if he “had to do it all over,” he’d only read Paul. “Everything is there.” There is a temptation to think that God gave us the Apostle to the Gentiles in order to have second readings at Sunday Mass, usually unrelated to the first reading and the Gospel. But everything truly is there. Paul was one of...

In few other places does the Church remain so prominent a force of charity, so public a teacher, so steady a font of grace and so vulnerable a target. In New York City, the churches are dressings on wounds of loneliness. In a city jammed with humanity, millions live as strangers, locked away behind headphones and dark sunglasses. The culture can be stiflingly secular, distractingly materialist, deafeningly loud, and restlessly in motion. Silence, and contemplation are not often valued unless you are willing to exchange Adoration for yoga class. Despair is the city’s greatest struggle and Kierkegaard was right. "The...

... Galileo, both of whom, of course, are more famous—at least in popular culture—than the Polish genius. From a recent column: Copernicus, son of a Polish father and German mother, was a priest and the temporary administrator of the diocese of Frauenburg. As a Renaissance man, he put Leonardo da Vinci in the shade, although painting seems to be the one art that did not claim him as a master. After studies in the universities of Krakow (where Pope John Paul II studied and taught), Bologna, Padua and Ferrara, he became a prominent jurist and mathematician and also practiced medicine...

During the persecution of Christians during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, the Roman prefect Rusticus was frustrated by the serene equanimity of the Christian convert Justin, a Platonic philosopher. The Romans considered Christianity a supserstitio parva (perverse superstition) and classified its morality as immodica (immoderate) for, among other things, refusing to abort the unborn and "expose" the newly born. Bereft of rational arguments against Christians, Nero blamed them for burning Rome, as some would blame the Jews for the bubonic plague. The demagogic policy, updated by Lenin and made a political craft in our day, was to "never let...

Bethany Was Near Jerusalem A homily on the occasion of the Memorial of William F. Buckley Jr. By Rev. George W. Rutler Editor's Note: The following homily was preached on the occasion of the Memorial Mass for Repose of the Soul of William F. Buckley Jr. on April 4, 2008, at St. Patrick's Cathedral. “Now Bethany was near Jerusalem. . . . ” John 11:18 In the village of Bethany was the house of Mary and her sister Martha and their brother Lazarus. There Jesus wept when Lazarus died, and then he called into the tomb and Lazarus came forth...

Lenten days bring two images immediately to mind, at least to my own idle mind. The first is of the bishops' gathering that first established Lent in 325 during the great ecumenical council in the Turkish town of Isnik — then called Nicaea. Some of the bishops there had been mutilated in the persecutions of the emperors Maximin and Licinius. A dubious record says there were 318 bishops in all, but we do know that their fifth canon ordered a time of fasting and penance lasting 40 days that we now call Lent, presumably because Moses, Elijah, and Christ had...