After the important investigation of Der Spiegel on the pope, entitled “Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness,” now another German daily, Herder Korrespondenz, which certainly not even the most frenzied Bergoglianist could condemn as conservative, is examining the authority of the Church, its questionable characters, and its ambiguities. Benjamin Leven, a well known German theologian…
A friend recently invited me to hear Dr. Jordan Peterson speak when he came to Sacramento on a book tour. He was a mixed bag of ideas, as expected, but thoughtful and provocative and worth listening to. One of the things Dr. Peterson said has stayed with me: “What you need most is always to…
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, whose 11-page testimony in August shook the Church all the way to the Apostolic See, has released a new statement today, challenging Pope Francis for his silence in the face of accusations that he was complicit in covering up for perpetrators of clerical sex abuse. In his new statement, Viganò says his decision…
If you’re a Catholic and you have a pulse, you feel it: we’ve entered into a moment in Church history that is wholly unique. Some will seek historical parallels in this or that heresy, this or that crisis, and mostly fail to do so. In large part, they fail because they’re wrong, but also because…
The darkness of our time often feels like a liturgical anti-incense, a dense smog that can be only temporarily fanned away before quickly returning to choke us again. This metaphor is a ripe one for Catholic lay action, because while a single person cannot fan away the smoke of Satan for long, a small but…
It was an “armored” press conference held by the pope [on Tuesday, September 25] on the flight that took him back to Rome after his trip to the Baltic Republics. The pope – who according to several correspondents on the plane appeared nervous and in difficulty – did not wish to respond to any questions…
“Gaslighting,” writes Dr. Stephanie Sarkis at Psychology Today, “is a tactic in which a person or entity, in order to gain more power, makes a victim question their [sic] reality. It works much better than you may think. Anyone is susceptible to gaslighting, and it is a common technique of abusers, dictators, narcissists, and cult leaders.” For…
The reaction to Archbishop Viganò’s revelations – at least in the United States – should give us heart: there are still bishops of orthodox faith who respect human rights and divine justice. Moreover, in spite of the almost daily bad news from Rome, we find dioceses in which vocations are on the rise; we even…
Just hours ago, new Chicago auxiliary bishop Mark Bartosic arrived unannounced at Resurrection Parish on Chicago’s Northwest Side and told pastor Paul Kalchik that he had just minutes to get his belongings together and vacate the premises, or the police would be called to arrest him for trespassing. Fr. Kalchik was about to perform a…
Although the pope pledged that he would “not say a single word” about the accusation that he was involved in the cover-up of Cardinal McCarrick’s sexual abuse, he seems unable to stop making oblique references to exactly that situation. There has been a pattern – a theme, if you will – that has overtaken the…
In January, when I shared my intuition that 2018 was going to be “a year of defying expectations,” “of things not going at all the way we think they will,” and, in fact, “the beginning of the end for Francis and Friends” – I didn’t know what that would look like. It was just a…
