For the past many years, I have been maintaining an internet ministry that allows me, through comment boxes, to listen in on the questions, complaints, and pontifications of thousands of people in regard to religion. I have noticed that these commentaries sort themselves out in fairly predictable ways, centering around issues of God’s existence, the problem of suffering, the uniqueness of Christianity among the religions of the world, and the whole range of the Church’s sexual teachings. But another theme that presents itself with remarkable regularity is the denial of the objectivity of truth and moral value. I have encountered this position frequently over the years, but in the past few weeks, a spate of such objections have surfaced in the wake of a recent video of mine on the subject. Here is one typical response: “Thirty seconds in, and he’s [“he” means me] obviously dumb: objective moral values? Those…

Desde hace muchos años, mantengo un ministerio en Internet que me permite, a través de los buzones de comentarios, escuchar las preguntas, las quejas y las pontificaciones de miles de personas con respecto a la religión. He observado que estos comentarios se ordenan de forma bastante predecible, centrándose en cuestiones como la existencia de Dios, el problema del sufrimiento, la singularidad del cristianismo entre las religiones del mundo y toda la gama de enseñanzas sexuales de la Iglesia. Pero otro tema que se presenta con notable regularidad es la negación de la objetividad de la verdad y del valor moral. A lo largo de los años me he encontrado con esta postura con frecuencia, pero en las últimas semanas ha surgido una avalancha de objeciones de este tipo a raíz de un reciente video mío sobre el tema. Esta es una respuesta típica: “Apenas treinta segundos,…

The past fifteen months have been a time of crisis and deep challenge for our country, and they have been a particular trial for the Catholics. During this terrible COVID period, many of us have been compelled to fast from attendance at Mass and the reception of the Eucharist. To be sure, numerous Masses and Eucharistic para-liturgies have been made available online, and thank God for these. But Catholics know in their bones that such virtual presentations are absolutely no substitute for the real thing. Now that the doors of our churches are commencing to open wide, I would like to urge every Catholic reading these words: Come back to Mass! Why is the Mass of such central importance? The Second Vatican Council eloquently teaches that the Eucharist is the “source and summit of the Christian life”—which is to say, that from which authentic Christianity comes and toward which it…