Columnist: Janet Smith

How well are seminaries doing in forming the priests we need to reform the Church—one dominated by a lavender mafia? A useful assessment is the recently-published 171 page study “Evaluating ...

I have spent hours reading tributes to Charlie Kirk and watching his videos. I have avoided as much as possible the unbelievable, hate-filled responses that rejoice in his death. For ...

Many who have written on the needed characteristics of the next pope have said such things as “The next pope needs to call the bishops to proclaim the faith boldly; ...

The Gospels do not tell us precisely where the apostles went after the crucifixion, but there is some evidence that they retired to the upper room where the Last Supper ...

Rachel Mastorgiacomo was ritually raped by then-Fr. Jacob Bertrand, who pleaded guilty to and was convicted of such a heinous act. Wiesław Walawender came from Poland to study for the ...

As I stated in previous columns, Ugandans don’t have much experience of homosexuality. What there is of it in their culture is largely unseen. One of my challenges was to ...

Last summer, when Fr. Alex Mugalaasi from Uganda invited me to visit to speak in five seminaries, each with 250 seminarians and about 20 priest faculty, I jumped at the ...

If Catholics want to hold a conference for Catholics who have been wounded by the modern Church, they will likely need a huge venue. A group named “Trad Recovery” is ...

Our Lord Jesus Christ established the Catholic Church to be the “light of the world”, that through the successors of the Apostles we might hear His voice and all nations ...

There are various metrics by which one can judge the progress of the U.S. bishops in handling sex-abuse cases since the Dallas Charter, 20 years ago. The most obvious one ...

It wasn’t long into my study of the sex abuse crisis in the Church that I realized that many or even most bishops customarily respond to a report about abuse ...

Those who have become familiar with the fate of persons sexually abused by priests know that victims experience the indifference (or worse) of Church authorities to their abuse as a ...

Dr. Janet Smith discussing her column with Raymond Arroyo on EWTN In her National Catholic Reporter article “Catholics seeking ‘religious’ exemptions from vaccines must follow true church teaching on conscience”, ...

Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich recently mandated that all priests and employees of his diocese receive vaccinations against COVID-19. While medical exemptions to his mandate will be granted, religious exemptions will ...

Yesterday Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill resigned from his position at the USCCB as a general secretary with responsibility for overseeing sex abuse cases. What caused the resignation of the highest-ranking non-bishop ...

Now that the growing tyranny of our government and the media have developed a “cancel culture,” the title of a recent article from The Pillar criticizing Bishop Joseph Strickland for ...

There are many different kinds of bishops. The basically good bishops lead morally upright lives, are faithful to the magisterium, and are dedicated to service. There are numerous varieties of ...

Monsignor Leonard Kalin was vocations director for the Diocese of Lincoln for 30 years. The Diocese of Lincoln has released the findings into its investigations of Monsignor Leonard Kalin who was a ...

Most Catholics understand the need to suspend public Masses, and many of us thank the bishops for following the directives of public officials. Not all of us, though. There are ...

When I was teaching at the University of Dallas, sometime in the mid-1990s, it hit me that I was now teaching a very different kind of student, the likes of ...

“Hide the handsome ones.” That was what was “jokingly” said when Theodore McCarrick would visit seminaries. It disgusts me that such “jokes” — which clearly portrayed a reality — did not ...