The Dispatch
Ecclesia and Excommunication
On the Readings for Sunday, September 10, 2017 […]
papacy
The Dispatch
The Papacy and Sacred Scripture
On the Readings for Sunday, August 27, 2017 […]
The Dispatch
The Paralyzed Church
The Church is paralyzed today. Last November’s meeting of the USCCB, the recent papal motu proprio (which I discussed here), and now this month’s USCCB meeting have all demonstrated an exhaustion of episcopal imagination, which […]
The Dispatch
The risen Christ to the restored Peter: “Feed my sheep!”
Readings: • Acts 5:27-32, 40b-41 • Ps 30:2, 4, 5-6, 11-12, 13 • Rev 5:11-14 • Jn 21:1-19 Years ago, not long after entering the Church, I called into a local radio program hosted by […]
The Dispatch
The remarkable story of the search for Saint Peter’s tomb
On November 24, 2013, the world was treated to a remarkable sight. Pope Francis, the 265th successor of Saint Peter, held an ossuary containing the bones of the first pope. The current occupant of a […]
The Dispatch
Argument over Pope Pius XII’s response to the Holocaust is political, not historical
In his exhaustive history The Papacy in the Age of Totalitarianism, 1914 to 1958 (Oxford University Press, 2014), Cambridge University historian John Pollard expresses doubt whether the argument over Pope Pius XII’s response to the Holocaust […]
Essay
The Church’s One Foundation
Author’s Note to the reader: This essay belongs to a conversation that includes Roberto de Mattei’s Tu es Petrus: True Devotion to the Chair of Peter, my own The Conversion of the Papacy and the […]
Essay
A short defense of authentic synodality
Among some Catholics today, “synodality” is regarded as an ill-defined term perhaps signifying nothing but the covert dismantling of Catholic structures and teaching. Raymond Cardinal Burke, for instance, recently said in an interview with LifeSiteNews […]
Features
New book clarifies beliefs and corrects misunderstandings about the papacy
Stephen K. Ray is the author of several books, including Crossing the Tiber, Upon This Rock, and St. John’s Gospel: A Bible Study and Commentary. He is also the host of the popular, award-winning film series […]
The Dispatch
John Henry Newman, conversion, and the papacy
It is cheering news that John Henry Newman’s canonization now appears to be at hand since a second miracle attributed to his intercession has been accepted. Whenever I am asked how I became Catholic (Newman […]