The Trinity Lutheran Case

By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK

Earlier this spring, we featured a discussion in First Teachers of the case of Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer, which was scheduled at the time to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. The verdict is in. The court issued a 7-2 decision favoring Trinity Lutheran Church on June 26; it should be of great consequence in the debate over taxpayer-assistance to students who attend schools run by religious groups.
Before discussing the court’s decision, let’s review the specifics of the case. Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Mo., operates a day care and preschool. The school applied to a state grant program that helps nonprofit institutions pay for the installation of rubber playground surfaces. The Missouri Department of Natural Resources denied Trinity Lutheran’s application, contending a provision in the Missouri state constitution bars the state from providing funds to religious entities.
Trinity Lutheran sued in federal district court, arguing that its exclusion was a violation of free-exercise and equal-protection rights, and that it was being singled out among nonprofit groups solely because of its religious affiliation. … Continue Reading

The Age Of Autonomy

By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK

If you have not yet discovered the writings of Andrew J. Bacevich, you owe it to yourself to look into them. Do an Internet search; you will find dozens of his articles and columns that you will be able to download, in publications as diverse as The American Conservative, Commonweal, and The Nation.
You will not always agree with what you read. Bacevich is an independent thinker, but always informative and thoughtful, worth your while. He is a retired Army officer who served in both the Vietnam War and the Gulf War, the author of several books and numerous articles, also a professor emeritus from Boston University. He identifies himself publicly as a “conservative Catholic.”
Bacevich’s most recent article — entitled “The New Normal: Social Changes That Trump Hasn’t, Won’t, and Can’t Affect” — appeared in the July 7 issue of Commonweal. If you are a supporter of Trump you may be put off by what Bacevich has to say about the president. … Continue Reading

Big Trump, Little Charlie . . . A Billionaire And A Baby Who Burst Establishment Barricades

By DEXTER DUGGAN

UPDATE: The Charlie Gard hearing was expected to continue beyond July 13. The London-based Daily Mirror reported that Justice Nicholas Francis called it “extremely unlikely” a conclusion in the case would be reached that day, and that a “quick decision must not be at the expense of fairness.”
Earlier in the day, Baby Charlie’s parents angrily left the courtroom after the judge referred to something he contended the parents said three months ago. Father Chris Gard reportedly exclaimed, “I thought this was supposed to be independent” — apparently referring to the new hearing not being held to “rake over” past proceedings.
When the parents returned to the courtroom, the judge apologized to them and said they would not be misquoted, the Mirror said.

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A 71-year-old Manhattan multibillionaire now living elsewhere and an 11-month-old English infant forced where his parents didn’t want him to be both posed dangers to powerful establishments.
Puissant Donald Trump beating his chest in Washington, D.C.’s, halls and peewee Charlie Gard breathing ventilator oxygen in a London hospital barring his exit, a strong man and a weak baby, had the potential to make pillars quiver in false temples. … Continue Reading

It Is Not Natural Or Perfectly Normal

By REY FLORES

And He said to His disciples: “It is impossible that scandals should not come: but woe to him through whom they come.”
“It were better for him, that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should scandalize one of these little ones” (Luke 17:1, 2)
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For several years now, many of my Catholic and pro-life colleagues and friends have been writing about the ongoing diabolical campaign by the sex-obsessed secularists and homosexual radical left to introduce young people and children to acts of sexual depravity and eternal damnation.
The most popular book utilized by purveyors of evil like Planned Parenthood and the National Education Association has been a book titled It’s Perfectly Normal. In 2012, Michael Hichborn, then with American Life League and now heading the Lepanto Institute, released a terrific video exposé titled Hooking Kids on Sex, exposing how sinister, vile, and disgusting this book truly is. … Continue Reading

Saving Magisterial Truth

By CHRISTOPHER MANION

Since the election of Donald Trump, officials at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops have commended the president’s actions on six specific issues: religious liberty, the HHS mandate, UN abortion funding, Planned Parenthood funding, the Mexico City policy (regarding U.S. funding of international abortions), and “transgender” student regulations.
Since last November, USCCB officials have also attacked the president’s positions on over a dozen key issues, including health care, the travel ban, refugee policy, Cuba policy, the Paris Agreement, the death penalty, global warming, the environment, migration, immigration, foreign aid, sanctuary cities, deportations, and border security.
In both cases they have done this formally and publicly, citing the authority of Catholic social teaching and their authority as bishops.
What the reader might notice, and what the bishops don’t mention, is this: While all those positions commended by the bishops address magisterial issues involving objective goods and objective evils, all of the Trump policies condemned by the bishops entail what the Church calls “prudential issues.”
What’s the difference? … Continue Reading

Alone Perhaps, But Is Trump Right?

