Austen Ivereigh, a journalist for the Catholic news website Crux, has written a post celebrating Pope Francis’s 80th birthday in which he claims that the Holy Father is “not against” the Enneagram, though he does have reservations about its misuse: “Pope Francis, incidentally, knows the Enneagram well and is not against it. But he is wary…
There is more to Christmas than just Christ’s birth. It serves as the beginning of an epic, and Advent is the prologue whereby we prepare for the first spellbinding chapter. There’s a thread running through Christmas that ties into so many other Christological elements, including Christ as Divine Lover, in concert with the poetry of…
What began as Four Cardinals became Four Cardinals and three bishops. Over the past two weeks, three more Cardinals have added their voices in support of the dubia, the most recent being Cardinal Renato Raffaele Martino, who has joined Cardinals George Pell and Paul Josef Cordes in publicly backing the effort. At The Wanderer, 1P5’s Maike Hickson reports: Yesterday,…
Many Catholic observers were somewhat disappointed when Cardinal Gerhard Müller gave an interview published by the Austrian website kathpress at the beginning of December concerning the papal document Amoris Laetitia and the dubia of the Four Cardinals. For, to all initial appearances, he had essentially declined to comment upon the whole controversial matter. However, further…
It appears that the post-dubia battle is one of turn-based strategy. After the initial request for clarification from the pope, we’ve seen weeks of often vicious retaliation from papal surrogates, with reports surfacing that at least some of the responses are even being directed by Francis himself. And now that, at last, the anti-dubia salvo has subsided,…
‘Tis the season for lots of fundraising emails from your favorite non-profits and publications. Of course, as a donor-supported organization, we’re no different. We’re already almost half way to our monthly goal for December. (THANK YOU, DONORS!!) We just need you to help push us over the top. So here’s the deal: we know it’s…
I’ve been absolutely terrible about podcasting this year. Between travelling (a lot!) to take care of family on the other end of the country, a move that is still in progress, being in temporary accomodations on and off for way too long, etc., finding a quiet space to set up my equipment and record has…
(Image: The Calling of St. Matthew; Caravaggio) Eric Sammons is one of my favorite writers here at 1P5. As a guy who has worked full time on diocesan evangelization efforts for many years, Eric’s style is approachable yet informative, but he’s not afraid to talk about the difficult truths. So I’m excited to share the…
One thing astute observers should know by now is that precious few milestones in the Vatican’s campaign for constant innovation (“always forward!”) arrive unannounced. The process to allow communion for the divorced and remarried took over two years — from the consistory keynote of Cardinal Walter Kasper in February of 2014 to the promulgation of Amoris Laetitia in…
In biblical studies, there are two similar-sounding terms of particular importance: exegesis and eisegesis. Exegesis is defined as “an explanation or critical interpretation of a text,” and is the standard method of examining and understanding the Scriptures. Eisegesis, on the other hand, is “the process of interpreting a text or portion of text in such a way that the process introduces…
Fifty years ago, in anticipation of the First Sunday of Advent of 1966, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a Pastoral Statement on Penance and Abstinence. Most American Catholics today are not familiar with the Statement itself, but we are familiar with its general effect: the loosening of norms for Catholics regarding fasting and…
