The Next Pope: The Leading Cardinal Candidates Edward Pentin Sophia Institute Press 523 pages $9.99 Kindle; $20.95 Paperback Edward Pentin’s recent book The Next Pope is a heavyweight tome, quite literally — nearly 700 pages printed on high quality paper stock. The author has provided a great public service to the Catholic Church. Since this Pope has not…
Though born in this country, at the age of ten, my mother had the great misfortune of being moved from the bustling city of Providence in Rhode Island, to a tiny hamlet in the mountains just outside of Naples. There she was forced to learn to cook in an open fireplace, to carry a water…
Salvatore Natoli is an Italian philosopher, academic, and author of some renown. Today, we’ve learned that he has some noteworthy opinions on the pope’s new encyclical. First, some background: Natoli, born in 1942, is a product of Catholic higher education and a self-described nonbeliever (but perhaps I repeat myself). He graduated from the Catholic University…
Her hair was red, but not nearly as red as the area rug that sat atop the aqua-green carpet in her living room. She was short and plump, yet not as round as the peanut M&Ms we ate while drinking coffee and discussing theology. Though nearly sixty years old, her Irish eyes sparkled with a…
I used to argue with Catholics at the grocery store. I was sixteen years old and a fiery Baptist. I remember attempting to convince an elderly Catholic cashier to abandon the Church for the freedom of my Gospel. There was an exhilaration that came in those days as a young man whom ignorance had blessed…
Since the release of Fratelli Tutti a few days ago, the debate over the Church’s re-imagined position on the death penalty — covered in some depth in the new encyclical — has resumed with gusto. And the questions that surround this “development” — particularly whether it in fact represents a contradiction — have far reaching…
The following text originated as a series of chapter talks given by a religious superior to a community of sisters. The superior shared it with Dr. Kwasniewski and gave him permission to edit it and publish it. The accompanying photos have been drawn from various places online. The Council of Trent stated: “Though the habit…
By A Catholic Dad Christe qui lux est et dies, noctis tenebras detegis, lucisque lumen crederis, lumen beatum predicans. I used to be obsessed with reading Church news. Every time I would get on my computer, I would open my email, Facebook, sometimes Twitter, and a selection Catholic news sites, all traditional, all decrying the…
I’ve already written at length about the longstanding Catholic teaching about the death penalty and why Pope Francis is wrong in his attempts to change it. I won’t, therefore, rehash those arguments here. For the purposes of this particular debate, what matters most is for Catholics to understand that the authority for civil powers to…
Let me start by answering the question posed in the headline: we don’t know. YET. But things are looking pretty suspicious. I’ll get to that in more detail in just a bit. First, let’s rewind a little bit to set the scene. The year is 2015. Pell, working as Prefect of the Secretariat for the…
We’ve entered one of those moments again where there’s a a flurry of activity in the Church, and hardly enough time to analyze it in depth. To top it off, I’m feeling like I’m coming down with something and running on far too little sleep, so rather than trying to coax my brain into something…