By PATRICK J. BUCHANAN

At the G-20 in Hamburg, it is said, President Trump was isolated, without support from the other G-20 members, especially on climate change and trade.
Perhaps so. But the crucial question is not whether Trump is alone, but whether he is right. Has Trump read the crisis of the West correctly? Are his warnings valid? Is not the Obama-Merkel vision of a New World Order a utopian fantasy?
At the monument to the patriots of the Warsaw Uprising, Trump cited Poland as exemplar of how a great people behaves in a true national crisis.
Calling the Polish people “the soul of Europe,” he related how, in the Miracle of the Vistula in 1920, Poland, reborn after 12 decades of subjugation, drove back the invading Red Army of Leon Trotsky.
He described the gang rape of Poland by Nazis and Soviets after the Hitler-Stalin pact. He cited the Katyn Forest massacre of the Polish officer corps by Stalin, and the rising of the Polish people against their Nazi occupiers in 1944, as the vulturous legions of Stalin watched from the safe side of the river. … Continue Reading

The Cost Of Catholic High Schools

By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK

The June 15 edition of this column centered on the difficulty that Catholic families face these days because of the high tuition costs at Catholic high schools. I used as examples two high schools in the area of Connecticut where I live: the Jesuits’ Fairfield Prep, with tuition around $20,000 per year and Notre Dame of West Haven, operated by the Holy Cross Brothers, which costs close to $15,000 per year. I asked our readers to give examples in other parts of the country to see if the situation in Connecticut may be an anomaly.
It is not an anomaly. D.A.I. of Bethany Beach, Del., tells us that her grandson’s tuition “at Georgetown Prep in D.C. is over $33,000 per year. His sister in the eighth grade is next door at Stone Ridge Academy where the tuition is $30,000 per year.” Stone Ridge describes itself as part of “the Sacred Heart Network of over two hundred schools.” D.A.I suggests jokingly that she suspects that her “son-in-law must rob banks for a living” to be able to afford these costs. D.A.I. notes that when she was a girl in the 1950s her Catholic grade school “was free,” and that Notre Dame Prep, her high school, “charged $260 per year.” … Continue Reading

Creation, The CCC, Evolution, And Angels

By PHILIP TROWER

My purpose in writing this article is twofold: in the first place, to look at what the new Catechism has to say on its subject, and secondly to see whether it is possible to throw any light on why there has been suffering and disorder in nature not only since the fall of Adam and Eve, as was once thought, but seemingly since the creation of the first living beings.
As St. Paul puts it in his Epistle to the Romans: “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail until now; and not only the creation but we ourselves.” As for the reason he only makes the mysterious statement: “for the creation was subjected to futility not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope.” Meanwhile, “it waits with eager longing for the adoption of the sons of God,” when “it will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:19-23). In other words, that will be at the end of time and the Second Coming.
The apostle does not, here or anywhere else, tell us when he thought nature began to groan, but as a man of his time, he would presumably have believed in a creation lasting six 24-hour days and attributed any suffering in nature outside the Garden of Eden, like everything else that had gone wrong, to our first parents’ sin. They were expelled from the garden into a world that had only just begun to groan. Before that, like the rest of his Christian and Jewish contemporaries, he would presumably have believed that it had been, if not in a paradisal state (it needed in some way “subduing” or tilling), at least in a state that excluded “groaning” and suffering. … Continue Reading

At Decision Of Pope Francis… Alan And Paula Sears Receive Highest Honor For Lay People

By DEXTER DUGGAN

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — An international leader for faith, family and freedom who lives in this area wondered why the bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Phoenix wanted to have a meeting at the chancery.
As co-founder of one of the world’s leading legal organizations defending traditional values, the Alliance Defending Freedom (adflegal.org), Alan Sears had encountered many powerful figures, both friends and opponents.
But, Sears said on June 29, he didn’t know why Phoenix Bishop Thomas Olmsted called him and his wife, Paula, down to the diocesan headquarters.
Speaking with The Wanderer on the campus of St. Bernadette Catholic Church in north Scottsdale, about five miles northwest of ADF’s own headquarters, Sears said he asked himself, “Were we in trouble? A fund-raiser?”
However, he said, Olmsted disclosed the news that Pope Francis wanted to honor them for their defense of traditional morality with investiture into the Papal Order of St. Gregory the Great. … Continue Reading

Confederate Monuments: Can We Talk?

By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK

It seems as if not a week goes by that we don’t hear of another Confederate monument being torn down. In New Orleans, they removed the monument to Robert E. Lee, in Memphis the statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest. There is a call in Richmond to remove every statue on Monument Avenue: those commemorating Jefferson Davis, Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and J.E.B. Stuart. The Confederate flag has been taken down in one state capital after another in the South.
We also saw Yale University recently renaming its Calhoun College because the building was named in honor of Yale alumnus John C. Calhoun, a noted defender of slavery; also Georgetown University renaming two buildings on campus that were named after Jesuits who organized the sale of Jesuit-owned slaves to help pay off campus debt in the 1830s.
It is easy to see why African-Americans applaud these actions. For them the issue is simple: The United States should not be honoring men who were slave owners. They see these monuments as an affront to their dignity, a slap in the face.
Am I saying they are wrong? That they should see these … Continue Reading