Pope Francis’s third encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, on Fraternity and Social Friendship, is a gift to the Church and to the human race. Building on previous social encyclicals, including his own Laudato Si’ (2015) and Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate (2009),...
The Catholic Church espouses a consistent ethic of life that requires the legal protection of all human life from conception to natural death. Thus Pope Francis wrote, in his 2018 Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate (“Rejoice and Be Glad”): The...
William Barr, a Catholic, has generated controversy since he began his tenure as Attorney General of the United States in February 2019. Among other things, on July 25, 2019, he ordered the Federal Bureau of Prisons to execute five federal...
When we say that biblical inerrancy is “limited,” we need to be careful to define exactly how and in what way it is limited. St. John Henry Newman wrote that the Bible was inspired in “all matters of faith and...
In my previous post, I explored the revision process and debate that led to the final wording of Dei Verbum (DV) 11, which says that the Scriptures teach “without error the truth that God, for the sake of our salvation,...
In part 1 of my analysis of the third chapter of the Vatican II document Dei Verbum (DV), I showed how the Church understands the creation of the Bible as a divine-human synergy. God is its Author insofar as he...
On August 6, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published a response to two dubia (questions) about clerics performing baptisms with the words “We baptize you” instead of “I baptize you.” According to their response, changing the...
The first chapter of Dei Verbum (DV) defines and explains faith and revelation, the second explains Tradition and how it grows, and the third explains Scripture and how to interpret it in light of both its human and divine qualities....
In the previous installment of my analysis of Dei Verbum (DV)’s second chapter, I explained how the Church defines Sacred Tradition, and how we are to understand its development and growth. In this article, I will explore how Tradition grows...
In the first part of my analysis of the second chapter of Dei Verbum (DV), I explained that, according to the document, Scripture and Tradition are not two things but one (unum). But just what is Tradition anyway, and how...
The first chapter of Dei Verbum (DV)—which I wrote about here and here—is about revelation and faith. The second chapter is about Tradition, a topic that has been controversial since the Protestant Reformation and the Council of Trent in the...
In my last piece, I showed how Archbishop Viganò rejects many teachings of Vatican II and the Council itself. How does he justify this, given that he is a Catholic archbishop who would naturally be expected to uphold the councils...
Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, Apostolic Nuncio to the United States from 2011-16, made headlines two years ago when he alleged, without evidence, that Pope Francis knew about the crimes of former-Archbishop Theodore McCarrick but employed him anyway. Recently, he...
Whenever we talk about divine revelation, we must also talk about faith, for faith is the human response required by it (DV 5). As I explained in part 1, Dei Verbum shifted the Catholic understanding of revelation away from the...
As this millennium approached, John Paul II called upon the whole Church to do an examination of conscience regarding the extent to which it had received and implemented the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council (Tertio Millennio Adveniente 36). He said that...
During this pandemic the Catholic Church has a choice between working together with the scientific community for the common good, or ignoring that community and confirming the charge that it is anti-science. It is a popular misconception that the Catholic...
Cardinal Raymond Burke, the titular head of the online resistance to Pope Francis, has given an interview about Querida Amazonia. It contains several eyebrow-raising lines, but what really stands out is his denial of Christ’s presence in creation. His eminence...
The pope’s official response to the Amazon Synod was released on Wednesday. Entitled Querida Amazonia (“Beloved Amazon”), it is said to complement rather than supercede the synod’s own Final Document (my analysis of which you can read here) (QA 2)....
The final document of October’s synod of bishops on the Amazon has finally received an official English translation (here). Among its themes and proposals stands out its emphasis on caring for creation (ecology). News coverage of the synod was dominated...
Yesterday Pope Francis, during his historic first-ever visit of a Roman pontiff to the Arabian peninsula, again made big news by signing a joint statement on “Human Fraternity” with the Grand Imam of al-Azhar, Ahmed el-Tayeb. He’s sort of like the Sunni...
Popular Posts