The Church tells us we should venerate Sacred Scripture, study it, pray with it, because it is the Word of God spoken to mankind, to the Church, to the heart and mind of each believer. It is uniquely inspired by God Himself, free from error, and always beneficial to the soul [i]. Yet this does not…
The church was crowded with worshipers that Holy Thursday evening. James was late and had to look hard for a seat. There’s always a seat in the front, he said to himself and pushed forward. This was a Catholic church, after all, and people preferred to sit at the back. He found a spot in…
We hear a lot nowadays about “Eucharistic inhospitality,” a phrase generally abused, but we would do well to reflect on a previous and far more damaging exclusion from the table that has cast a long and still lengthening shadow over the Church. ONCE UPON A TIME, there was a king, his queen, and forty-five honored…
Spain is blessed with a deep Catholic soul. Yes, despite the gradual apostasy of Western civilization. Yes, even despite the unhappy post–Vatican II “reforms.” And yes, despite even the ever accelerating and ever deepening quagmire in which the Church finds herself of late. The Archdioceses of Toledo (Castilla–La Mancha) and Valencia are especially renowned in…
On June 5, in reaction to radical new pro-abortion laws passed in the state of Illinois, Bishop Thomas Paprocki of the Diocese of Springfield issued a decree “declaring that Illinois legislative leaders who promoted and voted for the act … are not to be admitted to receive Holy Communion” and that said legislators should not…
We all know the old saying: “If a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.” We take comfort in the sentiment, since far too often in this life we are compelled, either by circumstances beyond our control, or by our own inherent weaknesses and limitations, to settle for results less than ideal. We did what…
Perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament was introduced a little over a year ago at St. Catherine of Siena parish of Franklin Square, Long Island. The parish had already had adoration for a few hours a month, but then pastor Msgr. Rick Figliozzi expanded it to perpetual adoration (24 hours a day). The chapel of a former convent…
Recently, my grandson Thomas received his first Holy Communion at a parish I have visited only a few times. My wife and I assist at Mass at a different parish, in part because it offers the traditional Latin Mass. The day after Thomas’s first Holy Communion at the Novus Ordo church, some children at our…
At an astonishing pace, one third of the 27 German dioceses have already now come out with statements concerning the recently published controversial intercommunion guide of the German Bishops’ Conference. Only one diocese has, so far, declared that it will hold back on implementing the new guide allowing, in individual cases, Protestant spouses of Catholics…
When the story first broke in April that the CDF had, with the pope’s explicit blessing, rejected the German Bishops’ intercommunion handout, people weren’t sure what to think. Nobody had seen the communication, and it was very intentionally kept under wraps by the Vatican. At the time, I issued a cautionary note about thinking that…
Today we want to relaunch an initiative which seems to us both legitimate and desirable, at a moment in which the sense of the sacred is being continually eroded, also within the Church, by other concerns and priorities, often linked to passing fashions. We reprint here a letter which the ex-Prefect of the Congregation for…
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