She looked up at me. Messy pigtails, marvelously intelligent brown eyes, a precocious wisp of a petite three-year-old: my boyfriend’s niece. Surrounded as I was by games and chatter, everyone thronging together for a day of fun on a Catholic family of sixteen’s farm, I stood still and looked down at her. “Will you take…
Earlier this month, U.S. attorney James P. Kennedy, Jr. served the Diocese of Buffalo, New York with a subpoena, seeking documentation about cases of clerical sexual abuse – marking one of the first cases where the U.S. federal government has become involved in investigating abuse within the Catholic Church. Yesterday, 60 Minutes ran an interview…
One of the many things that has disturbed me in this ecclesial turmoil through which we are living is the simple thought: what are the abusive priests thinking? What do they think of themselves and of their victims? How can they live with themselves? Do they believe anything of the Catholic Faith? The same question…
That The Lord of the Rings is one of the greatest works of literature produced in the 20th century is universally acknowledged. The story is in many ways the embodiment of Chesterton’s famous quip that “fairy tales are more than true, not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that…
This is the senior editor of OnePeterFive. Steve has mentioned me a couple of times, and I’m behind a number of the articles 1P5 has posted over the past several months – including today’s reprint of Whispers of Restoration’s post on the new rite of the Mass. The cascade of opposition in the comments spurred…
Editor’s note: the following is a departure from our normal coverage here at 1P5, and should be read carefully, and all the way through. All is not as it appears at first glance. Plenty of controversy now surrounds Pope Francis: his seemingly invalid election, his long pattern of heterodox teaching, the Viganò report implicating him in cascading sex…
It is striking the way in which Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has become, in many ways, the kind of hero the Church is so desperately looking for. Today, on the occasion of the Feast of the North American Martyrs — Jesuits who, unlike many of the modern-day variety, gave their lives for the salvation of souls…
PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania, October 17, 2018 (1P5) – The Associated Press (AP) is reporting that the U.S. Justice Department has initiated an investigation into the sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church. U.S. attorney William McSwain issued and served subpoenas throughout the state of Pennsylvania last week, pursuant to a grand jury report that included cases…
“I don’t know how much more I can take of this. Internally screaming isn’t doing it for me anymore.” This comment, shared with me yesterday on social media, summed up the way so many Catholics – myself included – are feeling these days. Day after day, headline after headline, accusation after accusation from Christ’s own…
Amid the low rolling plains, where the coastal mountains dot the northwest corner of Ireland, lies the beautiful county of Donegal. There, in the rural village of Gortahork, where Gaelic primarily is spoken among the 1,600 residents, lies the Catholic Parish of Criost Ri (Christ the King). Known for its natural diverse, rugged beauty, Gortahork…
As Pope Pius VI lay dying in Valence, France in 1799, a prisoner of the rising Napoleon, Talleyrand thought the First Consul had in his custody the last of the popes. Like the Holy Roman Empire, the anachronistic institution of the papacy would fall under the weight of the modern nation-states and empires. To hasten…
