Analysis

Fake canon law goes on goin’ on

April 22, 2017 Edward N. Peters 3

Fr. James Keenan writing in Crux this week makes his own a question raised (last July, it seems) by Rocco Buttiglione in L’Osservatore Romano: “Is there any contradiction between the popes who excommunicated divorced and remarried persons and Saint John […]

The Dispatch

Could a pope be in schism?

March 4, 2017 Edward N. Peters 1

Concerns that Pope Francis could cause a schism in the Church have been percolating in Catholic circles for some time now: US Catholic,Crux, Inside the Vatican, The Spectator. More recently, though, a narrower and more technical question has begun to surface, namely, whether […]

The Dispatch

A small but important point is at risk

February 24, 2017 Edward N. Peters 1

The debates over admission of divorced-and-remarried Catholics to holy Communion in the wake of Amoris have focused almost exclusively on what is just one canonical problem: the public reception of holy Communion by public sinners. But there are other, canonically distinct, […]

The Dispatch

I am a lawyer, not a mind-reader

February 23, 2017 Edward N. Peters 2

Cardinal Vincent Nichols’ echoing of claims that Amoris laetitia changed no doctrines occasioned a question for me: Am I the only (or among the few) Amoris critics who agrees with Amorisdefenders that Pope Francis made no doctrinal changes in Amoris? I do not think that […]