Marriage

By Tony Perkins, Patriot Post – There’s something different about this June. There are fewer rainbows. No, I’m not talking about the sign of God’s covenant that appears in the sky after a storm. I’m talking about the rainbow flag that has become the symbol of Pride Month… For years, June brought a predictable wave of corporate logos, advertising campaigns, themed merchandise, and public celebrations. Parents learned to pay closer attention to commercials in family programming …

By Linda Pieper, Catholic Exchange – “John Paul II taught that the body has a ‘spousal meaning.’ It is made to express love as a free, total, faithful, and fruitful gift.”… I graduated from high school in May of 1968. With my whole adult life ahead of me and college on the horizon, I wasn’t paying much attention to what was happening in the Church or in Rome. The world around me was in turmoil—the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the Vietnam War, and its protests, the Civil Rights movement, and the unfolding of the sexual revolution.

By Angeline Tan, LiveAction – US marriage rates have dropped drastically over the past five decades, and a new Heritage Foundation report found that the main causes of marriage decline are cultural changes toward sexuality and childbirth outside of marriage, together with escalating financial and lifestyle expectations linked to marriage… Though earnings for men in their 20s and 30s have remained stable, marriage rates have plummeted, weakening the argument that poor economics are responsible for the decline. …

By Bishop Joseph E. Strickland, Bishop Emeritus, Pillars of Faith – There are certain sounds that stay with us all our lives… Many of us remember nursery rhymes and lullabies long after we have forgotten so many other things. There is something about the voice of a mother that settles deeply into the soul. Even elderly men and women, after long lives and many years, will sometimes call out for their mother in moments of sickness or fear. Because somewhere deep within us is the memory of what it felt like to be protected – to be watched over – to belong completely to someone who loved us before we had done anything to deserve it. …

By Susan Ciancio, Catholic World Report – Mary continually offers herself as the mother we can strive to emulate, and every time she appears to us, she makes known her immense love… Our Blessed Mother constantly looks out for us, even when we aren’t thinking about her… I was reminded of this fact recently when I chanced upon Mary under the title of Our Lady of Charity. I had never heard of this specific title, so I searched the Internet and found a beautiful story of our heavenly mother’s protection and love. ..

By Edward Pentin’s Substack – The John Paul II Academy for Human Life and the Family has issued an open letter sharply criticising the Synod Study Group 9 report on same-sex relations, warning that its proposed “paradigm shift” departs from Catholic teaching and divine Revelation in favour of the “spirit of the age.”… The academy argues that the text is incompatible with the Church’s understanding of Revelation, risks reviving condemned modernist errors, and “touches the very integrity of the Catholic faith,” particularly by appearing to normalise or bless unions based on acts the Catechism calls “intrinsically disordered” ….

By Elise Winland, Zeale News – “I’ve talked with hundreds of detransitioners across America. We’re all heartened by the news out of Texas,” (Chloe Cole — a detransitioner and activist who says she was prescribed puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones before undergoing a double mastectomy at age 15) wrote. “But we’re angry, too. It should have never taken this long to create a clinic dedicated to some of America’s most vulnerable young patients. It’s a medical and moral crime that any child was subjected to a sex change in the first place — and that many are still being pushed down this painful road.”

By Carole Lieberman, The American Spectator – It is no secret that RFK Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services, doesn’t like psychiatrists, and he has had good reason, based upon his personal life experiences. For example, his aunt, Rosemary Kennedy, was treated with a prefrontal lobotomy at age 23 in 1941, a dark chapter in the history of psychiatry which left her institutionalized for life. He credits his own recovery from addiction to abstinence-based 12-step programs, focusing on spiritual principles and peer support, rather than on psychiatrists or medication.

By Guy McClung, Catholic Stand – A human person is an ensouled body, an embodied soul  –  you can’t have one without the other. The “One Flesh” resulting from a  sacramental, covenantal marriage is not simply a physical-union, nor is it simply and entity of two physically intimate spouses. The 2/1 Person  of a marriage is a totally new individual entity, the result of divine design… “One flesh” appears in both the Old and the New Testaments: Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19: 5-6; Mark 10:8; 1 Corinthians 6:16; and Ephesians 5:31. …

By Salena Zito, The American Spectator – Since the first American road, the Lincoln Highway, opened in 1913, Americans have found that their relationship with their nation and the roads that connect us north, south, east, and west is almost patriotic in concept… Whether you are on the road for hours or days, whether you stay in your home state or visit multiple others, there is a breadth of history, scenery and experiences that connect all of us ….

By John Melnikov, Crisis Magazine – There is no group of people on Earth more sick and tired of hearing about the ill effects and addictive properties of social media than teenagers. In their homes, classrooms, team meetings, youth groups, etc., Western kids are inundated with warnings about what could happen to them if they fall victim to criminals or manipulators over the Internet.

By Fr. Shenan J. Boquet, Human Life International – On the Solemnity of St. Joseph, March 19, Pope Leo XIV announced that he is convening the presidents of the world’s Episcopal Conferences in Rome this October. The occasion is the tenth anniversary of the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia. The purpose of the meeting, in his own words, is “to proceed, in mutual listening, to a synodal discernment on the steps to be taken in order to proclaim the Gospel to families today.”

By Kevin Wells, Wellspring – At the rise of the moon at Metanoia Manor, shadows will move across bedroom walls like processions of ghosts. Screams split the stillness of this hidden corner of Louisiana, and are swallowed whole by the silvery-gray moss hanging like tinsel from ancient live oaks… Yet this place of terror and nightmares is no House of Usher. It is a sacred place—a humble kingdom of resurrection for the world’s most ruthlessly wounded children. Metanoia Manor is a refuge, a safe place where blood-curdling screams are met with religious sisters who were sent by God to love His most bullied children.

By Angeline Tan, Live Action – In an incredible nod to the sanctity of life and medical ingenuity, Mia Pruzin of Shaker Heights, Ohio, triumphed over Stage 3 Hodgkin’s lymphoma while pregnant, delivering her baby girl Vivienne at 36 weeks and achieving full remission. Now, she is joyfully celebrating her first Mother’s Day as a cancer-free mom.

By Dr. Mark Lowery, Catholic World Report – The tragic impasse that exists in our culture on the issue of homosexuality stems from two errors… On the one hand, many moderns have embraced an autonomous view of reality: “I can do what I want as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else.” According to such relativism, homosexual acts are perfectly legitimate so long as they are between two consenting adults. In stark reaction to such subjectivism, many others embrace a moralism that easily turns venomous when it vilifies and demonizes: “Homosexuality is wrong because God said so” (and nothing more).

By Dr. Donald DeMarco, Catholic Exchange – A metaphor needs a ground, just as an airplane needs a runway.  It has no meaning when it is separated from the base from which it is launched.  Marriage cannot be detached from its mooring and most assuredly not for political reasons.  Beautiful things will derive from a good marriage, and they will be properly honored in poetical verse.  But the genesis of marriage, that two-in-one intimacy between a man and a woman, will always be the way it is divinely described in the Book of Genesis.

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.