European Secularism vs. The Catholic Church – “European secularism is not at all devoid of religion. It is a soft — or at times violent — form of de-Christianisation.” Interview: Cardinal Müller on Europe, Islam, the SSPX and the German Synodal Path (The Catholic Herald)
Lenin and Intimidation – “Demanding freedom of speech for his ‘negative patriotism’ (he wants Russia to lose), Lenin hates the very idea of anyone opposing him … ” Why Lenin Won (Law & Liberty)
Religious Worker Visa – “The recent story of Father John K. Ojuok, a Kenyan priest serving in the Diocese of Ogdensburg in upstate New York, is a small local news item that reveals a much larger crisis.” Stranded African Shepherds: How U.S. Visa Policies Are Hurting African Priests and Their Communities
About Coming Home – “A recent essay in the New York Times’ Modern Love column has sparked a flurry of think pieces, tweets, and reactions.” I’ll Be Home for Christmas? (First Things)
Critical Theory and Christianity – “The introduction of Christianity’s social vision into history is indispensable for understanding the rise of CT and its persistent popularity.” Critical Theory and the Politics of Divine Love, Part 2 (What We Need Now – Substack)
Our Jewish Friends – “Sunday’s attack is a somber reminder that the Jewish people will mark Hanukkah once again this year amid a disturbing global rise in hateful rhetoric against the Jewish community, including here in the United States.” Antisemitism is Anti-Christian, Anti-American, and Anti-Human (Providence)
U.S. Catholic Divorce – “Catholic spouses striving to honor their vows find little support from a church that seems to have adopted a U.S. divorce culture mentality.” What’s Driving The U.S. Marriage Annulment Crisis In The Catholic Church (The Federalist)
Standing in the Middle – “We fight back by reading across the spectrum—not just the one outlet that tells us we’re right and everyone else is evil. We look for the people who are wrestling with ideas in the messy middle, not shouting from the extremes.” Silos (The Prairie Homestead)
The Few and Fervent – “Gen Z is the least religious generation in U.S. history. And Gen Z is going to church more than any other generation.” Gen Z’s future with the Catholic Church (America)
A Catholic Revival – “For those who have monitored this trend over the past five years, the deeper question is no longer whether a renewal is underway, but whether the trend has the foundations to sustain it for the long term.” Christian Renewal in the West Is Here, but Will Leaders Be Able to Sustain It? (National Catholic Register)
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#7 – U.S. Catholic Divorce – What’s Driving The U.S. Marriage Annulment Crisis In The Catholic Church?
What indeed? And why am I reading this in the secular press?
“Anyone who appeals to a “spirit of the Second Vatican Council” in opposition to its binding doctrine may well be invoking a “spirit of the world”…
I like and respect Cardinal Muller very much, but to what is he referring with regard to the Council’s “binding doctrine”?
Muller did not say “new” binding doctrine, so surely he refers to doctrines that are simply carried forward in the Council Documents, as in all the constitution Dei Verbum. Or, maybe too, the constitution Gaudium et Spes which repeats the “permanent binding [!] force” of the Natural Law (n. 79).
Otherwise, for something new, some will point to the clarified and collegial relationship between the papacy and the bishops (Lumen Gentium Ch. 3 including the Prefatory/Explanatory Note) which serves to complete the work of the First Vatican Council (1870)—which was only “suspended” under duress of military invasion, and not adjourned.
The Abott edition of the Vatican II Documents (1966) includes an enriching footnote (#43) to the much-abused Constitution on the Liturgy: “Another important encyclical of Pius XII, ‘Mystici Corporus’ (1943), stressed the fact that the Church is Christ’s Mystical Body. This has been incorporated (and in some ways greatly surpassed) by the present Constitution and the Constitution on the Church [Lumen Gentium].”
Thank you Mr. Beaulieu. We always hear that it was a Pastoral Council, not a Doctrinal Council. You can’t have it both ways. I understand that there were maybe repetitions of previous examples of binding doctrine. But I thought the context (maybe mistakenly) referred to new binding doctrine.
