News

By John Waters, First Things - I would like to suggest a seventh rule to add to Mary Eberstadt’s “Six Rules for Pro-Life Radicals.” This additional rule was implicit in several of the six she listed, so she may have been presuming it axiomatic—so fundamental as to not require restating. But I believe that this rule does require restating and that it should be explicit. Indeed, I think that when pro-lifers keep this rule implicit it produces problems in the larger abortion debate: One side in the argument thinks the truth about abortion too obvious to reiterate, while the other side, not wishing to hear the truth, encourages this lacuna.

By Stephen Beale, Catholic Exchange - We’ve all the heard one about the three-lobed shamrock and the Trinity… But it turns out that God’s triune nature is imprinted on all creatures, according to two of the greatest doctors of the Church in the 1200s—St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure… In the Summa Theologica, Aquinas says that all creatures with an intellect and a will reflect the Trinity: For the Son proceeds as the word of the intellect; and the Holy Ghost proceeds as love of the will. Therefore in rational creatures, possessing intellect and will, there is found the representation of the Trinity by way of image, inasmuch as there is found in them the word conceived, and the love proceeding.

By Janet E. Smith, National Catholic Register - Jesuit Father James Martin, in his address to the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, made a number of proposals about how Catholic campuses should care for “LGBT people” and begins by telling the story of the experiences on a Catholic campus of a young Muslim woman who identifies as lesbian. Father Martin built on that experience to lobby for “accepting everyone for who they are” and for establishing “LGBT” support centers on campus… Father Martin’s approach sells short both the Church and young people. Here, I will sketch out a different possible scenario on a Catholic campus.