I’m fine with this. The Celibate priesthood is a non-essential tradition, dating no earlier than the Middle Ages. I dont’ expect it to be a panacaea, but I don’t think it will do any harm. At any rate, it constitutes a change to the priesthood, and I think after the last fifty years the priesthood… Read More Married Priests Might Be a Thing Again
Bad Catholic for the win, as the kids don’t say anymore: Unless we have an assurance that the people we love will never suffer and die, to accept an invitation to love is to accept an invitation to fear. Love does not comfort, then, but “ups the ante” of human existence, making higher the highs… Read More On the Fear of Hell
So Sayeth Thomas Williams over at Breitbart. Rather, the Pope is a critic of the spiritual malaise involved of the worship of Mammon. As he should be. But he never has said, or even suggested, that the free market be replaced with another economic system. Francis’s predecessor, Pope John Paul II, famously distinguished between capitalism… Read More The Pope is Not a Communist
Over at Ace of Spades. To summarize: The Pope is not infallible on matters of science. Anyone, even Catholics, are free to disagree with his assessment of scientific knowledge. The Holy Spirit does not assist with that. The Pope’s theology in this encyclical is solid. Ultimately, we cannot damage the earth without damaging ourselves, and… Read More A Sane, Sensible Discussion of Laudato Si, the Pope’s Environmental Encycical.
Deus Vult: Archbishop Tomasi also complained that a “certain indifference” to Christian suffering in Iraq existed in the international community. “It is difficult to convince—because of false modesty, I would say—the Western powers to take a strong stance in defense of the Christians,” Tomasi said. That’s the polite way of putting it.
You know how it is. You bounce back from a day of fasting and abstinence, and then you’ve got another day of abstinence staring down at you. The natural response: So Happy Meat Thursday, everyone. Now if you’ll excuse me, this chicken cordon bleu is not going to ravenously stuff itself into my mouth.
Abortion is not new. It did not spring fully-formed from the head of the Supreme Court in 1973. It is as old as civilization itself, and the controversy surrounding it is just as old: “Why sow where the ground makes it its care to destroy the fruit? Where there are many efforts at abortion? Where… Read More Kermit Gosnell and the Holy of Holies
If you are Catholic, and like me, you ended yesterday, shall we say, gastronomically unsatisfied. Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent, is a day both of abstinence and fasting. Abstinence means refraining from something, and Lenten Abstinence is the “no meat Fridays” rule that Catholics routinely remember to forget to remember. But fasting? That brings… Read More Happy Meat Thursday!
Just as any king can abdicate, Popes can vacate the Papal office. And just as with kings, such abdications are rare. How rare? The last time the leader of the Roman Catholic Church resigned his office was almost exactly 600 years ago in 1415, and that was to end the Western Schism and reunify the… Read More Yes, Popes Can Resign
He spent decades shielding priestly molestors. He deserves no less. A Church expert said the “very unusual” punishment showed how seriously the US Catholic hierarchy was taking the case. “To tell a cardinal he can’t do confirmations, can’t do things in public, that’s extraordinary,” said Jesuit scholar the Reverend Thomas Reese, a Georgetown University fellow,… Read More Retired Cardinal “Stripped of Duties”
Content Blues 