We have no reliable figures on just how many priests in the Catholic Church are gay. The Vatican has conducted many studies on its own clergy but never on this subject. In the United States, however, where there are 37,000 priests, no independent study has found fewer than 15 percent to be gay, and some have found as many as 60 percent. The consensus in my own research over the past few months converged on around 30 to 40 percent among parish priests and considerably more than that — as many as 60 percent or higher — among religious orders like the Franciscans or the Jesuits.

This fact hangs in the air as a giant, unsustainable paradox. A church that, since 2005, bans priests with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” and officially teaches that gay men are “objectively disordered” and inherently disposed toward “intrinsic moral evil” is actually composed, in ways very few other institutions are, of gay men.

The massive cognitive dissonance this requires is becoming harder to sustain. The collapse of […]

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Donald Trump’s tax cut for the rich and the corporations they control is turning out to be a bust for the American economy.

It will, however, burden taxpayers with at least $1.5 trillion more federal debt because, instead of boosting tax revenues through increased economic activity as promised, it has caused a sharp drop in revenue.

In addition, millions of residents of blue states are about to get hit with big federal income tax increases while many American expatriates who own businesses overseas are also facing unexpected new tax bills, especially if they prudently saved for their old age under the systems of the countries where they now reside.

I’ll be speaking about this at a Toronto tax conference on Friday, Feb. 1.

A host of economic indicators show that the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act failed to achieve its key promise, a major increase in investments by business that would create more jobs. This is exactly the result that many, including those of us at DCReport, predicted.

The economy is slowing down despite the promise that the Trump-Radical Republican tax cut would spur […]

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Drinking straws and polythene bags may be bearing the brunt of the backlash, but the true scourge of single-use plastics is our sheer overreliance on them. From transport to manufacturing to food services, plastic is everywhere, and combatting this “white pollution” will require a sea change in the material itself.

Fortunately, scientists, engineers and designers are shifting their focus to ecologically friendly alternatives that create circular, low-waste ecosystems – liquid wood, algae insulation, and polymer substitutes made from fermented plant starch such as corn or potatoes, for example.

These alternatives do more than stem the growing tide of plastics: they also address issues such as safely housing a growing population, offsetting carbon emissions, and returning nutrients to the earth.

Stone wool

To transform one of the world’s most abundant resources into something with utility and sustainability takes a special kind of alchemy. Stone wool comes from natural igneous rock—the kind that forms after lava cools – and a steelmaking byproduct called slag; these substances are melted together and spun into fibres, a little like candyfloss.

Unlike fibreglass insulation (made with recycled glass), […]

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