Catholic social doctrine is as old as Pope Leo XIII, and continues to exercise the minds of Catholics everywhere.  Pope Francis, as ever, has something to say, and, as always, it has the potential to ruffle feathers and push the boundaries of what Catholics have traditionally believed.  What do we make of his recent intervention on taxation and wealth distribution?

The Covid Class gets furious when freedom fighters like George Christensen and others with spine and morals compare Covid totalitarianism with Nazi Germany and similar "papers please" regimes.  One recent example of the vitriol in print occurred in The Australian.  The journalist involved displayed all the typical attributes of someone without a leg to stand on.

There have been a number of strategies to make everyone get the Covid jab.  Some offer carrots, others use sticks.  The othering of the unvaccinated has taken many forms, too, some of them nasty, others clueless.  Our low information professors are now entering the fray, much to their shame.

Pope Francis's recent Motu Proprio, Traditionis Custodes, has been seen as many things.  Certainly it has been seen as a major and sad setback for traditional Catholicism and the celebration of the Old Mass.  How is it playing out in Australia?  Will the Bishops play ball?  Republished from The Remnant.

Will Covid kill the Church?  It is a question that demands our attention.

Once upon a time there was a politician called John McEwen.  He threatened to lead his Country Party out of a Coalition Government if the Liberals chose a leader he didn't like.  Today our very liberty is at stake.  Where are the modern day John McEwens willing to use hard power to make governments turn back?

We expects thugs like Daniel Andrews to behave like thugs.  What we do not expect is that members of a party and a government with "liberal" in their names will take to abusing citizens, locking people up for dissent and imposing house arrest on its people.

The NSW Lockdown has personal impacts on families.

Barnaby's return to national leadership is a hope and an opportunity.  The left loves to hate true conservatives.  They hate Barnaby.  But will he deliver for those of us who hope for a better politics in this country?

The journalist Niki Savva has been stalking Tony Abbott for what seems like decades.  Suddenly noticing a current absence of political leadership, Savva has broken the habit of a lifetime and actually praised Abbott.  As an Opposition leader.  She still misses plenty.

Is Australia the champion of Covid management, or did we - despite the current furore - just get lucky with a low number of deaths from the not-so-killer virus?  Explaining Australia's performance is important for many reasons, not least because what has been achieved has come at a great cost.  And on close inspection, our performance is nothing about which to write home.

Those who thought that the NSW Government's approach to Covid management was both liberal and proportional have been delivered a rude shock, with escalating Covid State totalitarianism that is only just beginning.  This article first appeared at Politicom.

After being cast as a conspiracy theory, the idea that the Covid virus originated in a Wuhan laboratory and leaked - or was leaked - into the Wuhan community has now gained currency and respect.  Even reputable scientists and others now hold that the leak theory is at least plausible.

WB Yeats famously opined, in the dark shadow of the Great War, that "the centre would not hold".  A much quoted line, often tinged with sadness and fear.  The sensible centre of politics might similarly wonder - whither liberal democracy in this land, as we are assailed by the forces of the dark side and there seems no leadership emerging to fight these forces?

Whether the distinguished former Nationals' leader John Anderson would do more good for his country back in parliament or continuing his polished podcast interviews with global thought leaders is a moot point, now that his eternally disappointing party has rejected his Senate bid.  What looks like a bad outcome might not be.

The NSW Government is notionally liberal.  It doesn't even pretend to be conservative.  But on careful examination it is more than merely incompetent, factionalised and mushy-leftie.  We already know it to be all of these things.  The Government of the Unspellable Armenian is radical, and dangerous.

Undeterred by her eventually ill-fated attempts to crush George Pell, Louise Milligan set out to destroy Christian Porter.  On this occasion she had a different set of fembot collaborators who formed a self-styled "army" on behalf of a sadly deceased rape accuser.  An accuser who decided not to pursue her allegations against Porter, and whose family were strongly committed to putting the story to rest.

Louise Milligan, we know, is a slayer of Catholic Cardinals.  Or seeks to be.  She is also a conspiracy theorist.  An even-handed investigative journalist, she ain't.  The rabbit holes she chooses to go down are highly selective.

Originally published in the UK's The Conservative Woman.  Explaining Australia's false claim to be a Covid policy superstar.

Not all those Catholic priests accused of historical sexual misconduct have the good fortune to have their reputations restored through the Australian legal system, as Cardinal Pell, mercifully and eventually, did.  The case of Fr John Fleming has yet to be resolved in his favour, but the fight goes on.  As does the disgraceful abuse of this good and holy priest, by those who originally nailed him to his cross.

Recent events in the Liberal Party in two states have only reinforced the once broad-church party's drift to the secular left, leaving the shrinking minority of cowed conservatives in the Party and Christians across the electorate wondering how and why this has occurred.  The Liberal Party's growing list of crimes against people of faith and against the churches is beginning to look like an agenda.  This article first appeared at politicom.com.au.

Jacqui Lambie might or might not have called Alan Joyce a "p**f" outside the Qantas Chairman's Lounge.  Whatever she said, the incident has shone a light on the outworkings of the sexual revolution and on woke culture.

The "crucial" Upper Hunter by-election has come and gone.  There are myths, and there is the reality.  A Gladys miracle?  Not really.  There are deeper stories here.  A version of this article appeared at The Spectator Australia's Flat White.

The New South Wales Liberal-led Government recently turned ten.  Is there anything to celebrate in the Premier State?

Individual rights, traditionally conceived, exist prior to, and separate from, the State.  Not any more, in the age of Covid and lockdown, all that we previously accepted about government has been discarded.  And we did it.  It is a Faustian bargain.