The Vatican’s Deal with the CCP is Not Working—But Washington Can Help (Providence): “In 2018, the Holy See made a deal with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in an effort to ‘contribute positively to the life of the Catholic Church in China, to the common good of the Chinese people and to peace in the world.’”
How to Avoid Another Blowup at Notre Dame (The Irish Rover): “Each blowup leaves wounds—people angry, friendships frayed, colleagues factionalized, alumni disillusioned, the university disunited and the Dome’s moral authority compromised. Can the blowups be avoided?”
Pope Leo: Between Gospel Witness and Humanitarian Illusions (City Journal): “The pontiff is right to warn against hatred and rash recourse to war—but his tendency toward a kind of functional pacifism marks a departure from older Christian wisdom.”
When a Good Argument Fails (Catholic Answers): “It’s not enough simply to win the debate. You have to make them notice that you did.”
Catholic Education Needs Civic Formation (What We Need Now): Catholic schools and universities speak frequently, and rightly, about the formation of the whole person…. What they often speak about less confidently is citizenship.”
The Left Is Lying to Itself About the Cost of Its Rhetoric (National Review): “What we do know, however, is that the shooter was a progressive who hung out at Bluesky, and he seems to have been radicalized into committing violence by the panic and apocalypticism common in such spaces.”
Ratzinger in the Whirlwind (First Things): “Joseph Ratzinger did not fade into obscurity when he retired to a life of prayer inside the Vatican walls in 2013. On the contrary, his work remains as influential as ever.”
Swiss Catholics out of doghouse over Eucharistic desecration (The Pillar): “A Swiss diocese has announced that three people who shared the Eucharist with their dogs have not been excommunicated because they ‘did not act with sacrilegious intent.’”
Why Silicon Valley Is Turning to the Catholic Church (The Atlantic): “Priests and theologians want to shape the future of AI. Big Tech is listening.”
Spiritual Benefits of Journaling (SpiritualDirection.com): When we do have those times of sitting with [God], we want to remember what he says, how we feel, and what strikes us the most. The best way to do all of those is to keep a prayer journal.
Fernando Mendoza’s Catholic Playbook: Pro Tips From Las Vegas Faithful for the Raiders’ New QB (National Catholic Register): “The NFL’s No. 1 draft pick, who has been outspoken about his Catholic faith, can expect a warm welcome to one of the fastest-growing dioceses in the U.S.”
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The Pope is NOT the Head of the Catholic Church. Christ is. Let’s always keep that in mind.
Christ called 12 Apostles. Not just one. Let’s always keep that in mind.
The woman called “archbishop” of Canterbury is not a validly ordained minister as far as Christ’s Church is concerned. To pretend that she is so is giving witness to a lie. To give witness to a lie is a sinful matter.
Deacon, loved your reference to her cosplay as “Halloween Queen”.
I’m thinking I’m going to get AI to rewrite the 1980’s hit by Billy
Ocean “Caribbean Queen”.
“now we’re sharing the same dream” becomes “now we’re sharing the same scream….”
The absurd demands ridicule. Of course nothing more absurd than the CofE adding St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher as “martyrs of the reformation” to their calendar of “Saints and Heroes of the Christian Church”, commemorated every 6 July (the date of More’s execution) as “Thomas More, scholar, and John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, Reformation Martyrs, 1535, while ignoring that their founder murdered both men and they opposed the deformation.
TPR: I’m still reeling over the fact that the CofE confiscated the 12th c. village Catholic church where my mother was baptized (St. Peter’s, Martley Worcestershire).
@ Ratzinger in the Whirlwind
He found neo-Thomism dry, constraining, and insufficiently grounded in Scripture and the Fathers (Essayist Sam Zeno Conedera First Things).
Misunderstanding of Aquinas as a closed system is rampant. Neo Scholastics including Garrigou-La Grange were responsible for this perception ending with notable American philosopher ethicist Germain Grisez, who [claimed to have] developed an absolute diagram covering the entirety of morality based on deducting reasoning from universal principles. Whereas Aquinas teaches the opposite. That moral good is first perceived in the particular or singular, the act itself. Universals are formed by the intuitive apprehension of good acts.
