The following guest essay is from Peter Mitchell, a conservative Catholic and former priest. Mitchell was ordained in 1999 and laicized in 2017. He says he “is grateful to be a baptized and practicing Catholic.” The essay originally appeared at The American Conservative on the blog of Rod Dreher and has been reprinted with both Dreher’s and…
I’ve been sitting at my desk for the better part of three hours, skimming through news and social media, trying to get a sense of things this week. It’s not entirely clear to me what I should say. In my entire lifetime as a Catholic, I don’t think I’ve ever seen or felt anything like…
In a statement from the Vatican this morning, it has been announced that the resignation of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick from the College of Cardinals has been accepted in the wake of a rising tide of sexual abuse allegations. The full statement, as translated by Edward Pentin of the National Catholic Register, reads: Yesterday evening the Holy…
NOTE: The following information was provided to Catholic Relief Services in person in April, 2018. After three months of discussion on the matter, the Lepanto Institute was told that while Lepanto is convinced that CRS should withdraw from InterAction, CRS disagreed. On at least 4 occasions, Lepanto offered to include any rationale CRS could provide…
A friend passed along to me one of the more recent frenzied Facebook posts of a former Catholic apologist who will not be named. (His signature writing style will make it clear enough for those who are aware.) He’s not someone I believe deserves any attention aside from our prayers, but just in case anyone…
In today’s Holy See Bolletino, it has been announced that the pope has finally accepted the resignation of the Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Tegucigalpa in Honduras, Juan José Pineda Fasquelle, CMF. In April of 2018, National Catholic Register Rome Correspondent Edward Pentin reported on Bishop Pineda, who despite allegations pertaining to the abuse of seminarians…
Manuel Clemente, the Patriarch of Lisbon, Portugal published on 12 July a letter sent to him by Pope Francis in which the Pope praises him for publishing pastoral guidelines permitting some “remarried” divorcees to receive Holy Communion. After his 2016 letter to the bishops of the Buenos Aires region, this is the second direct papal approval…
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 monasteries. In April of 2018, OnePeterFive mentioned the case of Altomünster, a thousand-year-old abbey in…
Yesterday, I asked a question on my Facebook page that has been on my mind: Does the proposition, “The Catholic Church as we know it no longer exists” seem like an overreach? I think we’ve reached a point where we have to re-define our terms. Dozens of comments later, I can’t say that I have…
In presenting the Vatican Conference held July 5-6 to mark the third anniversary of Laudato Si, the Dicastery for the Service of Integral Human Development announced that it has become “plastic-free” as a way of giving good example to everyone. But is this the witness that Christ has asked for? Last week, from July 5-6,…
More and more evidence is coming out about Bishop Alois Schwarz, the former Austrian bishop of Gurk-Klagenfurt who is now the new bishop of St. Pölten. Reports claim that he covered up for an abusive deacon and for a morally corrupt priest. The Diocese of Gurk-Klagenfurt’s new diocesan administrator is losing no time in his…
