Earlier this month, I wrote a commentary on an alleged conflict between the Vatican and the German Church over their proposed “binding synodal process” on issues “arising from the clerical abuse crisis: clerical celibacy, the Church’s teaching on sexual morality, and a reduction of clerical power.” It was reported by CNA in early September that the…
“Two high-ranking cardinals close to Pope Francis,” writes Matthew Cullinan Hoffman at LifeSiteNews today, “stopped an investigation of a seminarian accused of abusing multiple adolescents who serve at Pope Francis’ masses.” This, Hoffman says, according to “extensive reports in the Italian media as well as statements made by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò that were published by LifeSite…
Vaticanista Sandro Magister reported today that a video of 79-year-old Fr. Giovanni Nicolini, an Italian priest of some stature (and a “protagonist of Vatican II”), has surfaced in which Nicolini claims that in the Amazon region, married deacons are offering “mass” because of the priest shortage, and that Pope Francis not only knows about it, but…
“The whole secret lies in confusing the enemy, so that he cannot fathom our real intent.” ―Sun Tzu, The Art of War As each of the synods during the pontificate of Francis gets underway, we are treated to what has become a familiar dance. For lack of a better description, we’ll call it the…
We were caught up and lost in all of our vices In your pose as the dust settled around us And the walls kept tumbling down In the city that we love Grey clouds roll over the hills Bringing darkness from above The pop song “Pompeii,” by the band Bastille, is an upbeat earworm that…
Msgr. Dario Viganò, the disgraced Vatican apparatchik behind the 2018 Pope Benedict “Lettergate” scandal, has been given a new plum position today as vice chancellor of the Pontifical Academies for Sciences and Social Sciences. In recent memory, Catholics hearing the name Viganò are likely to think primarily of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States,…
Yesterday, I received a message from a young Catholic in Hong Kong, after I posted something on social media about their current plight. “I am a Hongkonger,” he said, “and thank you for your recent post on Hong Kong. There is much I would like to say but I am too grieved to find words…
Despite Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory’s administrative record on handling sex abuse, the new leader of the Archdiocese of Washington has already stepped from the narrow path of avoiding partisan politics in the nation’s capital. Fresh from leading the Archdiocese of Atlanta, Gregory agreed to answer impromptu questions from the laity. On August 13, he attended…
New research from Pew published this month indicates that only 26% of US Catholics under the age of 40 believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. In his book, Index of Leading Catholic Indicators, Kenneth C. Jones cites a 1994 poll conducted by the New York Times/CBS that placed the number of…
“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 of talk these days about heresy and scandal in the hierarchy of the Church, of…
Earlier today, I was engaged in a discussion on Facebook in which, after saying something about the “Novus Ordo Paradigm,” someone asked me, rather indignantly, what that phrase means. I did my best to explain it, and I’d like to expand on it here in greater depth. I want to say at the outset of…
