Part 1 of a 4-part series: Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV Part 1: Hell is Real, and You Could Go There If one were to sample the doctrine of today’s sermons and books, one would think that every human being who has ever been and ever will be follows the high road to heaven. No…
Bishop Athanasius Schneider, today’s “lone voice crying out in the wilderness” among our bishops — our Athanasius contra mundum –has laid out his thoughts on the recently-closed Synod in an exclusive analysis provided to Rorate Caeli. We offer them our sincere thanks for allowing us, and others, to reproduce it full, so that the truth may be…
New York Times columnist Ross Douthat is a faithful Catholic who often writes about the Church. His latest column regarding the controversial Synod on the Family in Rome, “The Plot to Change Catholicism,” was strongly criticized in a letter to the editor by more than 50 signers, many of them theologians from Catholic colleges and universities.…
Editor’s note: the following is taken from the introduction to the upcoming book from Emmaus Road Publishing, From the Beginning: The Mission and Vocation of the Family in the Contemporary World. The introduction was written by Dr. Michael Sirilla, professor of theology at Franciscan University of Steubenville, and is reproduced by him here. The book received an initial limited print…
One of the best things about being a one-man show behind the scenes of a website is that everything flows through you; the articles, the design, the videos, the editorial tone and policy – it offers a fine degree of control in service of your vision as content producer. One of the worst things about being…
As Catholics we know that we have received life from God Who reveals Himself to our minds and hearts in two ways: by nature, or in the finality (referred to in theology as “the Wisdom of God”) inscribed in the very nature of things. This is called the Natural Law and includes in part what…
Why does it matter if people convert to Catholicism? Isn’t being Methodist good enough? Is a lapsed Catholic — a part of our religion by baptism — beyond hope? What about a nominal Christian who believes in doing good, even though she rarely darkens the doorstep of a church? And what about all those of other faiths…
It did seem as though many of the Synod fathers were proposing something that is logically impossible. It was not said out loud, but the implication was that they were asking, “Between yes and no, being and not being, sin and not sin, death and life, can we have a ‘third’ option? And if so,…
Editor’s Note: This is a reprint of a 2013 article anticipating the trend toward today’s Supreme Court decision. We present it for your consideration as discussion of this issue continues. Again and again, gay marriage advocates come to the debate insisting that marriage is a fundamental civil right, which begs the question. This assumption would…
In the Gospel reading for the Fourth Sunday After Pentecost, Christ initiates the ministry of the apostles by way of a miracle: And it came to pass, that when the multitudes pressed upon him to hear the word of God, he stood by the lake of Genesareth, and saw two ships standing by the lake: but the fishermen…
This Sunday in the Latin Church is the feast of the Most Holy Trinity (the first Sunday after Pentecost in both the ordinary and extraordinary forms of the Roman Rite). With this post, I share some thoughts (assembled from homilies and jottings over the years) on this, the central mystery of Christian faith, the mystery…
