Nowhere else on earth except on a skinny white plastic stick can two vertical lines create such immense joy. What’s represented by those two lines—the culmination of marital love and unity—is the fulfillment of long-held hopes and dreams. Indeed, they often evoke tears of happiness and maybe even a little victory dance. These two lines . . . Read more
The short answer is no, remarriage after annulment is morally okay. The Catholic Church does not acknowledge divorce. In the Catholic mindset, marriage is not merely contractual, but sacramental. It is a permanent spiritual union formed by God, and it makes no more sense to speak of a couple becoming un-married than of a person . . . Read more
Humanae Vitae (On Human Life) is Pope Paul VI’s famed 1968 encyclical on contraception and reproductive ethics. Written in light of a study commissioned by the Vatican on modern reproductive issues, its timing coincided with the sudden prevalence of contraception and concerns about overpopulation in society at large. Pope Paul VI’s writings reaffirmed long-held Church . . . Read more
“Human life is sacred because from its beginning it involves the creative action of God. . . . God alone is the Lord of life from its beginning until its end: no one can under any circumstance claim for himself the right directly to destroy an innocent human being.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church) In . . . Read more
The Beauty of Catholic Marriage Is remarrying after divorce a sin? To answer this question from a Catholic viewpoint, we must first understand what marriage is. The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines marriage as “the matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of . . . Read more
Some baptized Catholics who support abortion use a distorted understanding of Church teaching on the “primacy” of conscience to support their views. They also frequently misrepresent theological principles regarding Catholic sexual ethics. One of the most common abuses involves probabilism, which simply means that, if a definitive judgment has not yet been rendered by the . . . Read more
The Modern Misunderstanding of Conscience. A fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the human conscience lies at the root of many of the problems in the Catholic Church today. Very few Catholics even know what that role actually is. When pressed, many will say “If my conscience tells me that a particular action is all . . . Read more
Almost everyone knows that the Catholic Church opposes abortion. However, few are aware of the long and rich history of the Church’s reverence and respect for human life, and fewer still can explain exactly why the Church cannot change her teachings on abortion. This article will address a number of common questions regarding the teachings . . . Read more
When the battle over abortion began in earnest nearly half a century ago, pro-abortion strategists correctly identified their number one enemy as the Roman Catholic Church. They were fully aware that, if a large number of priests began to speak forcefully and knowledgably against abortion, the Church would quickly become a mighty force for the . . . Read more
The Predictions of Humanae Vitae We begin our exposition of Humanae Vitae (HV) with section no. 17. In this part of the document, Pope Paul VI lays out four predictions as to what would happen in society if teaching against contraception went unheeded. Let us remember that this teaching is not simply a particular doctrine . . . Read more
