Tuesday Update: 11/14/23 Bishop Strickland Calls for Prayers for Pope Francis, Warns of Forces Corrupting Catholic Church WSJ: Texas Bishop Joseph Strickland, a vocal critic of the pope, has “warned of ‘blasphemies emanating from Rome’”(WSJ 11/12/23) “Ousted Bishop Speculates on the Reasons the Vatican Removed Him. National Catholic Register: ““I really can‘t look to any… Read More Pope Francis Fires Conservative U.S. Bishop. Updated.
A fireworks of metaphors employed in quest to assess its place in Catholic history. Then there is Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne who (Oct. 8) thinks “The assembly that Pope Francis opened in Rome last week is radical, though not in the sense that his right-wing critics have in mind. Its purpose is downright… Read More Theologians See Trainwreck in Synod of Pope Francis.
Update: Without prejudice to the objectionable personal belief system of Jeffrey Sachs, noted below, there appear to have been developments in the political significance of Sachs: + Insider turned political heretic, Jeffrey Sachs, in discussion with Tucker Carlson (August 2024) ~~~ Pope Francis names Jeffrey Sachs to Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences —May 2023: Sachs on… Read More Jeffrey Sachs. Who he is ideologically and Why It Matters
Solène Tadié Vatican October 17, 2023 NCRegister. “Eight years after a footnote in one of Pope Francis’ signature documents appeared to open the door for divorced-and-remarried Catholics to receive Communion while remaining sexually active, a new round of public conflicts over its doctrinal legitimacy has exposed just how unsettled the issue remains at the highest levels… Read More Cardinal Müller: Latest Vatican Guidance on Divorce-Remarried Communion Represents a ‘Rupture’ With Church Teaching
Edward Pentin of the National Catholic Register writes, “Pope Francis appears to open the door to same-sex blessings in his response to dubium no. 2, saying that priests may use their discretion in giving such blessings, so long as they don’t imply a same-sex union is equivalent to a heterosexual marriage: a) The Church has… Read More Francis Appears to Open Another Door
Edward Pentin.Vatican.October 2, 2023. VATICAN CITY — Five cardinals have sent a set of questions to Pope Francis to express their concerns and seek clarification on points of doctrine and discipline ahead of this week’s opening of the Synod on Synodality at the Vatican. The cardinals said they submitted five questions, called dubia, on Aug.… Read More Cardinals Send ‘Dubia’ to Pope Francis Ahead of Synod on Synodality
“Pope Francis oversees a curia where the Relator General for the Synod on Synodality claims the Church’s teaching about homosexual acts is “false,” where the head of the Pontifical Academy for Life endorses a book that calls for a complete reversal of the Church’s teaching on contraception, and where the head of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of… Read More Hard to Believe History Will Be Kind
Updated. A couple of years ago our son asked me if I watched Michael Voris’ YouTube channel. I replied along the lines of, “Sometimes. Not very often. He’s been around for a long time; I know his thinking well enough. It can lead to wrong impressions, to schism or outright skepticism.” It can also minimize… Read More Michael Davies on Our Priests and Our Tribulation
Updated. Nancy Pelosi vowed to reverse the end of Roe v. Wade ‘one way or another’ By Anders Hagstrom | Fox News Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., urged her fellow Democrats to put the abortion issue front and center in their 2024 campaigns, arguing Republicans will lose big on the issue across the country. Pelosi appeared… Read More Pelosi says abortion is Democrats’ ticket to victory in 2024, accuses Republicans of ‘disrespect for women’
Bends over backwards to save ubiquitous travesties. “A few months ago, I visited Lourdes for the first time, and when I saw the mosaics, I groaned out loud. Father Rupnik’s style is immediately recognizable, and my first thought was that the art would forever be tainted… Three years ago, he was even briefly excommunicated …… Read More America Magazine Compares Rupnik Cartoons to Caravaggio.
