Yesterday, something very good happened and the University of Notre Dame was part of it. As you are no doubt aware, Notre Dame, the Archdioceses of New York and Washington and 40 other Catholic institutions joined in a lawsuit against the Obama Administration's unconstitutional abridgement of religious liberty via the HHS mandate.

Led by Cardinal Dolan, the US Bishops have been rock solid on this issue and they continue to impress. It is immensely gratifying to say that while this steadfast resistance to such infringement might not have been expected from the Bishops just a few short years ago, we have almost come to expect it now and that is amazing in and of itself. The Holy Spirit...READ MORE

I have always presumed that comment box on Catholic sites (or any religious sites) provided a unique distance and anonymity that allows commenters to behave badly. Among the most misbehaved are atheist commenters who prowl around comboxes making vicious, insulting, and often vacuous comments while feeling so superior in the process. If you have been around Catholic comboxes for any length of time, you have seen them. No more explanation is needed.

Like I said, I presumed this to be strictly a combox phenomenon for while I have met many atheists in my life, I have never met one who behaves in person like these others do in comboxes. I have never met one who behaved like they do, until...READ MORE

What if you went to a casino, sat down at a blackjack table, put up your chips and won 32 hands in row. You would naturally think that either a)the game is fixed in your favor or b)you are the luckiest person in the world. Either way, it is good to be you. So what would you say to the person who won 32 hands in a row cashes in his chips, hides the money in his mattress, and will never come within 10 miles of the casino convinced that he can never ever win?

You would think that such a person was negative beyond belief and a scaredycat. But what, instead of just chips and money, with every winning hand you protected real people, real souls, and real institutions and the only cost of...READ MORE

Congratulations class of 2012.  It is my great pleasure and privilege to address you on this momentous occasion in your lives.

I know today is all about you, so I want to talk about me for a second.  This is also a momentous occasion in my life. Well, not so much momentous as depressing.  As I look out at all your fresh, young, and eager faces a few things come immediately to mind.  First, and this is the me part, I realize how old I am.  I seems like I was you just a moment ago. It is sobering to think that when you were born, the world had already traded in the awesome musical stylings of Mister Mister for Milli Vanilli.  This was a harbinger of things to come if ever there was one,...READ MORE

I can't believe it. I can, but I can't.

One of the leading ostensibly Catholic Universities, Georgetown, has invited the author of the virulently anti-Catholic HHS mandate, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, to be one of its commencement speakers.

There is no way to interpret this other than a direct slap and challenge to the USCCB.  Georgetown needs to lose its Catholic certification immediately.  The Cardinal Newman Society reports:

In what can only be interpreted as a direct challenge to America’s Catholic bishops, Georgetown University has announced that “pro-choice” Catholic Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and lead architect of...READ MORE

There were two stories the other day about gay men that caught my attention, one in the political world and one in the Catholic world. In different ways I believe these stories to be instructive about how we should treat actual gays in the actual world.

In the first story, Romney appointed last week Richard Grenell to be his foreign policy spokesman. On Tuesday he resigned. Grenell is gay. Grenell resigned saying "While I welcomed the challenge to confront President Obama’s foreign policy failures and weak leadership on the world stage, my ability to speak clearly and forcefully on the issues has been greatly diminished by the hyper-partisan discussion of personal issues that sometimes...READ MORE

Once you see it, you can never un-see it.

There is an important video making the rounds today in which Rep. Gowdy of South Carolina questions HHS Secretary and Catholic turncoat Kathleen Sebelius on the legal justification for the right-destroying contraception mandate. It is a very telling clip. But before we get to that, I need to talk about something in order to put it in its proper context. I need to speak about Van Damme's bump.

The '80s was the heyday of "B" action movies and I loved them. Hey, I am a guy, sue me. Among the pantheon of b-movie action stars was a certain Belgian by the name of Jean-Claude Van Damme. You may remember him. He made a couple of stupid fun movies and...READ MORE

It has been noted by many commentators over they years that an oxymoronic singular objective of a movement dubbed "feminist" is to achieve some false notion of parity by behaving like men.

Sure, good men have certain admirable qualities that any person, regardless of gender, would do well to emulate. In the classic musical My Fair Lady, Professor Higgins comically extols these qualities while lamenting their apparent absence in women singing...

    Why can't a woman be more like a man?

    Men are so honest, so thoroughly square;

    Eternally noble, historically fair.

    Who, when you win, will always give your back a pat.

    Why can't a woman be like that?

Alas and...READ MORE