Recently I attended my son’s installation ceremony as a member of the student government at his elementary school. The passage into office was marked by a series of oaths in which students made vows to uphold the integrity of their charges and the duties that flowed from those vows. In the ancient Roman world, the term most employed to refer to the civic relationship to which such vows bound a person was pietas.
The suffering of those who feel themselves to be transsexual can be so great—to the point of making them suicidal—that from the perspective of the Church one can hardly categorically forbid surgical and hormonal measures to reduce their suffering, as a last resort after attempting other measures. The proscription of self-mutilation must here be weighed against the good of reducing suffering. Continue Reading »
The debate last night underlined the reasons why Donald Trump’s character and temperament should be disqualifying in the eyes of conservatives. Continue Reading »
Incestuous relationships between adults should push the issue of consent and its many complexities and weaknesses to the fore in debates about sexual morality and marriage. Continue Reading »
Marriage and monastic life share many pleasures, pains, and conundrums. Every day you have to walk into the thicket of your promise again. Continue Reading »
Communion discipline, Rocco Buttiglione says, should be changed to incorporate the difference between objective and subjective guilt. This is wrong. Continue Reading »
Unfortunately, a lot of NFP promoters preach NFP as a prosperity gospel. When this happens, NFP doesn’t deliver and people abandon it. Continue Reading »
The Church affirms that human beings are by nature suited to contract marriage, and she teaches that Christian couples can call upon the graces of the sacrament of Matrimony in living out the marriages they contract. Against such an ancient and affirming tradition, Francis’s assertion that “the great majority of our sacramental marriages are null” shocked both common sense and Catholic sensibility. Continue Reading »
Francis reminds us that the Eucharist is not “a prize for the perfect.” But marriage, apparently, is. Continue Reading »
If the sincere exchange of vows doesn’t make their marriage valid, what does? Must all sacramentally valid marriages resemble my friends', beginning only after a few years of theological study, during a Mass set to music by Mozart? Continue Reading »
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