Manuel Clemente, the Patriarch of Lisbon, Portugal published on 12 July a letter sent to him by Pope Francis in which the Pope praises him for publishing pastoral guidelines permitting some “remarried” divorcees to receive Holy Communion. After his 2016 letter to the bishops of the Buenos Aires region, this is the second direct papal approval…
Over at Jihad Watch, Robert Spencer takes note of something particularly outrageous, even for the refugee-crazed Catholic bishops: Monsignor Raffaele Nogaro, bishop emeritus of Caserta, says he is ready to “turn all the churches into mosques if it were useful to the cause and if it allowed us to save the lives of men and…
Over at his “Seventh Heaven” blog at L’Esspresso, top Vaticanista Sandro Magister has a post up from a couple days ago that’s worth reading for those keeping score on the contradictory nature of the Francis pontificate — or as I like to call it, the “shell game.” Magister notes that this year there have been “at…
I’ve said all this before, but it’s getting to the point where I need to be able to reference it in other posts. So here it is all by itself. The Ecclesiastical Juan Peron Every so often, someone sends me something orthodox (or orthodox-ish) that Francis has said, and asks me what I make of…
The Vatican presented something important today, 8 June, at a press conference: the Preparatory Document for the upcoming 2019 Pan-Amazon Synod in which there is now talk about giving women some “type of official ministry” and of making “courageous” and inculturated proposals with regard to the Church’s “inclusive ministerial action.” One of the leading organiziers…
I usually steer myself away from political topics here. Partially because it’s a bit outside our normal wheelhouse, partially because I’m just sick to death, after over a decade of living in the DC Metro area and being a political conservative with a microphone, of talking about any of it. But the religious liberty issue…
Last Thursday, on the Feast of Corpus Christi, Cardinal Rainer Woelki, one of the seven German bishops who opposed the new German intercommunion handout allowing for some Protestant spouses of Catholics to receive Holy Communion, gave a moving speech at the end of the Procession and Pontifical Mass in his Cathedral of Cologne. In this speech,…
It’s Memorial Day here in the United States today, and as is human nature, we use our holidays to get together with family, to cook and enjoy good food and drink, and to treat the day of rest we have been given like another opportunity for a party with the people we love. And there’s…
It’s been another long week, with lots to report, and many things left untouched. I’d like to offer a few parting thoughts before we head into what I hope will be a long weekend (Monday is a holiday here in America.) The Michael Smalanskas/Providence College Story Has Reached a New Low Michael Smalanskas, the Providence…
These days, we are seeing some of the conservative cardinals getting stronger in their resistance against the progressivist agenda as it is being promoted within the Catholic Church. Just a few days ago, Cardinal Gerhard Müller called the concept of “homophobia” an “instrument of totalitarian dominance”; Cardinal Walter Brandmüller just called those who insist upon…
Image: Herforder Münster (Germany), formerly Marienkirche Cardinal Reinhard Marx, the head of the German bishops, is now opening up to the idea of different German dioceses having different rules concerning the possible admittance of Protestant spouses of Catholics to Holy Communion. Another bishop just said, moreover, that Pope Francis seems not to see in the…
