By a prodding of Providence, I walked into an old religious house some days ago in the French village where I live, where, as in the massive, once flourishing house of sisters across the road, the remnants of a formerly vibrant missionary order spend their waning years in retirement. The same saintly founder bequeathed both…
Holiness is a topic about which ignorance abounds and concerning which not much Catholic ink is spilled. It’s also one of the most critical to understand if we’re to have a clear idea of what it means to be Christian. Holiness is typically taken as a synonym for moral goodness. However, this is only one…
Editor’s note: The following is an interview conducted by Italian journalist Lorenza Formicola with Ettore Gotti Tedeschi. As former head of the Vatican Bank, Tedeschi is one of the better -known signatories of the recently issued filial correction of Pope Francis. Lorenza Formicola: It’s been a few months since the “filial correction” was published, and confusion remains.…
Cardinal Silvio Oddi, who died in 2001, was one of the most outspoken conservative prelates of his time. He also has a special place in the history of the debate about the message of Fatima, inasmuch as he insistently tried to get Pope John XXIII to publish the Third Secret of Fatima. As the British…
With the news that Pope Francis might relax the rule of priestly celibacy in certain regions, there has been much celebration in certain quarters of the Catholic world. Many of those celebrating see celibacy primarily as a burden that forces unnecessary loneliness onto priests. What they fail to see is that such loneliness can have…
In the middle of the fourth century, Saint Jerome remarked that the world “awoke with a groan to find itself Arian.” Arianism divided the Church and Empire of the fourth and fifth centuries and beyond by claiming that the Divine Logos, Jesus Christ, was not of the same substance (homoousios) as the Father and not…
I know we have a global audience, and that not all of you will be celebrating Thanksgiving today like we do here in the United States, but all the same, it’s an opportunity for me to express my gratitude to you. For your readership, for your prayers, and for your support of our work here…
Image: The miracles of St. Francis Xavier (see full image here), by Peter Paul Rubens Two good friends, fellow parishioners, are having coffee and donuts after High Mass one Sunday. Maximilian: I really enjoyed Father’s homily today. His explanation of the parable of the mustard seed and the yeast in the dough hit the nail on the…
There is a hierarchy of language. This is true for secular politics and cultural commerce, as well as in terms of religion. In this hierarchy, some languages are higher than others. JRR Tolkien, a philologist at Oxford, was quite aware of this. In his fictional world, which we know through Lord of the Rings, the…
By Fr. Paolo M. Siano From October 20 – 29, 1981, the Plenary Congregation of the Pontifical Commission for the Revision of the Code of Canon Law met in the Vatican to discuss and vote on the renewal of canon 2335 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law which conferred excommunication on Catholics enrolled in…
Many Fatima devotees were, I think it’s fair to say, disappointed when the centenaries of each of the original apparitions in 1917 came and went with no discernible event taking place to mark the occasion. For my part, I have always believed that God prefers to be less predictable than this, though there is certainly…
