Last Sunday, as the Bishops of the United States began to make their way to Baltimore, those blessed with the opportunity to attend the Tridentine Mass heard Matthew 13:24-30 read as the Gospel. The following is a synopsis of this parable as I heard it explained by a diocesan priest who wishes to remain anonymous:…
Yesterday, during the opening session of the US Bishops’ fall annual meeting, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the American bishops’ conference, announced that the Holy See had intervened to stop the bishops from voting on two measures designed to tackle the Church’s ongoing sex abuse crisis. The Vatican has inexplicably ordered the bishops to wait on…
Editor’s note: The following is not the position of 1P5, but we submit the author’s opinion to help inform discussion on the question of the always troublesome (these days) Jesuits. As we lament their present state, it is worthwhile to consider their illustrious past. Merely saying the word “Jesuit” will likely cause a frown in…
In a wonderful article from years ago that I only recently discovered, “The Mass and the Four Most Important Lessons of Childhood,” Michael P. Foley argues that the four basic responses that parents teach their children from an early age map onto the four basic purposes of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: Implicit, then,…
Last week, the display cases at my Catholic high school, which house the most recent creations of the art students, caught my attention. They contained dioramas commemorating family members and close friends who were clearly deceased. I assumed, it being the week of All Souls’ Day, that this was a project coinciding with that feast.…
The auxiliary bishop of Astana, formerly bishop of Karaganda [Kazakhstan], Athanasius Schneider, has received a verbal injunction from the Vatican asking him to reduce the frequency of his foreign trips. This measure was taken last spring; the bishop was informed in April by the Nuncio in Kazakhstan, Francis Assisi Chullikatt, of this extraordinary restriction on…
Like many Catholics who love their faith, I have struggled to find an explanation for the current crisis in the Church. Despite countless hours of research and analysis, I still find the situation deeply mysterious. It seems that the impossible has happened. It seems that the Church has lost either its visibility or its indefectibility.…
Last week, I spent day after day fighting through seemingly endless distractions in an attempt to write a piece summarizing the takeaways from the Youth Synod in Rome that lasted nearly the entire month of October. I wrote a bunch, but it just wasn’t coming together. I may take up the task again this week,…
I am a loyal son of the Church, Catholic born and raised. I studied for the priesthood for two and a half years, was loyal to the pope and reverential to my bishop, and I teach theology at a committedly Catholic high school. I was what some might style a “true believer,” until my worldview…
Any Catholic who has studied the history of the Church since the 1960s knows that revolution has happened. “Revolution” is an important word, as it describes points in history when change has happened, often violently but sometimes under cover of “progress.” It took France three revolutions to finally get rid of the monarch. There was…
The time from Michaelmas until the Hallowtide, for me, has always been a time to reflect upon Hell itself. After all, as fall settles on the Northern Hemisphere, people tend to reflect upon the afterlife as the days grow shorter and darker. And didn’t Christ talk about perdition quite a bit? It used to be…