@ US Catholic Divorce
A catastrophic admission by tribunal priests that marriage tribunals have become divorce facilitators. Anything and everything that’s considered a difficulty are readily accepted as grounds for declaration of nullity.
The Federalist’s Beverly Millett offers an excellent, discouraging expose on the frivolity are work among parish priests who encourage the avalanche of fake marriage trials. Defective consent is heard here, there and everywhere, an impediment to validity that has been strained through the scrambled minds of today’s ‘pop’ psychologists to mean whatever they wish.
That many believe that marriage isn’t forever, indissoluble if freely consented to is part of the vicious circle of clergy posing doubts about their faith and laity who unwittingly buy into their lack of faith – as our faith.
Heresy abounds tribunals included. Clergy and laity seem to believe that if a tribunal makes a judgment [however vacant of truth and justice], that it is a guarantee of God’s favorable sanction.
An article in the Boston Globe forty years ago stated that then-Pope John Paul II expressed concern about the number of annulments being granted in the US. According to the article, in 1960 a grand total of six annulments were granted in the entire US; by 1985 the number had risen to approximately 50,000. (And then some wonder why annulments are referred to as Catholic Divorce.)
“Anything and everything that’s considered a difficulty are readily accepted as grounds for declaration of nullity.”
I personally know two people who received declarations for what might be considered a “difficulty”. One was a somebody who married an alcoholic and while raised Catholic, the individual wasn’t religious. I think the declaration was more about affixing “fault” than anything else, since the individual contemplated a civic marriage to a non-Christian.
Thank you so much for the “Silos” article. That looks like an interesting blog or website to check out. The comments for the article were worth reading too.
I think we can all relate to this.
I lost a decades old friend like one of the commenters did. Politics taking priority over friendship. It’s so sad.
Fr. Morello above (3:03) – Yes, Beverly Millett is doing good work at The Federalist.
To repeat – Why am I reading her excellent articles in the secular press?
A subject Cleo that’s given to controversy and terribly true. Perhaps the powers to be do not wish to address it?
Here’s hoping that a CWR reader might confirm or correct my memory…
…that Pope Francis returned the annulment appeals process to the national bishops’ conferences (yes/no), that he replaced the presumption of marriage validity with only a preponderance of evidence (yes/no), and that he early had blurted publicly his presumption that half of all marriages are invalid (retracted or later edited by others, yes/no)? I also recall reading somewhere that 85 percent of divorced Catholics do not seek annulments at all (yes/n0), but that of those few appealed to Rome for reversal, half of such marriages were upheld.
Of the statistical total of Catholics in the United States, the vast majority of whom do not frequent the sacraments or even believe in the Real Presence…how distorted is the total by those who have departed mostly because declarations of nullity are not even sought?
Perhaps the post-synodal Study Group #9 on “hot-button issues”—assigned the Velcro task of “theological criteria and synodal methodologies for shared discernment of controversial doctrinal, pastoral, and ethical [!!!]”—will propose something or other, but surely not a zeitgeist accommodation. Maybe even a definite proposal that, as the Church prays more for “vocations,” the serious vocation (!) of marriage with comprehensive pre-Cana and moral formation is also intended.
The Study Groups are scheduled to turn in their homework this very month of December. https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2024/07/09/these-are-the-members-of-the-synod-on-synodality-study-groups/
What I might be misremembering—or what might have been misreported in related news briefs—is Pope Francis’ 2015 moto proprio establishing greater efficiency in tribunal cases: https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/motu_proprio/documents/papa-francesco-motu-proprio_20150815_mitis-iudex-dominus-iesus.html
Pope Francis frequently spoke on the sacrament of marriage:
Pope Francis to young people: Prepare yourselves for marriage, don’t get divorced – Catholic World Report
At Vatican marriage tribunal, Pope Francis extols ‘gift of indissolubility’ of marriage – Catholic World Report
Pope Francis: The Holy Spirit is ‘essential’ for unity in marriage – Catholic World Report
Pope Francis: Marriage is a lifelong union between a man and woman – Catholic World Report
Fr. Morello – I think PL is going there.
He did say that it’s more virtuous to save a marriage rather than to dissolve it. So based on that I am hopeful.
