Spirit & Life Blog

“If the right to life is an inherent and inalienable right, it must surely exist wherever life exists. No one can deny that the unborn child is a distinct being, that it is human, and that it is alive. It is unjust, therefore, to deprive the unborn child of its fundamental right to life on…

Any fair analysis of how well the Catholic Church has done in educating Catholics about – let alone convincing them of – the Church’s teaching on contraception, would have to conclude that the Church’s ministers have failed quite spectacularly. One much-cited poll from 2016 found that only 13% of weekly Mass-going Catholics agreed with the…

Parents, I think it is fair to say, are among the great unsung heroes of our world. Becoming a parent is one of the most rewarding things a person can do in this life, but it’s also certainly one of the most difficult. I am constantly amazed at the mothers and fathers I encounter in…

“Openness to life is at the center of true development. When a society moves towards the denial or suppression of life, it ends up no longer finding the necessary motivation and energy to strive for man’s true good. If personal and social sensitivity towards the acceptance of a new life is lost, then other forms…

The fight against the culture of death is a fight for lives and for souls. However, it is also a fight for the freedom of Christians to live their lives and raise their families in accordance with their beliefs, and to participate on equal terms in the public square. The further our culture moves away…

One step forward, two steps back. That’s how the culture wars sometimes feel these days. Last week I was pleased to write about a Supreme Court decision that protected the right of a Catholic adoption agency to abide by Catholic beliefs in only adopting children into families with a mother and a father. This week,…

In recent years, it is all too rare that pro-family activists have won any significant victories. From the passage of civil union laws, to the legalization of same-sex “marriage,” and now the rapid spread of an extreme and coercive form of gender ideology, it seems that we have been losing one major battle after another.…

During a year when one of the most pro-abortion presidential administrations in history is pushing abortion every chance that it gets, it can be strangely comforting to read abortion-related news coming from pro-abortion organizations in the country. Take, for instance, the Guttmacher Institute, one of the most powerful and extreme pro-abortion agencies on the planet.…

For Catholics, June is the month of the Sacred Heart, in which we recall and celebrate Christ’s redeeming, self-sacrificial love for us. For the world, however, June is now Pride Month – a month-long hedonistic carnival in celebration of a debased concept of “love”: one that in many cases reduces love to nothing more than…

“Marriage and conjugal love are by their nature ordained toward the begetting and educating of children. Children are really the supreme gift of marriage and contribute very substantially to the welfare of their parents.” ─ Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, no. 50 Politically speaking, the United States and…