On Monday, May 6th, Vice President Biden met with a group of religious leaders to discuss gun control. The Associated Press reports that during their two-and-a-half-hour meeting, Vice President Biden told those in attendance to instruct their followers to support the Obama administration’s efforts to place tougher restrictions on firearms, because that’s “the moral thing to do.” [...]
Although there was a time when the old men at a local gun club used to flatter my dad by telling him that I was a better shot than any of the boys in my 4-H club, I am not a gun enthusiast. Nevertheless, as a Catholic theologian, I am troubled by accounts suggesting that Catholics who [...]
I’ve been beating a particular drum lately because of the confluence of topics in the national conversation: gun violence in a few spectacular cases on the one hand, and the horror that has taken place at a particular abortion clinic on the other. A guest post in the Chicago Tribune adds to the conversation. As [...]
The US Bishops have announced a sensible principle with respect to immigration reform–one wonders if they consider the implications of this principle for other issues. As reported by the NCReporter, Cardinal Dolan was asked whether the reform process should be slowed down due to the immigration history of the Boston bombers. He said this: That’s [...]
Now, I don’t mean to start your week off on a bad note. I don’t want to shock you or upset you. But I’m afraid I have some “news.” You know the Boston bombers? The ones from Chechnya? The ones who turned pressure cookers into sophisticated people killing machines and morphed the streets of Boston [...]
“#NoMoreNames,” they call it. “#NoMoreNames” is an online effort to play on people’s feelings to support any old gun control measures by reading out the names of people who have been killed by guns in the U.S. They round it out to 30,000 people killed in the U.S. each year with guns and work that [...]
It’s this sort of inaccurate, irresponsible dreck that makes it difficult to promote “the Catholic position” in politics and to trust the spokesbureaucrats at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to lead well. I would love to be able to just know that when the USCCB took a position and the bureaucrats promoted it they [...]
Kermit Gosnell is on trial for many counts of murder, including delivering babies alive, taking a pair of scissors, and snipping their spinal cords. Did you know about that? I’ll bet lots of people who may have heard of it a while ago forgot about it, and didn’t know his trial has begun. That may [...]
Should Catholics be excommunicated from the pro-life movement if they oppose banning most guns? That seems to be the position of Sr. Mary Ann Walsh of the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ conference. She declared in the Washington Post this week that to be pro-life, Catholics must favor banning “assault weapons,” and support other new restrictions. It’s very [...]
The gun control legislation that President Obama put forth in the immediate aftermath of the Sandy Hook tragedy has foundered in the Senate. Before everyone rushes to blame (or credit, as may be the case) Republicans, keep in mind that the Senate is 55-45 Democratic, and the key component of Obama’s plan—an assault weapons ban—was [...]
