Editor’s note: originally published in February, 2017, we are re-posting this today in light of dismissals by some media outlets that the Vatican would ever consider a new, contraception-friendly pastoral “re-interpretation” of Humanae Vitae. The nature of the statements and gestures below — and the sheer number of them — should put any confidence that Humanae Vitae could…
On Thursday, July 13, Cardinal Cristoph Schönborn — the pope’s chosen interpreter and advocate for his apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia — addressed an audience at the “Let’s Talk Family: Let’s Be Family” conference in Ireland in anticipation of the World Meeting of Families in Dublin next year. According to Greg Daly of The Irish Catholic, Schönborn opened his talk…
We live in an age of demagoguery, where would-be petty tyrants grasp at power from behind the stalking horses of “oppressed” or “powerless” surrogates. We must “help the kids” or “save the planet” or do something-or-other for the peripheral groups of people who live at the margins of society. (Or is that the marginalized groups…
Rumors of Cardinal Gerhard Müller’s impending departure as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith are nothing new. But last week, a new story hit the radar, largely-unnoticed in the English-speaking world. The Argentinian newspaper Clarín ran a report saying that Pope Francis planned to take advantage of the looming July 2 deadline on Müller’s five-year mandate…
Among the more controversial paragraphs from Chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia (AL), 298 seems to be a real ideological Rorschach test. Some people see the problem with it, and some don’t (or choose not to). Since it has come up several times in various online discussion, I’d like to try to break it down in the hopes…
Earlier today, a letter emerged on Settimo cielo, the blog of Sandro Magister. It is claimed to have been written by Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, one of the four so-called Dubia Cardinals, on behalf of all four of those prelates who had requested clarity from the pope on specific points of confusion arising from the post-synodal apostolic exhortation…
On May 17th, Maike Hickson reported a rather shocking revelation from Italian journalist and Vatican expert Marco Tosatti: In the Vatican, unconfirmed reports from good sources have leaked that the Pontiff is on the verge of appointing – or even might have already formed – a secret commission to examine and potentially study changes to…
Poland, Castle Yesterday, 7 June, the Polish Bishops’ Conference ended its General Assembly in the Polish city of Zakopane. According to the official website of the German bishops Katholisch.de, the speaker of the Polish Bishops’ Conference, Pawel Rytel-Andrianik said that the teaching of the Church with regard to Holy Communion for those people who live…
Belgium, Landscape The Belgian bishops have recently (on 24 May) issued a Pastoral Letter in Dutch and in French where they, too, give their consent and support to the post-synodal exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, thus joining the ranks of the German and Maltese bishops’ conferences, as well as some Argentine, Italian, and U.S. bishops. The significance…
Image courtesy of Edward Pentin. At the Congress of April 22ro, at the Hotel Columbus, Rome, just one block from Vatican City, six lay scholars gathered in order to “make clarity one year after Amoris Laetitia” (“fare chiarezza a un anno da AL”), the papal apostolic exhortation about love and marriage, with particular reference to…
Several Catholic outlets around the world – including Infovaticana and Chiesa e postconsilio – have reported that Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, coordinator of the pope’s “council of nine“, has made some condescending and disrespectful remarks about the four dubia cardinals. The moderate and characteristically gentle Italian journalist and Vatican specialist Marco Tosatti went so far as to say that…
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