Jeanie Hannaman

February 12, 2025

Fr. Peter Totleben: Vice President Vance, the Good Samaritan, and the “Order of Love”

By Fr. Peter Totleben, O.P., Catholic World Report - It’s not often that Catholic theology breaks into the news cycle, but this is just what happened when Vice President J. D. Vance gave an interview to FOX News defending the Trump administration’s actions regarding immigration and its “America First” stance on foreign policy. Vance appealed to the traditional theological concept of the “order of love” (ordo amoris)—the idea that our love of neighbor has a certain set of priorities—to justify prioritizing the needs of citizens over immigrants and domestic concerns over foreign ones.

February 12, 2025

Trump’s Antics and the Highest Human Value, by Dr. Jeff Mirus

Dr. Jeff Mirus, Catholic Culture - Based on this comparison, for example, I have little sympathy for Cardinal McElroy’s characterization of Trump’s immigration policies as a “war of fear and terror”, or even for Pope Francis’ direct denunciation of Trump’s efforts. I don’t withhold my sympathy for these critics because I am in favor of mass deportation of poor immigrants desperately seeking a better life. Rather, I withhold it because I insist on knowing where these critics were when it was a question of President Biden’s far more evil abortion, sex and gender policies.

February 12, 2025

Trump’s Early Decisions Expose Damage Caused by Vatican Complicity With Democrat-Run Globalism, Says Italian Scholar, by Edward Pentin

By Edward Pentin - Just a fortnight into the Trump presidency and the damage wrought by the Pope and the Vatican allying too closely with Democrat-run globalism on a variety of moral issues is becoming clear, the head of an Italian Church think tank has said... In a Jan. 29 commentary entitled “Trump and the Vatican: War in Progress,” Professor Stefano Fontana wrote that early policy decisions of the Trump administration have exposed the extent to which the Vatican’s close alignment with a progressive globalist agenda has caused “great damage” by weakening her voice on a number of serious moral issues.

February 12, 2025

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput: On the Council and the Church

By Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., Substack - A man born of a Jewish mother is Jewish by virtue of his birth. He may be very religious, or lukewarm, or an atheist. But he’s still, in a real sense, a Jew. Being Catholic is a different kind of experience. Baptism is necessary to being a Catholic. But it’s not sufficient. We’re defined by what we believe, how we worship, and how actively we live our faith in public and in private... It’s not possible to be a so-called “cultural” Catholic. Catholic culture comes from Catholic faith. Unless we truly believe and practice our faith, Catholic culture is just a dead skin of nostalgia and comfortable habits.