Sometimes, the Church’s call to embrace voluntary poverty and her emphasis on the poor and oppressed can seem counterproductive. After all, growing in virtue is an important part of the Christian life—and wealth would seem to be conducive to such an end. Or, if not wealth (since the wealthy are hardly exemplars of...
“It is to give proof of a submission which is far from sincere to set up some kind of opposition between one Pontiff and another. Those who, faced with two differing directives, reject the present one to hold to the past, are not giving proof of obedience to the authority which has the...
[Yesterday, during the meeting of the US Catholic Bishops in Baltimore, clerical abuse survivor Mark Joseph Williams and Cardinal Joseph Tobin spoke to the assembly about the journey of accompaniment and healing from the trauma and horror of the sexual abuse crisis. As Williams wrote about the summer of 2018 in the Church,...
[Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series on “Vatican II and Theological Paradigms” by Michel Therrien, STL, STD, exploring some critical issues in the post-conciliar Church, particularly the root causes of internal divisions and polarization. In this series, Dr. Therrien considers the debate over the possibility of paradigm shifts in Catholic...
[This is the official text of the Address of His Excellency Archbishop Christophe Pierre, Apostolic Nuncio to the United States of America, to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Plenary Assembly in Baltimore, delivered earlier today, November 15, 2022. Published with permission.] My Dear Brothers in Christ, I greet you in the...
The preparation for the Synod on Synodality is enabling the Church to take a deeper look at her own reality. What constitutes the Church? What makes us the Church? How do the members of the Church fit and work together? As part of this journey of self-discovery, I recently wrote an article on...
A reflection on the Mass readings for November 13, 2022 — The Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time On the flight home from my recent vacation, I had the opportunity to watch the two Creed movies. I had heard good things about the movies but never took the time to watch them, so a...
“I want to see a Church so far forward, that my successor will not be able to turn back.” (scroll down for answer)
Over the past few days on social media, I have been the subject of attacks regarding some questions and concerns I’ve raised about clergy members of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham (OOLW), one of three personal Ordinariate structures in the Church. These Ordinariates were established by Pope Benedict XVI to allow...
Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. (Isaiah 1:18) There is a legendary story, written by Eleanor C. Donnelly, a Catholic American poet born in the 1800’s,...
Imagine if the pope extended an invitation to all the Catholics of the world and invited them to share their thoughts about the Church. Let’s imagine they were given a forum to speak about what they saw as the Church’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as where they think the Church fails and...
My children’s choir’s two favorite words every year? “Christmas concert.” Though we practiced every week in preparation for one Sunday Mass a month, working on Christmas songs for the concert was what fueled their participation during the slowly darkening evenings of late fall. The children’s repertoire could be divided into three sections: a...
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