“Young people can help keep [the Church] young,” says Pope Francis in his new Apostolic Exhortation, Christus Vivit. “Young people can offer the Church the beauty of youth by renewing her ability to ‘rejoice with new beginnings, to give unreservedly...
With all the attention Cardinal Joseph Zen has been getting with regard to his protests against the China/Vatican deal, most American Catholics probably aren’t aware that Hong Kong has two retired cardinals. Taking a much different approach than his predecessor,...
Below you will find a selection from St. Francis de Sales’ great work The Catholic Controversy. St. Francis is a Doctor of the Church and was a very successful missionary to the Calvinists of his day (he lived from 1567 to...
Throughout history, there have always been Catholics who have wanted to dissent from the teaching of the popes. Today, we see this attitude in theological “liberals” who do not like some of the “old fashioned” teaching of the Church, particular...
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...
The Magisterium is the teaching office of the Church. According to the Catechism (#100), “The task of interpreting the Word of God authentically has been entrusted solely to the Magisterium of the Church, that is, to the Pope and to...
I’m currently making my way through James Hitchcock’s History of the Catholic Church which succinctly summarizes the main developments of the Church over its 2000 year history. One thing this brief survey of the Church has taught me is that...
“Express how you feel, and then be quiet. Because the truth is humble. The truth is silent. The truth isn’t noisy. It’s not easy, what Jesus did. But the dignity of the Christian is anchored in the power of God....
“Uncrowd my heart, O God, until silence speaks in your still, small voice; turn me from the hearing of words, and the making of words, and the confusion of much speaking, to listening, waiting, stillness, silence.” — Esther de Waal;...
On Saturday, September 22, a long-anticipated “provisional agreement” between the Chinese government and the Vatican was announced regarding the process of appointing bishops in the Catholic Church in China. Officially, this agreement puts an end to the decades-long division between...
Wake up and smell the newest apostolic constitution from the Holy Father: Episcopalis Communio. Released Tuesday morning, it re-writes some of the rules for the Synod of Bishops. The stand-out feature is that it for the first time invests the...
For two years, critics of Amoris Laetitia have pointed to Poland as a celebrated example of a national bishops’ conference upholding their view of “orthodoxy.” Beginning in 2016, when a senior Polish bishop vowed to never allow communion to the...
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