The auxiliary bishop of Astana, formerly bishop of Karaganda [Kazakhstan], Athanasius Schneider, has received a verbal injunction from the Vatican asking him to reduce the frequency of his foreign trips. This measure was taken last spring; the bishop was informed in April by the Nuncio in Kazakhstan, Francis Assisi Chullikatt, of this extraordinary restriction on…
Like many Catholics who love their faith, I have struggled to find an explanation for the current crisis in the Church. Despite countless hours of research and analysis, I still find the situation deeply mysterious. It seems that the impossible has happened. It seems that the Church has lost either its visibility or its indefectibility.…
Last week, I spent day after day fighting through seemingly endless distractions in an attempt to write a piece summarizing the takeaways from the Youth Synod in Rome that lasted nearly the entire month of October. I wrote a bunch, but it just wasn’t coming together. I may take up the task again this week,…
I am a loyal son of the Church, Catholic born and raised. I studied for the priesthood for two and a half years, was loyal to the pope and reverential to my bishop, and I teach theology at a committedly Catholic high school. I was what some might style a “true believer,” until my worldview…
Any Catholic who has studied the history of the Church since the 1960s knows that revolution has happened. “Revolution” is an important word, as it describes points in history when change has happened, often violently but sometimes under cover of “progress.” It took France three revolutions to finally get rid of the monarch. There was…
The time from Michaelmas until the Hallowtide, for me, has always been a time to reflect upon Hell itself. After all, as fall settles on the Northern Hemisphere, people tend to reflect upon the afterlife as the days grow shorter and darker. And didn’t Christ talk about perdition quite a bit? It used to be…
She looked up at me. Messy pigtails, marvelously intelligent brown eyes, a precocious wisp of a petite three-year-old: my boyfriend’s niece. Surrounded as I was by games and chatter, everyone thronging together for a day of fun on a Catholic family of sixteen’s farm, I stood still and looked down at her. “Will you take…
Earlier this month, U.S. attorney James P. Kennedy, Jr. served the Diocese of Buffalo, New York with a subpoena, seeking documentation about cases of clerical sexual abuse – marking one of the first cases where the U.S. federal government has become involved in investigating abuse within the Catholic Church. Yesterday, 60 Minutes ran an interview…
Editor’s note: The following is an expression of hope, not certainty. Any resemblance to real people, places, or years is entirely coincidental. Remarks by Father Geoffrey Schultz after the Rite of Dedication to the Church of St. Bonaventure, in the Year of Our Lord 2082. Dominus vobiscum! The heart of the Community of St. Bonaventure…
One of the many things that has disturbed me in this ecclesial turmoil through which we are living is the simple thought: what are the abusive priests thinking? What do they think of themselves and of their victims? How can they live with themselves? Do they believe anything of the Catholic Faith? The same question…
That The Lord of the Rings is one of the greatest works of literature produced in the 20th century is universally acknowledged. The story is in many ways the embodiment of Chesterton’s famous quip that “fairy tales are more than true, not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that…
