Letters to the Editor: December 2018

A Sign of Desperation... Viganò, the Vatican Whistleblower... From an Open Letter to Pope Francis... Bad Reasons for Good Behavior... In God We Do Not Trust... Lost in Plato’s Cave...

The News You May Have Missed

Church vs. State... Million-Dollar Prank... Moon over Manchuria... Drive, She Said... Sh**ty by the Bay... Scrapegoats... The Chip Is in the Mail... Stamped Out... Nobody but Your Selfie to Blame... Cookie Monstrosity... Droning It In... and more

What & Where Is the Holy Grail?

AN ARTHURIAN LEGEND FIT FOR MODERN CATHOLICS

Charles A. Coulombe

Its contents were what made the Grail holy. In that sense, just as every confessional is Chapel Perilous, so too is every adoration chapel a Grail Chapel.

Is Francis’s Revised Teaching on the Death Penalty a Development of Doctrine?

THE PRIMACY OF MERCY — OR THE END OF MERCY ?

Monica Migliorino Miller

The Culture of Life may be advanced by the Holy Father’s innovation, but he has forged an unsettling theological path to take us there.

An Outcast Among Organization Men

NEW OXFORD NOTEBOOK

Pieter Vree

Few are the churchmen who are willing to speak publicly about the root cause of the sex-abuse crisis: the scourge of homosexuality in the priesthood.

Finding Security Behind Closed Doors

CULTURAL COUNTERPOINT

Jason M. Morgan

The sexbot is a tool that uses us and mocks our weakness. It is a vision of Hell: inhuman, ruthless, mendacious, comfortless, and cold.

Gosnell: The Bigger Picture

GUEST COLUMN

Alexandra Wilson

Gosnell’s attorney asks why Gosnell should be convicted of murder in the case of “Baby A” but not in the cases of the countless other babies.

“William Wilson.” By Edgar Allan Poe.

LITERATURE MATTERS

Michael S. Rose

Poe uses the doppelgänger motif as a physical manifestation of Wilson’s conscience and ultimately shows the demise of a man who, blinded by his sins, kills his own conscience.

Perfecting the Social Order

Thomas Storck

The foundations of Catholic social teaching are not in economic morality but in Catholic doctrine about the state and the nature of the human person.

The Dictatorship of Noise

Christopher Beiting

Our world of constant din and restless activity is nothing more than a colossal attempt to distract ourselves from ultimate realities.

Briefly Reviewed: December 2018

The Cross: History, Art, and Controversy... Matters of Life & Death: A Catholic Guide to the Moral Questions of Our Time