It’s Pride Month. Former George W. Bush speechwriter and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson sees no downsides to gay liberation. “The advance of same-sex marriage, it seems, has generally ended in cake and dancing.” He’s ready to celebrate the triumph of the Rainbow Reich. Not me. I’ll pass on the champagne and free condoms. By … Read more
Many grandees of the Catholic Church in Europe are falling in with the Rainbow Reich. Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg is president of the Church’s partner to the E.U. bureaucracy, the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union. In a recent interview with Germany’s Catholic News Agency, he asserted that the Church’s current … Read more
The current regime in Rome will damage the Catholic Church. Pope Francis combines laxity and ruthlessness. His style is casual and approachable; his church politics are cold and cunning. There are leading themes in this pontificate—mercy, accompaniment, peripheries, and so forth—but no theological framework. He is a verbal semi-automatic weapon, squeezing off rounds of barbed … Read more
We are witnessing the collapse of the episcopal establishment in the United States. In one sense, the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report tells us nothing we didn’t already know. But it spells things out in inescapable detail, in a series of case studies complete with diocesan memos and letters from bishops. The lurid details of the actions of … Read more
Theodore McCarrick has been stripped of his status as cardinal for pursuing young men throughout his clerical career. “Uncle Ted” liked to take his “nephews” to bed with him. The public revelations of this fact evoked outrage. It was not so much that a churchman sinned as that he did so with impunity, protected by … Read more