Editor:
Jerry Novotny OMI
*Updated Daily:
May 17, 2025

Breaking News

What Rights Do Human Embryos Have?
President Trump's administration seeks to "make it easier for loving and longing mothers and fathers to have children." But this statement begs a lot of questions, particularly those related to the rights of the child. Should anyone who wants one be able to buy and make a baby with IVF? To answer this question, I will rely on the instruction from the CDF. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) cites Donum vitae on the familiar passage about the gift of a child.

What Rights Do Human Embryos Have?
President Trump's administration seeks to "make it easier for loving and longing mothers and fathers to have children." But this statement begs a lot of questions, particularly those related to the rights of the child. Should anyone who wants one be able to buy and make a baby with IVF? To answer this question, I will rely on the instruction from the CDF. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) cites Donum vitae on the familiar passage about the gift of a child.

Media Blackout On Abortion Pill Study Proves They Never Cared About Amber Thurman's Death
If the press truly cared about women like Thurman suffering and potentially dying, they would amplify news that tens of thousands of women who took the abortion pill over a seven-year period ended up with emergency room visits, sepsis, infections, follow-up surgeries, hemorrhage, or other complications. Instead, the little media attention the wide-ranging analysis of mifepristone-related insurance claims has received was written off as "junk science," using quotes from abortion activists.

Feminism Against Fertility
Women's "no" to lifelong socially binding care relationships is self-reinforcing. It exacerbates the gender funk, which in turn further lessens the appeal of the old patterns of intimate life. Children are not only the fruit of male-female bonds but their glue. Children are a couple's common project, one that connects them to their wider family and their community. They are a call for self-sacrifice that a culture of autonomy cannot comprehend.

Transhumanism and AI: An Ideology of Death
Transhumanism and AI promise a tech utopia but risk a dystopian nightmare, warns Aaron Kheriaty. From surveillance to control, explore the ethical dangers shaping our future.

Sepsis, Hemorrhaging, Infection. These are Major Problems Women Experience After the Abortion Pill
One in ten patients experience a "serious adverse event" after taking the abortion pill, according to a study released Monday by the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), a conservative think tank and advocacy group.

The Abortion Pill is Injuring Tens of Thousands of Women. Where are the Feminists?
The study of nearly 866,000 abortions procured by use of the prescription drug mifepristone is the largest of its kind to date and full of findings that, its authors say, should prompt action by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to review and address the high rate of serious complications the drug inflicts on women.

HHS Releases New Report Revealing the Dangers of 'Gender-Affirming Care' for Minors
"Despite growing pressure to promote harmful medical interventions for minors, this review makes one thing clear: There is extremely weak evidence that puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or surgeries have any benefits in children and adolescents with gender dysphoria," Feliciano added (emphasis original). "At the same time, the risks--particularly permanent harm like infertility--are becoming increasingly undeniable."

Pope Francis Called Abortion the "Slaughter" of Innocent Babies
He likened the act to murder, emphasizing the innocence of the unborn and described the killing of babies in abortions as a "slaughter."

Pope Francis: "Defend the Unborn Against Abortion"
I learned that, as a Cardinal in Argentina, he was quoted as saying, "Defend the unborn against abortion even if they persecute you, calumniate you, set traps for you, take you to court or kill you." Strong words from a man who valued the sacredness of life from the moment of conception to the instant of natural death. The late Holy Father was a champion of the marginalized - and no one is more marginalized in our society than the unborn child.

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Editorial

Refugees Crying Out in the Wilderness

Poet Warsan Shire hit a nerve with she composed this stanza in her poem "Home"...

No one leaves home unless / home is the mouth of a shark.
You only run for the border / when you see the whole city / running as well, and
no one puts their children in a boat / unless the water is safer than the land.

Today, we are facing a global refugee crisis. In mid-2024, the refugee population reached 43.7 million. In addition to this number, there were 72.1 million internally displaced people and 8 million asylum seekers, leaving a total estimate of 122.6 million people around the world who have been forced to flee their homes. Continue reading at Fr. Jerry's Blog...

Ethical Perspectives

New! Pope Francis and Accompanying Each Other Along the Path to Truth

Luis Tellez
Pope Francis devoted much of his pontificate to the challenge of implementing a culture of love in support of the truth in contemporary culture - a culture that does not grasp what authentic love is, because we treat love as a commodity. Many people - young people especially - are eager for caritas in veritate, and the pope sought to teach it to them through many of the themes of the pontificate: accompanying others, recognizing the concrete circumstances that we fallen human beings can find ourselves in, and always being witnesses to God's infinite mercy.

