I am a loyal son of the Church, Catholic born and raised. I studied for the priesthood for two and a half years, was loyal to the pope and reverential to my bishop, and I teach theology at a committedly Catholic high school. I was what some might style a “true believer,” until my worldview…
Any Catholic who has studied the history of the Church since the 1960s knows that revolution has happened. “Revolution” is an important word, as it describes points in history when change has happened, often violently but sometimes under cover of “progress.” It took France three revolutions to finally get rid of the monarch. There was…
She looked up at me. Messy pigtails, marvelously intelligent brown eyes, a precocious wisp of a petite three-year-old: my boyfriend’s niece. Surrounded as I was by games and chatter, everyone thronging together for a day of fun on a Catholic family of sixteen’s farm, I stood still and looked down at her. “Will you take…
Editor’s note: The following is an expression of hope, not certainty. Any resemblance to real people, places, or years is entirely coincidental. Remarks by Father Geoffrey Schultz after the Rite of Dedication to the Church of St. Bonaventure, in the Year of Our Lord 2082. Dominus vobiscum! The heart of the Community of St. Bonaventure…
One of the many things that has disturbed me in this ecclesial turmoil through which we are living is the simple thought: what are the abusive priests thinking? What do they think of themselves and of their victims? How can they live with themselves? Do they believe anything of the Catholic Faith? The same question…
As Pope Pius VI lay dying in Valence, France in 1799, a prisoner of the rising Napoleon, Talleyrand thought the First Consul had in his custody the last of the popes. Like the Holy Roman Empire, the anachronistic institution of the papacy would fall under the weight of the modern nation-states and empires. To hasten…
Some of my fondest childhood memories are of sitting in the back of my father’s car, listening to the music he loves. He would pick me up from daycare in the late afternoon, and I would close my eyes and fall into whatever song was playing – “Dear Prudence” by the Beatles, maybe, or “Through…
In 2013 Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor told Paul Vallely of The Independent, “Four years of Bergoglio would be enough to change things.” In a story published in March 2017, LifeSiteNews quoted from a speech given by former cardinal Theodore McCarrick that there was a pre-conclave plan to elect Jorge Bergoglio as the one who could “reform…
Many who have studied the life and pontificate of Pope Paul VI are convinced that he was far from exemplary in his conduct as pastor; that he not only did not possess heroic virtue, but lacked certain key virtues; that his promulgation of a titanic liturgical reform was incompatible with his papal office of handing on that…
It’s difficult to know how to begin this letter to you. Perhaps you’re already cringing at my use of “divisive” Catholic qualifiers, lamenting the fact that I can’t just call us both “Catholics” and get on with what I have to say. I hate this categorical language. Yet I feel I have no choice but…
This article is also available as a printer-friendly PDF document. Asking the Question Throughout his five-year reign, Pope Francis has been a controversial figure. He has pushed for novelties and innovations to both the papacy and the Church itself, from superficialities like refusing to live in the papal apartments to more substantial changes like permitting…
