The term “Magisterium” is a relatively new term that became prevalent in the past few generations of Church history. Before this, there was a distinction made within the Church Militant between the Ecclesia Docens (“Teaching Church”) and the Ecclesia Discens (“Learning Church”). The Baltimore Catechism: How may the members of the Church on earth be…
Liberals and Modernists of every stripe attempt to defend their own identity as Catholics by an appeal to infallibility. This appeal is not an effort to safeguard the Tradition of the faith, but an effort to excuse one’s conscience from obedience to the Fathers and the Magisterium. This appeal usually takes the following form: when…
Abp. Viganò’s latest open letter continues the vital conversation about the nature of Vatican II and the extreme necessity to properly respond to this “pastoral event.” This conversation must happen openly among the bishops who are courageous enough to face the difficult questions honestly. Instead of a spirit of “dialogue” among the bishops, there has…
The latest epistle of Viganò has provoked a wider controversy than has his other recent letters, especially as it comes within days of a highly publicized letter to President Trump that the latter approvingly tweeted about. Remarkably, at least one member of the “mainstream” episcopate has made a statement that is not a pure vilification…
The very first heresy that threatened the Church had to do with race. This was known as “Judaizing.” The baptized Christian who had been born a Jew and observed all the commandments of the Law of Moses (besides others of the rabbis) sought to impose also the Law of Moses onto Gentile converts to the…
At the Pentecost Octave, the Church celebrates an end and a beginning. It is the close of the Paschal cycle, which celebrates the close of the Old Covenant. This is the beginning of the Time after Pentecost, celebrating the birth of the Church under the New Covenant not of the letter, but of the Spirit…
On Thursday, May 22 of this year, the faithful entered the season of “Little Advent,” the Lord’s own novena given to the apostles: Ascensiontide. Just as in winter Advent, the Church waits in joyful and fearful expectation for the Lord’s coming in the flesh, the Little Advent of Ascensiontide awaits a mysterious and unknown power…
“Naïve and immature people have a great passion to ‘serve humanity,’ but they cannot bear to serve a human being standing right in front of them.” This adage was given to me by a wise man who pithily summed up the pervasive folly of our age, and indeed several centuries of modernity. The bloodshed wrought…
For readers of One Peter Five, the crisis in the Church is no secret, but an open wound fifty years old and more. And after the summer of shame and the continuing saga of Viganò, speculation was raised at the onset of January 2020 as to what could possibly go still worse in the Church.…
The French Revolution and its daughter movements defined the social question of the 19th century, which, as I have noted elsewhere, the Magisterium from Pius VI to Pius XII answered with authority and clarity. But, as Pope Benedict observed in his famous “hermeneutic of continuity” address in 2005, it was the legacy of the American…
As the COVID-19, Chinese communist, Wuhan coronavirus pandemic (pick your modifier) crisis continues, faithful Catholics from all sides have divided on the issue. The spectrum of opinions ranges from those faithful Catholics taking the virus very seriously and advocating for great caution to those other faithful Catholics dismissing the whole thing as an overblown and…