New! Why Progressive Politics Undermines Christian Faith - And How Churches Should Respond

Kurt Mahlburg
New research shows an alarming trend: as people become more progressive, they're more likely to abandon Christianity. Here's what that means for churches today. A belief held by many Christians today is that Jesus was neither "right" nor "left", and that politics is best kept out of the church.

New! Grief or Relief

Judie Brown
Planned Parenthood tells website visitors that "the decision to have an abortion is personal, and you're the only one who can make it." For over half a century, forsaking science on the altar of choice has been a vocation for far too many Americans. And today we see the wretched results. There can be no genuine relief in our midst when babies die, when women suffer, and when all of us experience the sorrow of failing to insist that abortion is not a right, it is a death sentence.

New! Unconditional Love - Easy to Say But Hard to Do

Warwick Marsh
"I looked at my little boy when he was born and felt an unconditional love I never knew was inside me. As he grew, and I watched him stagger about, squeak his first words, and turn into a beautiful little boy, that feeling did not change." I could have written these words about any one of my five children, but these are the touching words of author Tony Parsons.

The Ethics of Brainless 'Spare Bodies'

John Stonestreet
The Church must have a theology of the body, or "disturbing" science will fill in the blanks.

UK researcher applies for embryo gene-editing license

Xavier Symons
Just months after the release of a controversial Chinese study into embryo gene-editing, British scientists have requested permission to genetically modify human embryos using the ground-breaking CRISPR-CAS9 technique.

Shoot first, aim later

Michael Kirke
Ireland's Press Council was praised by the Leveson Inquiry. But it hasn't put a stop to the group think in the Irish media.

Worldview and Haiti: Ideas Have Consequences

John Stonestreet
By choosing a life of patience and forgiveness over major league baseball, Buster Posey's kids, community, and soul will be better because of it.

Men and Abortion: Twentieth Century Literary Examples and Their Application to Contemporary Men

Jeff J. Koloze
Of all the perspectives from which one can view abortion, I have considered the woman's (more correctly, the mother's) view and the unborn child's view, but I have never looked at the literary evidence of abortion from the man's or the father's view. I was delighted, then, to see that this year's conference of the American Men's Studies Association could challenge me not only to investigate the literary evidence of men in American abortion fiction (restricted to major works of the twentieth century), but also to summarize what the literary evidence can suggest for men in this new, twenty-first century.

Educational Resources on Cloning for Contemporary Students

Jeff J. Koloze
This paper addresses two corollary issues which should be the concern of any life-affirming researcher. Developing adequate research on cloning involves two activities: first, a discovery of principles of basic research for the twenty-first century student and, second, an explosion of certain myths held by library science professionals or those whose political correctivity precludes an honest evaluation of resources which oppose cloning.

All Together Now

Proclaim Sermons
Sometimes the desire to take all the credit means we're not good collaborators. No one was more qualified to take all the credit than Jesus, yet he made his disciples collaborators in the work of the kingdom, and even called out twelve apostles who would assume great responsibility for making choices as collaborators. If Jesus could share the credit with these ordinary people, shouldn't we do the same?

Cinematic Treatment of Abortion:
Alfie (1965) and The Cider House Rules (1999)

Jeff J. Koloze
This paper is concerned with an evaluation of what films have to say on one of the most urgent issues of our culture, the right-to-life issue of abortion. Time constraints and the quantity of material available on the first life issue do not allow a comprehensive examination of the other two life issues (infanticide and euthanasia). Thus, I will focus on two major abortion films, Alfie (1965) and The Cider House Rules (1999). More importantly, what right-to-life criticism can say about these films is substantial and can indicate how other films on the life issues can be reviewed.

Kansas City Chiefs' kicker Harrison Butker takes on the warriors of woke

Kurt Mahlburg
There is nothing about being an NFL player, however, that prevents players from having other passions in life. And Butker has made it quite clear over the years that his faith and his family rank as higher priorities for him than football. It was the themes of faith and family that landed Butker in hot water for the commencement address he gave at Benedictine College, a private Catholic liberal arts college an hour out of Kansas City.

Bishop Bruskewitz will deny Kerry the Eucharist

Barbara Kralis
Referring to canon 915, Bruskewitz said, "We agree completely with Archbishop Raymond Burke in the action he has taken and we would take the same action in the diocese of Lincoln with regard to manifest, persistent, obstinate sinners, including politicians, regardless of which diocese they are from."

Holy Week and the Preborn

Judie Brown
As pro-life people, we strive to defend and protect the innocent at all times and in every place where we are needed. This is part of our vocation as defenders of truth, but during this Holy Week it serves us well to think specifically about how each aborted child is a victim of bloody crucifixion in the same way that Christ was a victim on Good Friday. Reflecting on His suffering brings us a bit closer to understanding the reality of what it means to kill the innocent babe, or for that matter, a vulnerable person at any stage in her life.