If religious differences are discussed at all today, they tend to be elided or celebrated. Ecumenism has been the watchword among Catholics in recent decades; the Second Vatican Council’s On Ecumenism was one of the most-frequently mentioned documents in American …
Category: Christian Persecution
Stopping the Heartbeat of the Church
Editor’s note: The following article comes to 1P5 from a Carmelite nun who fears for her order. For centuries, contemplative religious have been recognized as the “heartbeat of the Church.” Indeed, even the 2018 Vatican document “Cor Orans” calls contemplative …
Fr. Jan Kobylowicz: Living Martyr of the Confessional Seal
The sacrament of Confession has been under attack in Australia since the conclusion of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in December of 2017. Several states have now passed legislation that requires Catholic priests to violate …
Bishop Guo Evicted, Homeless after Refusing to Join Vatican-Approved Chinese Patriotic Church
In 2017, Bishop Guo Xijin of Mindong in China’s Fujian province disappeared. At that time, he was pressured to sign a document stating his willingness to “voluntarily” be demoted to coadjutor bishop as a condition that he be recognized by the …
Cardinal Joseph Zen To His Brother Cardinals: The Church is Being Killed In China
Dear friends and enemies … we are publishing a letter that Cardinal Joseph Zen sent some time ago to all the cardinals, and that he has now decided to make public. Needless to say, the latest news coming from mainland …
‘It Hath Hated Me before You’: Interview with Fr. Vaughn Treco, Excommunicated for Preaching the Faith
“Christ was crucified on earth and the Church is crucified in time, and the Church is crucified by all of us, by her members most particularly because She is a Church of sinners.” —Flannery O’Connor. There is quite a lot …
Bastille Day: Blood, Death, and Exterminating the Beautiful
This week’s Bastille Day in Paris featured a man flying around on a brand new flyboard prototype, designed by inventor Franky Zapata. This “future soldier” buzzed through the air above the crowds and underneath a sky clouded in the colors …
Francis: ‘I Am the One Responsible for China. The Resistance Will Suffer.’
It was an “armored” press conference held by the pope [on Tuesday, September 25] on the flight that took him back to Rome after his trip to the Baltic Republics. The pope – who according to several correspondents on the …
Vatican to Allow Beijing to Name Bishops
It is never a good idea to sign a deal just for the sake of signing a deal The Vatican is set to sign an agreement with China by the end of the month, one that cedes control over the …
Germany’s Cdl. Marx Making Himself the Enemy of Monasteries, Nuns
Peter Seewald, the German journalist who published several books with Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI, has recently been writing reports on the closing down of monasteries in the Diocese of Freising-Munich, always against the reverent will of the nuns in those …