Dr. Sandro Magister, the well-respected Vatican expert, has just today published an excellent overview of the current discussion concerning Amoris Laetitia and the subsequent dubia published by the Four Cardinals. He points out that, among the eighteen bishops and cardinals who have made public statements concerning this matter, only seven have defended Pope Francis’ position.…
Advent in the domestic church is a mystery lying somewhere under our wet-boot-stained carpet, the cookie crumbs, and the fir needles. Here, the coming of Christ is hiding somewhere between the packages outside our door, the voice of Bing Crosby crooning away in our kitchen, and our family Nativity scene donkey that only has one…
LifeSiteNews‘ Lisa Bourne conducted an exclusive interview with Cardinal Raymond Burke in which she asked about the a timeline for the promised formal correction in the absence of a response from Pope Francis on the dubia related to Amoris Laetitia. Burke responded: “The dubia have to have a response because they have to do with the very foundations of…
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…
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…
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…
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…
One hundred years ago, Our Lady of Fatima mysteriously warned us of the danger that the then-unspecified “errors of Russia” would somehow come to spread throughout the whole world if Russia would not first be adequately and solemnly consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Such a consecration, moreover, was prophesied to attain Russia’s own…
