Analysis

Holy Communion is to be withheld from divorced-and-remarried Catholics in virtue of Canon 915 which, as has been explained countless times, does not require Catholic ministers to read the souls of would-be communicants, but rather, […]

Before it was released, the Papal Exhortation Amoris Laetitia received many online giggles for its title alone, which could be translated variously as “The Joy of Love”, “The Joy of Sex” or even “The Exuberance […]

Pope Francis’ post-synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, “On love in the family,” has been one of the most widely anticipated papal documents in recent years, following the closely watched and sometimes controversial Extraordinary Synod of Bishops […]

The good news about the post-synodal exhortation Amoris Laetitia, “On Love in the Family,” is that none of the outrageous statements and proposals that marred the prefabricated 2014 “Synod Report” made it into the final […]

I think that Chapter 8, “Accompanying, Discerning and Integrating Weakness”, is the most problematic section of Amoris Laetitia (AL) for three reasons: 1) Pope Francis seems almost (not quite, but almost) incapable of acknowledging that an individual is sinfully […]

There are as one might expect in a document of this length and written with access to the kinds of resources a pope commands, many good things said about marriage in Amoris. Whether those things […]

In recently musing about what Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis’ much anticipated post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation, might (or might not) contain, I wrote:  I don’t think Francis is going to try to change doctrine. Even if he […]

My initial judgment: The Joy of Love (Amoris Laetitia) is the best of Francis’ official documents yet—probably because he defers a great measure to bishops’ interventions at the synods on the family—even while it remains […]

A decade ago, a 79 year-old soft-spoken, white-haired German theologian returned to visit a university at which he had spent much of his academic career. On such occasions, it’s not unusual for a distinguished professor-emeritus […]

While President Obama is correct in saying the war on terror is not and mustn’t become a war against Islam, it would be foolish to ignore the religious dimension of Islamic terrorism as now reflected […]