On December 7, 1914, Pope Benedict XV wrote suggested that a temporary hiatus in the “Great War” be observed in honor of the Christmas celebration. While his proposal was not well received by the commanding officers of the German and British militaries, something altogether different was happening in the trenches of the Western Front. The…
Today, DER SPIEGEL, a very influential German publication, published an article about the manifest current crisis in the Church, to include a growing resistance to Pope Francis’ proposed and actual reforms. At the end of this article its author, the Spiegel’s Correspondent in Italy, Walter Mayr, reveals an important new leak: In a very small…
(CNS photo/Paul Haring) Pope Francis again returned to his critique of ‘spiritual diseases’ during his annual Presentation of Christmas Greetings to the Roman Curia. This year this included his analysis of what he considers ‘good’ resistance and ‘bad’ resistance to his reforms. The fact that the Holy Father gave priority to resistance to his reforms…
(Image: The University of Freiburg, circa 1900) Two German theologians – Professors Jan-Heiner Tück and Helmut Hoping – have now also raised their voices in support of the Four Cardinals and their presented dubia concerning Amoris Laetitia. What both men have in common is that they once worked together at the University of Freiburg in…
In an interview published this week at Catholic World Report, Cardinal Burke (who gave the Interview on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception) sounds like he’s feeling a bit feisty. Referencing a statement he made in 2004 about “always getting into trouble” after confronting pro-abortion Catholic presidential candidate John Kerry on the issue of receiving communion, the interviewer…
Dr. Sandro Magister, the well-respected Vatican expert, has just today published an excellent overview of the current discussion concerning Amoris Laetitia and the subsequent dubia published by the Four Cardinals. He points out that, among the eighteen bishops and cardinals who have made public statements concerning this matter, only seven have defended Pope Francis’ position.…
LifeSiteNews‘ Lisa Bourne conducted an exclusive interview with Cardinal Raymond Burke in which she asked about the a timeline for the promised formal correction in the absence of a response from Pope Francis on the dubia related to Amoris Laetitia. Burke responded: “The dubia have to have a response because they have to do with the very foundations of…
Austen Ivereigh, a journalist for the Catholic news website Crux, has written a post celebrating Pope Francis’s 80th birthday in which he claims that the Holy Father is “not against” the Enneagram, though he does have reservations about its misuse: “Pope Francis, incidentally, knows the Enneagram well and is not against it. But he is wary…
Many Catholic observers were somewhat disappointed when Cardinal Gerhard Müller gave an interview published by the Austrian website kathpress at the beginning of December concerning the papal document Amoris Laetitia and the dubia of the Four Cardinals. For, to all initial appearances, he had essentially declined to comment upon the whole controversial matter. However, further…
It appears that the post-dubia battle is one of turn-based strategy. After the initial request for clarification from the pope, we’ve seen weeks of often vicious retaliation from papal surrogates, with reports surfacing that at least some of the responses are even being directed by Francis himself. And now that, at last, the anti-dubia salvo has subsided,…
One thing astute observers should know by now is that precious few milestones in the Vatican’s campaign for constant innovation (“always forward!”) arrive unannounced. The process to allow communion for the divorced and remarried took over two years — from the consistory keynote of Cardinal Walter Kasper in February of 2014 to the promulgation of Amoris Laetitia in…
