Often times, as I scramble from writing one story to another, spend my days (and often nights) recording and editing video or podcasts, or try in vain to work my way through an overflowing email inbox, correspondence from readers — real, physical notes or letters — begin piling up on my desk. Today, I took…
Just because “Uncle” Ted McCarrick has been laicized and made a scapegoat on behalf of a Vatican that continues to demonstrate it’s anything but serious about clerical abuse, it doesn’t mean there’s nothing left we can learn from him. Here, very briefly, are two lessons from McCarrick worth remembering. First: just because a high-ranking cardinal…
Editor’s Note: Despite our stated concerns about the forthcoming Martel book about homosexuality in the Vatican, it presents information that is undeniably going to shape the conversation around the abuse crisis going forward. This, from Marco Tosatti, concerns an important piece of the puzzle. Sodom [which in English is entitled In the Closet of the Vatican], the…
There’s a new book coming out to coincide with the sex abuse summit in Rome, and it’s already all the buzz on a number of Catholic websites. Entitled, In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy [and known as “Sodom” in Europe] the book is written by a French journalist by the name of Frédéric Martel —…
The news broke very early this morning (about 9:30AM Rome time) that Theodore McCarrick, once the Cardinal Archbishop of Washington, DC, powerful Church fundraiser, and a kingmaker in ecclesiastical politics — including the election of Pope Francis — had been found guilty of depraved crimes by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF)…
Confirming what has been widely-rumored in recent weeks, the Vatican has announced today that former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who stands at the center of the Church’s re-awakened clerical sex abuse crisis, has been stripped of the clerical state following an investigation into allegations of longstanding abuse of priests, seminarians, and minors. When levied as a…
In response to an invitation to participate in a National Catholic Register symposium on the Clerical Sex Abuse Summit in Rome later this month, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has once again made public comments about the crisis in the Church. In his brief essay, he signals pessimism about the upcoming meeting, saying, “I am praying intensely…
On a winter day in early 2016, after months of attending the traditional Latin Mass at my local FSSP apostolate, I was asked what I thought of the Mass at a little parish called the Church of St. Bede the Venerable in St. Louis Park, Minn., a suburb of Minneapolis. You see, the Church of…
We’re blessed here to have a lot of top-notch contributors, and one of our regulars is Stefanie Nicholas (see her articles here), who I just did a podcast with a couple weeks ago. One of our newest writers, John Hirschauer, who offered an excellent analysis of Cardinal Dolan’s feckless response to calls to excommunicate the…
It has become a subject of heated debate: did Pope Benedict XVI validly resign from the papacy? An article we published late last year on the topic of so-called “Benevacantism” had over 900 comments. Across the Catholic sectors of social media, one sees this question discussed, often heatedly, on a regular basis. Today, three top…
VATICAN CITY, 14 February 2019 (OnePeterFive.com)—As rumors of the imminent laicization of disgraced former Cardinal and accused pederast predator Theodore McCarrick continue to spread, Pope Francis has announced the appointment of McCarrick protégé Cardinal Kevin Farrell as papal Camerlengo—a position of administrative authority over the Holy See, once a pope has died (or, if following the…