Aquinas provides irrefutable principles for the development of thought, rather than a closed system. Platonic thinkers such as Bonaventure, a Ratzinger favorite, possessed a sense of freedom to explore beyond what is immediately perceived. A perfect methodology would be a synthesis of both, which Ratzinger did by acknowledging Aquinas’ basics as a guide.
Benedict XVI’s resignation (can have had the result that it) cut off the development of understanding at different stages of given issues. He said he was tired.
Take “Anglican communion”. This conjunction is not in the Council Documents. The Council refers to Protestants with other words, linked, honour, norm of belief, zeal, loving belief, ecclesial community, open to the Spirit, exhort.
If Protestants are baptized properly it can be said they are initiates maybe even qualifiable catechumens. And surely the authentic baptism would have to be shown; for it could be that in some if not many of those communities, formulas became abused.
Consider also that one has to evangelize with a priority toward to those who will receive not priority toward “ecclesial institutionality” as an absolute imperative.
There were certainly repercussions that amount to monumental. There was a good nonetheless in his remaining at the Vatican, even though it were thought an imprisonment. We, those of us who were more in union with his ecclesiology, and specifically Christology as it is the fulcrum for the individual’s sanctity and the efficacy of the mystical Body.
He continued writing. He completed much of what he intended in his great work Jesus of Nazareth. In a curious way he presented a counterbalance, a lifeline to those who felt drowning under the Bergoglio papacy. In that regard he did write ‘papers’ on theological moral issues that to my knowledge were made known.
God operates as we know in inscrutable ways, one might say by allowing Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio to be elevated to the papacy as a putative reprimand for our overall discontinence. While retaining the silent but occasional vocative counterbalance Ratzinger. A pope emeritus. Contemplative recluse with a pen.
Re: Blowup at Notre
This problem could be easily solved by simply doing what should have been done decades ago:
Removing any association between this leftist hive and the Blessed Mother.
Call it ‘Notre Obama’ or ‘Notre Bane’ or ‘Notre Dem’ — anything but Notre Dame.
Then any and all moral outrages they inevitably commit will not be connected in any way to our dear Holy Mother who deserves much better.
@ Pope Leo: Between Gospel Witness and Humanitarian Illusions
Unity within the Church must be understood to revolve around sexual matters since the transmission of human life is the apex where justice is initiated for the human person made in God’s image.
If we compare the perception of Pope Leo’s comment that sexual matters are secondary to other more vital concerns as morally associated with the heresy of the Synodaler Weg – we are indebted to acknowledge the opposite. That it is also an acknowledgement that such a secondary positioning is misplaced.
Essayist Maloney makes himself clear. Some make a charitable, well intentioned assessment of Pope Leo’s controversial comments on sexuality, the omission of its reference to marriage.
As well intended as her commentary is, there are some of us who have to answer to parishioners. Humanitarian outlook is suitable for the less spiritually focused. Our response must make clear what the Church teaches, and the reasoned measure of moral priorities such as the marital conjugal act, its beauty and purpose as having priority over other important matters such as poverty, and climate control.
There were certainly repercussions that amount to monumental. There was a good nonetheless in his remaining at the Vatican, even though it were thought an imprisonment. We, those of us who were more in union with his ecclesiology, and specifically Christology as it is the fulcrum for the individual’s sanctity and the efficacy of the mystical Body.
He continued writing. He completed much of what he intended in his great work Jesus of Nazareth. In a curious way he presented a counterbalance, a lifeline to those who felt drowning under the Bergoglio papacy. In that regard he did write ‘papers’ on theological moral issues that to my knowledge were made known.
God operates as we know in inscrutable ways, one might say by allowing Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio to be elevated to the papacy as a putative reprimand for our overall discontinence. While retaining the silent but occasional vocative counterbalance Ratzinger. A pope emeritus. Contemplative recluse with a pen.
This comment is my reply to Elias Galy
City Journal Witness and Illusion; are they even reading the Pope right?
Got it Fr. much appreciated.