Members of Women’s Ordination Worldwide — that’s the name of a group promoting the “ordination” of women — have been in Rome this week, where rather than being shunned, as is appropriate, they were granted an audience with an official from the Vatican Secretariat of State. Hearing their appeal on behalf of some 150 women who have been “ordained”…
Part I | Part II Gregory XVI was the first of the modern Popes to address the central role of biblical studies in the advance of the Modernist heresy within the Church. In his 1844 encyclical Inter Praecipuas, Pope Gregory explains that the enemies of the Church actively promote the publication and dissemination of vernacular…
Part I | Part II With man being wholly dependent upon God as upon his Creator and Lord, and created reason being absolutely subject to uncreated truth, we are bound to yield to God, by faith in His revelation, the full obedience of our intelligence and will. And the Catholic Church teaches that this faith,…
Judeo-Christian revelation has always taught that, in view of God’s absolute sovereignty over the whole creation, the First Commandment of the Decalogue obliges not just individuals, but societies as such, including the political community. Over a century ago, Pope Leo XIII already acknowledged that American-style church-state separation (then fairly benign) was acceptable in countries with…
News is now spreading about Cardinal Gerhard Müller’s varied remarks on marriage, as well as on the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia itself, during his trip to Spain at the beginning of May. As the Spanish website Infocatolica.com now reports, Cardinal Müller spoke at a presentation of his new book on hope at the Francisco de Vitoria University…
It is our pleasure to present the commentaries of some reflective people in Europe and in the U.S. who are knowledgeable experts when it comes to the Vatican and the Catholic Faith. Each was asked to write a brief commentary to the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, and they have generously responded. We are very honored…
It is the simple truth: God created us for happiness. Not jealous of the good He has (or rather is), God fashioned finite intellectual beings—angels and men—capable of sharing His good through knowledge and love, and thus capable of entering into His eternal joy. We honor and love Him by seeking and welcoming this gift…
My maternal grandmother had the merriest brown eyes of anyone I’ve ever known, but they’d take on a special light when she recalled one of the poems she’d learned as a young girl. Her favorite, Daffodils, she could recite to her dying day, with such obvious pleasure that her listeners believed she beheld in her…
I recently took a trip across the country, and, as it happened, found myself in a certain chapel (under the care of one of the traditional Catholic priestly societies in good standing) for the Third Sunday of Lent. As the homily began, my ears immediately perked up at a quotation from 1 Peter 5. What followed was…
The fallout from Pope Francis’ comments on Zika and contraception continue. I’ve already shared my thoughts on the need for public correction by our bishops of the error (that contraception is justified to prevent birth defects caused by viral transmission) propagated by Francis. Privately, I’ve begun to hear from moral theologians and Catholic medical professionals who…
Part 4 of a 4-part series: Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV Part 4: The Wisdom of the Church and Her Understanding of Man In this final article, I will speak of the great wisdom of the Church’s understanding of the need for purification, a need that extends not only to the life to come,…
