Yesterday, something very unexpected happened. In their Fall General Assembly for 2017, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) held votes on several items, among them, the chairmanship for their pro-life committee. Faced with a choice between a bishop with a pro-life track record and a reliably progressive cardinal who has made serious compromises on…
Yesterday afternoon, I received word through one of my sources that something would be coming today, at long last, in the ongoing and seemingly never-ending process that would move things in the direction of the highly-anticipated “formal correction” of the pope. I was told that it would not be the formal correction itself, but something…
In just a few days, from 16 to 17 November, the newly reformed Pontifical Academy for Life will host a conference in Rome on the topic of “End-of-Life Questions.” (Nota Bene: the event is already closed.) One of the announced speeches’ title is: “Euthanasia in the Netherlands: Balancing autonomy and compassion.” As this title indicates,…
One year ago today, on November 14, 2016, four cardinals took formal step of publishing a set of five dubia — inquiries about doubtful theological propositions — that they had issued directly to Pope Francis two months earlier. The dubia pertained to the pastoral guidelines for divorced and “remarried” Catholics living more uxorio (engaging in sexual relations) as outlined…
Over the past week, German Cardinal Reinhard Marx has once again fueled discussion of the possibility of ordaining to the priesthood those who are called “viri probati”, i.e., married men who lead a virtuous life. Several reports have now been published in Germany which relate what Cardinal Marx himself just said at the assembly of…
Over the weekend, as I browsed my social media timelines, I found myself scrolling past what appeared to be a proliferation of sexual misconduct stories in the worlds of both politics and entertainment. In response to these stories, I also saw not a small amount of gloating, for lack of a better word, coming from…
Yesterday, 9 November, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, gave yet another interview, in which he continues to try to explain his own position with regard to the current debate about Pope Francis’ post-synodal exhortation, Amoris Laetitia. With his new statement, he contradicts the claims of…
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…
Many of our readers might already be aware that in spite of his own exhortations in favor of open-hearted dialogue, Pope Francis himself was responsible for steering some of the discussions during the two family synods, especially with regard to the question of divorced and “remarried” couples. The most prominent example of these kinds of…
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…
So it’s Guy Fawkes Day. Thanks to the Gunpowder Plot to blow up Parliament, English Protestants have had a Catholic boogeyman to focus their hate on for centuries. Fawkes would have been the Osama bin Laden of Catholics, had he succeeded. I wouldn’t doubt it, in fact, if it were actually Divine Providence that prevented…