NCRegister: “When the Vatican recently announced that lay Catholic men and women will participate as voting members in the 16th ordinary general assembly of the Synod of Bishops in Rome Oct. 2-29, the news caused head-scratching among some Catholic experts. “The Synod of Bishops, as understood by the Second Vatican Council, as understood by Pope St. Paul… Read More “Never in the History of the Church”
The Imaginative Conservative.Victor Orban interview excerpt. “… the Hungarian position was that there was hardly any chance that there could be a winner in this war. It will have losers, but it won’t have winners. “Russia is coming up against a brick wall, and as NATO is supplying Ukraine with weapons and money, it’s simply… Read More The Ukraine War, the Pope, & the West
Urges Hungary to welcome migrants. America Magazine (CNS): “As expected, in his first speech in Hungary—to government and civic leaders and diplomats serving in Budapest—the pope acknowledged efforts to protect traditional values, but insisted those values include supporting European unity, welcoming migrants and working to end the war in neighboring Ukraine… Mentioning some areas of… Read More Pope Francis Repeats Words on Gender Ideology, Abortion and Migrants
“New World Order Without God”… Who needs the old Progressivist desire for a Third Vatican Council to mitigate Church teachings when they can have almost anything they want through an incremental permanent synodal Church? A lot of the infiltrators who maneuvered their way into the highest positions in the Church by pretending to be pious… Read More Cardinal Müller challenges Pope Francis
Peter Kwasniewski, PhD To a degree not yet as widely recognized as it should be, Pope Francis – Jorge Bergoglio, S.J. – is showing himself to be an admirable disciple of his Jesuit forerunner Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. (1881-1955), the Piltdown paleontologist and “Omega Point” mystagogue, who exercised an enormous influence on the young… Read More Teilhard de Chardin: Model of Ambiguity for a Future Pope
…and Interview With the Authors, Shaun Blanchard and Stephen Bullivant. Note: The book under discussion here represents only one of a number of interpretations of Vatican II and it’s fruits which are found at this website. See Labels / Categories for others. — Editor. “There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, that sometime in the 1950s,… Read More Addressing a “Different Kind of Crisis”? A New Introduction to Vatican II
Updated. Cardinals Mueller and Burke on the German Synod and beyond. “Bishops are accusing brother bishops of schism and heresy — and it’s all over the most fundamental and crucial doctrines of the Church.” Signs of the times. “Desecration is the act of depriving something of its sacred character, or the disrespectful, contemptuous, or destructive… Read More Pontificate of Francis 10 Years Later
“The Christo-centricity of teaching is being weakened; Christ is being moved from the centre”. THE VATICAN TODAY Commentators of every school, if for different reasons, with the possible exception of Father Spadaro, SJ, agree that this pontificate is a disaster in many or most respects; a catastrophe. 1. The Successor of St. Peter is the… Read More Cardinal Pell’s Pessimistic Assessment of the Pontificate of Francis
“… it would be legitimate to wonder whether the testimony of these seminarians is really true. The editor of the website Germinans Germinabit also wondered in another article, dated January 1. Are we facing yet another case of alleged accounts of personal conversations with the Pope, such as those made several times by the Italian journalist Eugenio Scalfari?… Read More VPO Clarifications Sought in Allegations of Theology and Language Unbecoming of a Pope
Are Catholic prelates really moving in on Francis with a view to ousting him as a report indicates? “Vatican plot to force Pope Francis to resign: Conservatives wage ‘secret plan’ to put the liberal pontiff under so much stress he will step down, Italian cardinal reveals’ — Daily Mail, 1/9/22 I’d be surprised if this happens… Read More Moving in on Francis?
Newsmax. “The Vatican has defrocked Father Frank Pavone — who has been described as “the most vocal Catholic priest in America for the pro-life movement” — in a move that has shocked Church conservatives. This past weekend the Catholic News Agency (CNA) revealed the full text of a letter from Archbishop Christophe Pierre, the Apostolic Nuncio to… Read More Fr. Frank Pavone and Contraception Rumors. Updated.
By Christian Oliver For Mail online.13 Dec 2022. The Pope has warned of ‘omens of even greater destruction and desolation’. The pontiff said even more dire times for humanity are set to come in the future. He was speaking at a Mass commem- orating the appearance of Mary in 1531 The Pope has offered a harrowing vision of… Read More Pope warns ‘omens of greater destruction and desolation’ for mankind
By Dave Carlin.The Catholic Thing. Decades ago, American conservatives used to say that liberalism was “creeping socialism.” It wasn’t true at the time – although it may well be true of today’s liberalism, a very different and far more leftist kind of animal than the liberalism of the old days. From the late 1940s until… Read More Improving the Church
Updated. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat’s new book, To Change The Church: Pope Francis And The Future of Catholicism … is an urgent, compelling work of popular religious journalism. Douthat reads the signs of these anxious times with acute clarity and far-seeing vision. This book is must reading for every Christian who cares about the fate of… Read More Revisiting the 2018 Dreher / Douthat Interview: the Great Gamble of Francis.
Then, The Jesuits: What Went Wrong? But first: Franciscan University Presents. Panelists Dr. Regis Martin, Dr. Scott Hahn, and special guest Fr. Gerald E. Murray, a diocesan priest in the Archdiocese of New York, and Co-Author of the new book “Calming the Storm: Navigating the Crises Facing the Catholic Church and Society“, as they discuss… Read More Facing Crises in the Church and Society | Fr. Gerald E. Murray
By Michael Brendan Dougherty.National Review, 10/12/22. And six decades of pseudo-theologyYears ago, during a very brief meeting at New York University with the eminent English conservative Roger Scruton, I shared with him — an Anglican by tradition — my reservations about the Second Vatican Council and my interest in the old liturgy. He had no… Read More 60 Years Since Vatican II
Thomas Merton on Moral Chaos, and “the worst insanity” (below). Thomas Merton: Nuclear Weapons and Sanity: “The generals and fighters on both sides, in World War II, the ones who carried out the total destruction of entire cities, these were the sane ones. Those who have invented and developed atomic bombs, thermonuclear bombs, missiles; who… Read More Tucker Carlson and Thomas Merton on the Nuclear Option
“But those who wait on the Lord Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint.” (Isaiah 40:31) — The Great Deformer. On the Final Phase of Francis’s Turbulent Papacy by Pieter Vree, editor New Oxford Review. August 2021.… Read More The Effects of Limiting The Traditional Latin Mass
7.30.22. “I don’t think I can go at the same pace as I used to travel,” said the 85-year-old pope, who suffers pain in his knee that has seen him increasingly reliant on a wheelchair. “I think that at my age and with this limitation, I have to save myself a little bit to be… Read More Pope to Slow Down. Or to Quit.
