On yanking and slapping hands
Today is the Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God: one of the holy days of obligation of the Christmas Octave and the first day of the New Year of 2020! So what better way for a...
Category: Commentary
A New Year’s Resolution for Catholics: Be Critical
2019 was a turbulent year in the Church, but amid all the controversy, much was revealed. Some prominent critics of the pope, spurred on by the example of the now-discredited Archbishop Viganò, expressed themselves with rare frankness, allowing us to...
Pope Francis and Mary Co-Redemptrix
Pope Francis’ homily for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12 has been the source of some discussion and controversy. One article carried the headline: “Pope calls idea of declaring Mary co-redemptrix ‘foolishness’.” Another said: “Francis: Mary...
Hijacking Legitimate Authority
As I continue to work my way through the dreary Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin, I notice a good deal of what I call hijacking legitimate authority. By this I mean that he claimed his interpretation of Scripture was the true meaning...
Pope to Curia: We are no longer living in a Christian world
On December 21, 2019, Pope Francis addressed the Curia in a Christmas message. Unlike many papal homilies, speeches, and addresses that slip silently into the Vatican’s online archives, this address received significant attention from the secular news media. Not surprisingly,...
Bizarro World Catholicism
As the antics of some Catholics continue, I am reminded of the DC Comics Bizarro World. The basic concept here is whatever is seen as right, true, and good on Earth is seen as wrong, false, and bad in Bizarro World....
Christianity Without Guardrails
Fr. Dwight Longenecker finished reading Rusty Reno’s new book and is now ready to declare that we are heading for World War III. But Longenecker’s article illustrates that a world war, spiritual in nature, is already upon us. Longenecker’s review...
They actually believe this garbage
Today, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, writing from an undisclosed location, issued yet another statement against Pope Francis, summarized by Lifesite News, (another translation is provided by Robert Moynihan of Inside the Vatican) employing the type of language once reserved for...
Fr. Pacwa and divine signs
I would like to end my series on the controversy around the Amazon Synod carved figure by making a brief commentary on a recent video by Fr. Mitch Pacwa. This video is the source of the “do you think we’re...
Catechesis Is Not the Answer
What figure best shows how dire the Church’s situation is in the West? Is it Mass attendance among youth? Perhaps it is polls of self-professed Catholics that reveal little connection between the Church’s teachings and common practice? We know the...
How the pope’s critics sound like Calvin
Some people have reacted with hostility or mockery to my articles about the Pope Bashers behaving like Luther or Calvin. Presumably they think I mean they share the same errors on theology. Since they know they don’t, they think I’m...
On Capitalism: American Catholics Have a Choice to Make
The debate touched off by Senator Marco Rubio’s recent speech at the Catholic University of America reveals major fault lines within current Catholic thinking in the United States. What Rubio, who is Catholic, pointed out in his speech seemed straightforward...
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