“Today, if we listen to the Spirit, we will not be concerned with conservatives and progressives, traditionalists and innovators, right and left. When those become our criteria, then the Church has forgotten the Spirit. The Paraclete impels us to unity, to concord, to the harmony of diversity. He makes us see ourselves as...
Two Intertwined Narratives Rod Dreher begins his book The Benedict Option by observing that the “culture war” is over and that the conservatives have lost it. If the war is indeed over, many of the warriors don’t seem to have noticed. Whether or not the culture war has been lost, its very existence...
It was a dull day in the Where Peter Is offices and not much was happening, apart from the Church falling apart in the Last Days; but that was no longer a story and we had a page to fill for Friday. The Managing Editor walked in and threw a Dictionary of British-American...
Catholic News Service had a report today on a statement by Bishop Georg Bätzing of Limburg, president of the German bishops’ conference, following his private audience with Pope Francis this morning. The article quotes from Bätzing’s statement, which says he “‘informed the pope in detail’ about the status of the German church’s ‘Synodal...
Check out the eighth episode of The Critical Catholic on Where Peter Is Media, with Mike Lewis and D.W. Lafferty. We stream live every Sunday on YouTube at 8 p.m. EST. Join us for the second part of our look at the conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Pope John Paul I. Albino...
In this morning’s General Audience address, Pope Francis began a new catechesis series on St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians. In just a few words, he returned to some familiar themes: inculturation of the Gospel, trust, discernment, prayer, and rigidity. These themes are especially pertinent to the situation today in the United States...
Like many Catholics who live in the Washington, DC area, I have attended the annual March for Life many times over the years. For those who haven’t been, it’s a massive annual pro-life rally held every year on January 22, the anniversary of the Roe v Wade decision. Groups come by bus from...
Note: Continuing in this week’s ecumenical spirit, fostered by Gareth Thomas’s reflection yesterday on the Taizé community in France, today we have a piece by our friend Julian Waldner. Julian is a Hutterite Christian (a tradition that traces its roots to the Anabaptists), who enjoys interfaith and ecumenical dialogue to build friendships and...
This Postcard from the Camino is from the Taizé Community in France, which is situated on the Way of Saint James on a variant of the Vezelay route to Compostela. The village is not far from the ruins of Cluny abbey, where the 10th century Benedictine reform radiated out across Europe: in its...
Last week on the Critical Catholic, we looked at how the conspiracy theories regarding the death of Pope John Paul I fit into a particular “liberal” narrative regarding the Church and the encyclical Humanae Vitae. This week, we continue by delving into a very different world of Freemasonic intrigue, massive financial corruption, and...
A reflection on the readings for Sunday, June 20, 2021 — the Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time There are few experiences in the world that can match the intensity, the violence, and the sheer drama of a midwestern storm. Growing up in northeastern Pennsylvania, shielded by the gently rolling Appalachian mountains, I never fully...
Marriage, like the priesthood, “serves to build up the People of God” and confers a special mission to spouses in the edification of the Church. The family is a “domestic Church”, the place in which the sacramental presence of Christ acts between spouses and between parents and children. In this sense, “the experience of...
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