“If a type of action always destroys, damages or impedes some basic element of human good, then no ranking of proportional outcomes can make that action consistent with integral human flourishing. “ By E. Christian Brugger, Zenith Dispatch. Problem Lies in Idea of Maximizing Good. WASHINGTON, D.C., 27 JULY 2011 (ZENIT) Here is a question… Read More The Battle Over Proportionalism Rises Again
A Synod “filled with the usual modern technocratic, therapeutic linguistics of faux egalitarian tyranny”. Will the Church still be a “listening” Church in ten years or will the “Spirit” go mute once the Germans have given the final definitive word on the Spirit’s intentions? Larry ChappCatholic World Report April 22, 2022 I am not opposed… Read More The quintessentially modern approach to “synodality” is empty and artificial
By John Waters 3 . 23 . 20 /First Things Magazine. Recently [2020], while speaking in the Italian city of Bari, Pope Francis mentioned contemporary “populist” politicians—specifically, those who describe recent waves of migrants traveling from Africa to Europe as an “invasion.” “I grow fearful when I hear certain speeches by some leaders of the new… Read More ON LOVING THY NEIGHBOR
“Vile Attack”. “Erase him from memory of the Church.” Speaking to an Italian newspaper, the pope emeritus’ personal secretary noted that such people ‘never loved him as an individual, his theology, his pontificate.’ Edward Pentin, February 10, 2022, National Catholic Register VATICAN CITY — Archbishop Georg Gänswein has claimed that a movement is not only… Read More Archbishop Ganswein: Progressivist Forces Want to Destroy Benedict XVI’s Life and Work
“…[T]here is no shortage of those who today are railing against him “They are free to do so, but I can affirm that I have never found in him any shadow or attempt to hide or minimize anything. Nor can his sensitivity in dealing with things with a profound moral sense be mistaken for uncertainty… Read More Finishing Off a Pope too Traditional?
By Elise Ann AllenDec 18, 2021, CruxNews ROME – In a new interview, Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston spoke out against American critics of Pope Francis with ties to the EWTN television network, insisting that despite this opposition, the pope enjoys broad support in the United States. A key papal advisor, O’Malley spoke to veteran… Read More O’Malley says EWTN, social media give distorted image of US support for Pope
Francis X. Maier, The Catholic Thing. Tuesday, October 26, 2021 Every pontificate gets mixed reviews. So, too, the current one. For some, Francis is the great reformer. He’s a visionary pope. A voice of the marginalized. A champion of compassion. He’s returning the Church to the proper path of Vatican II – a course sadly… Read More Praying for the Pope
October 17. The way it is. Actual Streaming beginning around 9:35 min. Photo above. Michael Madrigal, a lay minister in the Diocese of San Bernardino, recites the “Native American Prayer to the Four Directions” at the beginning of the diocese’s opening Mass for the Synod on Synodality, Oct. 17, 2021 at Holy Angels Church in… Read More 2021. Synod on Synodality, Oct. 2021. Opening Mass in San Bernardino.
By Courtney Mares, Vatican City, Sep 27, 2021, CNA Pope Francis decried abortion and euthanasia in a speech Monday in which he said that today’s “throwaway culture” leads to the killing of children and discarding of the elderly. “There is the discarding of children that we do not want to welcome with the law of… Read More Pope Francis decries abortion, euthanasia as treating human life like ‘waste’
See also First Things, Burying Benedict by Matthew Schmitz Intro, Inside the Vatican magazine “Pope Benedict XVI is very old now, and lives mostly in silence and prayer. “Therefore, he is no longer able to defend himself against attacks on his thought as he once did, quite effectively, in his own words, with his own strength of… Read More Canceling Pope Benedict
NYT: Pope Francis Is Tearing the Catholic Church Apart (Revisited). By Michael Brendan Dougherty.The New York Times.August 13, 2021. In the summer of 2001, I drove up to Poughkeepsie, N.Y., to find what we called “the traditional Latin Mass,” the form of Roman Catholic worship that stretched back centuries and was last authorized in 1962, before… Read More All I Really Need to Know in Theology I Learned From … Mr. Rogers?
