Image: Left: Fr. Thomas Weinandy, OFM Cap. (CNS); top right: Fr. James Martin, S.J. (Wikipedia); bottom right: Msgr. John Strynkowski (YouTube) Fr. Thomas Weinandy, OFM Cap., is owed a debt of gratitude for his courage and forthrightness in making public his letter to Pope Francis respectfully criticizing and encouraging the Holy Father to fulfill his principal charge: to…
Image: Antonio Escobar y Mendoza, a prominent casuist of the 17th century. One might think casuistry is dead and buried, that the controversies of the 17th century should be over once and for all. Rarely do any of our contemporaries still read the Lettres Provinciales (Provincial Letters) and the authors whom Pascal (1623-1662) attacks therein.…
St. Thomas Aquinas wrote that servile fear is of the kind that a servant feels before his master — essentially, a fear of punishment. “Accordingly, ” St. Thomas writes, “if a man turn to God and adhere to Him, through fear of punishment, it will be servile fear; but if it be on account of fear of committing a fault, it will…
In the wake of the latest instance of a faithful son of the Church pointing out that the papal emperor has no clothes, we have been treated to yet another flurry of loud and aggressive assertions that there is nothing to see here, no confusion really exists, and can everyone please stop acting childish and just…
Last month, our friends at LifeSiteNews conducted an interview with Professor Joseph Seifert and several other Catholic Scholars on the topic of the development of doctrine. The occasion was the controversy raised by the pope’s recent comments that the Death Penalty “is, in itself, contrary to the Gospel.” Although LifeSiteNews published links to PDF versions of the…
Image: “The Dragon Transmitting Power” Master of Sarum, c. 1250. Sometimes, it’s hard to find words. This is one such occasion. What can be said to explain the Vatican’s decision to issue a stamp with a reverential image of one of the most notorious heretics in history, to “mark the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation”? Note the…
In a two-part essay at Public Discourse (here and here), E. Christian Brugger has responded to Edward Feser and Joseph M. Bassette’s new book on capital punishment (By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment). Feser and Bessette argue that the Church’s traditional teaching on the moral permissibility of the death penalty…
Do we really know when this “crisis” started? Many of those concerned about our ongoing – and suddenly calamitously escalating – crisis look mainly back to the last 50 years for causes; it is certainly undeniable that the period immediately following Vatican II has seen the most precipitous drop in the relevant statistics in our…
Written by John F. Salza, Esq. Part Two of a Two-Part Series Part I – Part II In Part I of this feature, we saw that Pope Francis’ refusal to respond to the dubia issued to him by the four Cardinals (Brandmüller, Burke, Caffarra and Meisner) on September 16, 2016, as extraordinary as it was, does not prove…
Things are escalating again. Pieces, falling into a puzzle with a picture we cannot make out, bit by bit. I recently hinted at my own perception of an increase in activity transpiring behind the veil between this world and the next. I suspect many of you sense it, too. Earlier this week, as I was ruminating…
Written by John F. Salza, Esq. Part One of a Two-Part Series Part I – Part II Now that it has been published (on November 14, 2016) that Pope Francis has refused to answer the dubia of the four Cardinals (Brandmüller, Burke, Caffarra and Meisner) issued to him on September 16, 2016 concerning his erroneous and even…
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