Between the invented “community statement” a Portland parish appended to the Creed we heard about last month, and the fact that a self-identified shaman was allowed to read the Holy Scriptures at Mass in Seattle, one might be forgiven for thinking that there is something unsound going on among Catholics in the Pacific Northwest. The

One of the most striking failures of right-of-centre policymaking in America is its infinite solicitousness toward corporations but indifference to families. According to Federal Reserve data, the median net worth of a family with a head of household under 35 was $11,000 (£9,000) in 2016. According to the USDA, the average yearly cost of having

The sight of a dozen elderly, white, progressive Catholics singing “We Shall Overcome” as they protested against an African priest who threw out their felt banners would be funny, but for the fact that it happened in a church just after Holy Mass. The clash between liberal parishioners and Fr George Kuforiji at St Francis

New Jersey’s assisted dying law went into effect on August 1st, making it the eighth American state that allows terminally ill patients to self-administer deadly drugs with a doctor’s prescription, and the seventh to legalize the practice legislatively. The law has several provisions meant to temper – or euthanize – the objections of moderates, like

Trust is easily broken and repaired only with difficulty in a place like West Virginia, whose south-west corner is most closely associated with the notoriously grudge-prone Hatfield clan. (The Hatfield–McCoy feud, a bloody land dispute between two rural families, raged from 1863 to 1891.) The incoming Bishop Mark Brennan (pictured) of West Virginia – or of

Planned Parenthood has had a bad month. Its president left the organisation last week after serving for less than a year, the Trump administration announced that federally funded family planning clinics that refer for abortions would lose funding under Title X, and a judge threw out the organisation’s claim in its lawsuit against pro-life activist

The supercomputer that generates trend pieces about millennials has gone haywire. Having been fed a steady diet of breezy reportage about that generation’s penchant for witchcraft, aperol and avocados, and after being told they are eschewing normal familial roles in favour of “plant parenthood” and polyamory, we are now supposed to believe that this most

Imagine being ritually flayed alive, scalded with boiling water, and having your blood drunk by a band of Iroquois for the sake of the Catholic faith, only to have the school named after you, more than 350 years later, disobey the local archbishop with the support of your order and lose the right to call

The career of the Illinois congressman Dan Lipinski is an object lesson in the centrality of abortion politics in today’s Democratic Party, and the shrinking space in the party for someone with a pro-life voting record. In an incident that shows the party’s willingness to hang him out to dry, earlier this month Democratic Congressional

The frontrunner in the Democratic nomination contest to challenge President Trump switched his position on the Hyde Amendment on May 6, signalling a willingness to use federal funds for abortion, in a flip-flop that points to the growing power of progressives in the Democratic coalition. Joe Biden, the senator from Delaware who served as Vice

The US Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s law requiring the remains of abortion victims be interred or cremated on May 28, in a decision that hints at the Court’s future thinking about abortion. The decision could also be seen as a victory for advocates of foetal personhood legislation, as it implicitly concedes that the remains are

Earlier this month dozens of polices officers, some dressed in SWAT gear, descended on the office of the Diocese of Dallas. The police were seeking records that they claim were withheld by the diocese, making the raid necessary. But Dallas Bishop Edward Burns has criticised the raid as an unnecessary show of force. He said