There is the issue Fr., that sacramental marriage is sacrament, when things get hard you are supposed to suffer it and suffer for it with full heart; where even if they together and the tribunal decide not to suffer anything and just arrive to so-called “closure”, they all are going to end up getting judged on it.
Instead there is grace to be faithful and encounter its meaning. Jesus had suffered everything completely and after he had expired there still was no “closure”. He “opened a door no-one could close”! This has its own set of implications for the children, called to be faithful to their parents and bear up under the responsibilities, disdaining finding solace in after-effects and substitutions and artificial tranquilizing notwithstanding there seems to be nothing else for a long time.
I would like to dare say, This is the faith.
Similarly, the Church does inquire into non-sacramental marriage to see if it was valid; the reason for this as I understand it, is the prior availability of the call of Christ and the seeking for its presentation and just and proper fulfillment of the peace.
First Things January 2026 edition analyzes the Tucker Carlson/Nick Fuentes interview through the universalist-nationalist lenses of conservatism. Author Glenn Loury, Brown U. professor of soc.sci. concludes, “The future of our nation depends on whether we can achieve…” an integration of both poles of conservatism. That synthesis will be “intellectually coherent, morally serious, and culturally grounded.”
Also: “A conservatism worthy of the name mut find room for Jewish particularism and black particularism within a shared civic framework. It must reject anti-Semitism and racism, not only because they are morally abhorrent but because they violate the very foundations of the Western civilization it reveres.”
https://firstthings.com/tucker-and-the-right/
If they were only as concerned about Anti-Catholic or Anti-Christian sentiments, which are far more broadly held and by “respectable” people.
I am unable to answer Beaulieu’s questions above here. I am at the mercy of “news” unfortunately and am often having to speculate or defer. Hardly ideal.
Much has been made of “listening” since 2013; and “walking” and “being on journey”. This led us to the book published by Pope Francis in which he plied for “legalizing homosexual civil union” on the grounds that it is “not heresy” to do so; and in which he asserted that Benedict XVI had come to agree with that (but so asserted after Benedict’s passing).
Actually it would entail the believer accepting to assist such activity from the hierarchy as an act of piety and Mass oblation -which it could never be.
What brought the Pope to such a pass?
What is listening, what is walking, what is a journey. Suffering can be any and all of those. Notwithstanding the place of suffering, it seems to have been relegated to a transitory incidental. During long periods of time never even mentioned. Whereas at the turn of the century one might have thought of it from its most sacred aura, by 2025 it was found out that there is a forcing of justifying of alternatives competing for equal attention or for substitution and more importance.
When marriage gets into troubles, one of statements that is heard is, “In order to get a nullity you have to first get a divorce.” Different hierarchy personalities say it. One intends to affirm the natural meaning, “That is not for you to do, you know.” Another intends to offer ….. panacea ….. temptation ….. ghastly silence: “There is a trick to this and nullity resolves it later.”
Maybe the emphasis has been misplaced though. The emphasis is not for listening, walking, journeying, just so. The emphasis is, do you recognize the sign of the call to suffer and the grace to take on its totality.
Where I live, the phrase “true-true” is used to identify the authentic. Like, “He is the true-true son.”
These good true-true bishops in Malawi are doing Eucharistic Congress that might prepare them for true-true synods to follow.
MALAWI
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2025/07/11/malawi-getting-ready-for-first-ever-eucharistic-congress/
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2023/12/20/bishops-in-malawi-declare-blessings-for-same-sex-unions-of-any-kind-are-not-permitted/
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2017/08/12/amid-rising-divorce-rates-malawi-bishops-hold-marriage-conference/
AFRICA
‘ Three of the first national bishops’ conferences in Africa to reject same-sex blessings within their countries were Malawi, Zambia, and Cameroon. Over the past two weeks, bishops’ conferences representing at least six other African countries joined them in their opposition: Ivory Coast, Togo, Rwanda, Angola, and Sao Tome. ‘
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2024/01/03/resistance-to-same-sex-blessings-grows-in-africa-but-bishops-are-divided-globally/