The Vatican published parts of a letter from Pope Benedict this week, and the Catholic world suddenly lost its mind. The reason? Because the letter said that “Pope Francis is a man of profound philosophical and theological formation” and that the 11-volume theological work on the theology of the pope “help to see the inner…
Mit langem Atem – Wege. Erfahrungen. Einsichten (With Long-Term Perseverance. Ways. Experiences. Insights) Cardinal Karl Lehmann (Author); Markus Schächter (Editor) 272 pages 19,99 € Cardinal Karl Lehmann – who was for twenty years the President of the German Bishops’ Conference and who thus greatly shaped the Catholic Church in Germany – just died, on 11 March, in his…
In the world today, there is a tendency to separate spiritual things from objective guidelines and rules. How many people call themselves “spiritual but not religious,” as if to say the precepts of religion have no connection with the spiritual life? Nevertheless, it has been the constant teaching of the Church that doctrine and spirituality…
Preliminary Note: Today, 12 March, Vatican News published a report that Pope emeritus Benedict XVI wrote yet another letter. In this new letter, he praises a set of new books on the theology of Pope Francis which make clear to him “that Pope Francis is a man with profound philosophical and theological formation and [which]…
In August of 2017, InfoVaticana, a small Catholic news portal based in Madrid, Spain, was surprised to receive a letter from Baker & McKenzie, the second largest law firm in the world, demanding that InfoVaticana transfer its domain (www.infovaticana.com) to the Vatican Secretariat of State. The reason for the demand was that the Vatican alleges that…
Considering the upcoming 2018 Youth Synod, as well as the 2019 Pan-Amazonian Synod, we may now learn more from two Vatican specialists who predict that the real theme of these synods will be priestly celibacy, and its step-by-step process of attenuation. The two journalists – Edward Pentin and Julius Müller-Meiningen – have quite different backgrounds,…
While my parents are well within the Baby Boomer age range, they were not hippies. But if they had been, and if there were extant film footage that depicted them frolicking in mud pits at Woodstock, or holding up “Drop Acid, Not Bombs” picket signs, I would not let my children see it. If such…
By Renzo Puccetti The release of a book on the encyclical Humanae Vitae, which documents the influential help of the then-Archbishop of Krakow, has become an occasion for Avvenire to renew an assault on the encyclical published 50 years ago. Its objective: to bypass the ban on contraception. The strategy is to divide Blessed Paul…
I once received a humdinger of a piece of anti-fan mail from a lady in Europe who was quite incensed by the lecture at Steubenville that became chapter 1 of my book Noble Beauty, Transcendent Holiness. Recently re-reading it, I thought it might be interesting to share what she wrote, and then my response to…
The first time I ever got on a motorcycle, I only rode it for a few minutes before I wiped out. I had borrowed it from a friend. We were seniors in high school. He and his younger brother had each had one, but the brother had left it — and all his other worldly…
In the wake of Cardinal Gerhard Müller’s recent strong rebuttal of the German bishops’ decision to admit Protestant spouses of Catholics, in individual cases, to Holy Communion, it is now Cardinal Walter Brandmüller who takes his own stance with regard to this new episcopal step, calling the German bishops’ referral to “individual cases” a “salami…
