A Guest Essay by Willem Jacobus Cardinal Eijk Archbishop of Utrecht This chapter is taken from Eleven Cardinals Speak on Marriage and the Family ©2015 Ignatius Press. It is reprinted with permission. All rights reserved. Editor’s Note: Through the gracious assistance of a reader, we were given permission to re-print this text from the so-called “Eleven Cardinals Book”, issued…
My article – regarding the dilemma created for Catholic lawyers related to whether or not the local ordinary’s permission is required before seeking a civil divorce – has received a reply from the internet’s pre-eminent canon lawyer, Edward Peters. Since I am not a canon lawyer, I welcome any correction from a competent authority (and blogmeister Dr.…
By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment Edward Feser & Joseph Bessette Ignatius Press, 2017 500 pages $21.20 Paperback Sometime in the mid-1990s in Colombia, Luis Alfredo Garavito Cubillos lured a 6-year-old boy into an isolated spot and sodomized and murdered him. There were bite marks and other evidence…
(Part II of a two-part series. Read Part I here.) In the first part of this essay I attempted to cut through some of the confusion that frequently surrounds discussions of the various modes of exercise of the magisterium, particularly with reference to the term ‘ordinary magisterium’, which can mean two different things in two different…
Image: screenshot of live stream, Ordinary Public Consistory, June 28, 2017. Earlier this week, we received, from a member of the clergy in Rome, the text of a homily from Cardinal Raymond Burke on the occasion of the feast of Saint Cecelia and the Ordinary Public Consistory in November of 2010, during which ten new cardinals…
Editor’s note: As we continue our exploration of the Church’s magisterium in light of some more recently troubling papal documents, we are pleased to introduce this work from Dr. des. John P. Joy. Joy wrote his doctoral dissertation in dogmatic theology “On the Ordinary and Extraordinary Magisterium from Joseph Kleutgen to the Second Vatican Council”…
Earlier this week, papal biographer and Crux contributing editor Austen Ivereigh fired off a bravado-laden tweet about Amoris Laetitia (AL) and the corresponding dubia: Naturally, the pope won’t answer the so-called dubia; they seek to overthrow the fruit of the HS in two synods & a major papal document. — Austen Ivereigh (@austeni) June 20,…
In 1862, the French poet Charles Baudelaire wrote that “The finest trick of the devil is to persuade you that he does not exist.” The quote was paraphrased –somewhat more famously, perhaps — in the 1995 film The Usual Suspects, as “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” Over the course of…
What does “Catholic” really mean? In order to answer that question, to the benefit of Catholic and non-Catholic alike, I’d like to examine the core distinguishing elements of catholicity. I hope to reveal the inner logic of the word, which is the unity of the people of God in all eras, in every place, in…
It has arguably been the most high-profile Catholic news item in the United States for years. The Little Sisters of the Poor became the poster children in the fight over over religious freedom in America during the Obama administration and the roll out of the so-called Affordable Care Act. The administration’s refusal to allow conscience…
One sunny autumn day, as I was taking a walk throughout my neighborhood, I spotted a man whom I had never met before, and who I knew did not live in the neighborhood. After briefly talking, he reached into his pocket and handed me something. It was a dollar bill with a picture of Benjamin…
