By now, virtually everyone has heard of the Rolling Stone fiasco, with its explosive article, “A Rape on Campus,” having been unmasked as deeply flawed. Although the magazine featured a long story about campus sexual assault, the police found no evidence to substantiate the allegations of rape at the University of Virginia.
Perhaps fewer are familiar with the case of Alan Dershowitz, the well-known Harvard Law professor who tells his own frightening story of a false accusation. Dershowitz’s reputation for integrity, built over the course of a lifetime, was recently threatened by an uncorroborated allegation of sex with an underage woman. While that accusation has now been stricken from the record, Dershowitz notes that “you can’t unring a bell.” His sterling career and good name having been called into question. Continue Reading »
Patriarchy refers to rule by men. It is an accusation often levelled at the Catholic Church, an institution led by a class of male-only priests distinct in status. Priests decide on disagreements over dogma, administer God’s forgiveness of sins through the sacrament of confession, and institute the Eucharist at Mass—some of the most important Church activities. For most people, this is patriarchal and unwelcome in our age of gender equality. Continue Reading »
Twenty years ago today, on the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Richard John Neuhaus was ordained a Catholic priest. Cardinal John O’Connor ordained Father Neuhaus in 1991 at St. Joseph’s Seminary, just north of the city in Dunwoodie. Exactly one year previous, on September 8, 1990, Cardinal O’Connor had received Richard into full communion with the Catholic Church, in a ceremony held in the private chapel of the cardinal’s residence… . Continue Reading»
In his influential book The Courage to Be Catholic, George Weigel wrote about the “The Truce of 1968.” By that is meant the decision not to discipline the many theologians and priests who, in a public and concerted campaign, rejected the teaching of the 1968 encyclical on human sexuality, . . . . Continue Reading »
The New Testament’s epistle to the Hebrews was written to Jewish converts in the early Church who had shrunk back from their Christian confession when faced with persecution. To encourage them to persevere in the new covenant in Christ, the writer shows how the details of the Old Testament . . . . Continue Reading »
There are numerous obstacles to making the connections between religion and public life. For some moderns, a quasi-religious commitment to secularism produces an overt hostility to religion in all its manifestations. For many others, religion is self-evidently a purely private phenomenon. In that . . . . Continue Reading »
