By Jacob Airey, Live Action – The Prime Video adult animated superhero series “Invincible” recently stunned viewers with a blatant abortion propaganda episode, involving the titular hero and his girlfriend, Atom Eve… In the series, a couple discusses a female character’s pregnancy and decision to have an abortion… A similar storyline was featured in the comic book of the same name… In both circumstances, the decision to have an abortion was normalized and justified. …..

By Mary Rose, Zeale – Many Catholics can recite many of the prayers of the Mass by heart, but – if they’re honest – can’t fully explain them. The Mass is full of deeply meaningful gestures and words that are widely memorized through repetition but may leave most without a clear sense of what is being done and said or to whom… Theologian Edward Sri spoke to Zeale News about how every element of the Liturgy is legible – if only Catholics are given the tools to understand it.

By John Melnikov, Catholic Exchange – The truth of the matter is that teens want to fight for something meaningful. There is an inherent desire in the hearts and souls of teenagers today to be part of social movements that employ activism for the greater good of a segment of society, or society itself writ large. While this is a wholly noble desire, the problems that arise from desire without focus can lead to internal restlessness, anger, and confusion… Parents can address the desire for meaning through activism ….

By Victor Davis Hanson, Daily Signal Senior Contributor – We’re approaching 60 days of the so-called Iran war, and we’re still getting these loud voices that Donald Trump has failed, that the war’s not going well… It’s completely nonempirical. It’s antithetical to the evidence… Here we are at 60 days, and Iran is losing about $500 million in input per day. It’s running out of storage space in a week or two for its daily output of oil, at which point they either have to stop pumping or they’re going to have—if they don’t stop pumping—their wells will collapse.

By Phil Lawler, Catholic Culture – In Rome, a new book by Italian journalist Massimo Franco is drawing new attention to the claim that at the papal conclave of 2025, the electors saw Cardinal Prevost as a strong candidate because they were anxious to recover the confidence of American Catholic donors. Delia Buckley Gallagher, a capable reporter herself, treats that hypothesis as she introduces the book. But I’m not convinced.

By Josh Hammer, The American Spectator – One might be inclined to ask who started this latest bout of mass, iterative gerrymandering. … The reality is that both parties have gerrymandered their respective controlled states for a very long time. That is a tedious and uninteresting observation. The more interesting and pressing question, as this rare mid-decade redistricting war nears its end, is this: Looking at the aggregate nationwide redistricting efforts, which party will come out on top in advance of the midterm elections this November?

By Monica Migliorino Miller, Catholic World Report – Faced with a German Church that may be, at this point, a schismatic ecclesial body, Pope Leo XIV made remarks on April 22nd that stirred controversy and debate… First of all, I think it’s very important to understand that the unity or division of the Church should not revolve around sexual matters. We tend to think that when the Church is talking about morality, that the only issue of morality is sexual. And in reality, I believe there are much greater, more important issues, such as justice, equality, freedom of men and women, freedom of religion, that would all take priority before that particular issue. The Holy See has already spoken to the German bishops.

By Andrew J. Peach and Peter C. Fulweiler, Catholic Exchange – The Fellowship of St. Joseph (“FOSJ”) is flourishing. FOSJ is a men’s group in Wilmington, Delaware, devoted to the spiritual development of its approximately two dozen members. Started during the COVID lockdowns, the group meets a pressing need among Catholic men hungry for Christ in an increasingly hostile and vacuous culture. Entering its sixth year, FOSJ continues to thrive, with members expressing gratitude for the insight, consolation, and joy of the meetings.

By Joseph R. Wood, The Catholic Thing – The new month brings a trifecta on my ecclesiastical calendar: a full moon, First Friday, and the feast of St. Joseph the Worker… My calendar’s tracking of astronomical events is a holdover from long ago, when the Church had its own astrology. It accepted the possibility of the influence of the heavens on earthly events as natural causes, much as the relative orientation of the earth to the sun causes seasons, and the sun and moon cause tides.

By T. S. Flanders, OnePeterFive – The Crusade of Eucharistic Reparation is a lay sodality run by OnePeterFive in partnership with Benedictus and Mass of the Ages… This crusade was called by His Excellency, Bishop Athanasius Schneider in June of 2020 in response to the profanations of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament during the COVID crisis. Now he has also added the intention of the reversal of Traditionis Custodes… A crusade is a spiritual war called by the clergy, but waged primarily by the laity. …

By ACI Prensa – In the plan of salvation, the Blessed Virgin Mary holds a special place. By virtue of her role to be the mother of the Son of God by divine election, she was conceived immaculately — i.e., without the stain of original sin — and by fidelity to her son has been crowned queen of heaven and earth… Everything Mary said and did leads to Christ. Who knows a child better than a mother? And what good and loving child does not know his or her mother and love her with all of his or her heart?

By Fr. Bill Peckman, Facebook – Today, I start the new temporary schedule that will mean I am providing pastoral care to 8 churches and two schools. I am not worried or anxious… But…… why is this happening?… A chronic lack of priestly vocations… We can get into the dirt about who is to blame. We can get into the decades old arguments about changing who we ordain or relaxing celibacy.  Has that been remotely helpful? Or is it self absolution?… We can get into the collapse of the family, smaller families, fewer families. We can get into our society that focuses and prizes overconsumption as the primary good of life. …

By Mary Rose, Zeale – In the latest episode of his Virtue of Patriotism video series, Cardinal Raymond L. Burke draws on the Fourth Commandment and the teaching of Saint Thomas Aquinas to argue that love of country is not mere feeling but a moral obligation rooted in the order God has written into creation… The series is produced by the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe and hosted on CatholicVote’s Zeale for America 250 campaign page. New episodes drop every two weeks in the lead-up to July 4, 2026 — the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence …

By Stephen P. White, The Catholic Thing – God made man in His own image and likeness. God Himself, then, is the primary reference point for man’s self-understanding. Accordingly, when man loses sight of God, he loses sight of his own humanity… This is the story of our secular age writ large. It is also, in some vaguely reassuring sense, the story of man writ large. I say “reassuring” in the sense that our failings are rarely quite so novel as we think they are, which means the remedies are less inaccessible than we might otherwise suppose.

By Tyler O’Neil, The Daily Signal – Joe Biden’s presidency was even worse for Christians than you think, according to an exhaustive report from the Justice Department’s Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias, published Thursday… The anti-Christian bias seeped into official policy across the federal government, from personnel matters—where Christians’ requests for time off around Easter Sunday were met with suspicion in the State Department—to the IRS investigating churches for traditional Christian values perceived to be aligned with the Republican Party ….