“We should recall that no man is an island, entire of itself. Our lives are involved with one another, through innumerable interactions they are linked together. No one lives alone. No one sins alone. No one is saved alone. The lives of others continually spill over into mine: in what I think, say,...
Signs of an all-too familiar pattern are appearing. The narrative that the pope didn’t really say what he said seems to be developing in some conservative Catholic circles. We’re still in the midst of the media circus after Pope Francis was revealed to have made some provocative statements in an upcoming documentary, including,...
Catholic News Agency yesterday publicized comments from Pope Francis on same-sex civil unions that the agency claimed constituted “a shift from the perspective of [the pope’s] predecessors, and from his own more circumspect positions on civil unions in the past.” The comments, taken from the new documentary Francesco, were originally spoken in Spanish...
[This article has been updated. Click here] There was a stir in Catholic media today that began when Catholic News Agency reported that Pope Francis had expressed support for the recognition of same-sex unions. According to CNA, Francis was quoted as saying: “Homosexuals have a right to be a part of the family....
Today, Catholic social media unleashed a fury of reactions to the revelation that Pope Francis had indicated support for the idea of same-sex civil unions in a clip from “Francesco,” an upcoming feature-length documentary by filmmaker Evgeny Afineevsky. It’s hard to even know where to begin my response, the reactions have ranged everywhere...
One key to understanding the Church’s teaching on the economy is to ask—as Francis does in Fratelli Tutti—whether we “include or exclude those lying wounded along the roadside” (FT 69). This is, of course, a reference to the parable of the Good Samaritan, the framework upon which Pope Francis built his latest encyclical....
I see you. You were brought up with CCD and Sunday Mass and played Necco wafer communion. You gave up candy for Lent, ate fish sticks on Fridays, and know what “Holy Day of Obligation” means (get thyself to church). Your grandmother or some other sweet church lady used to pray the rosary for...
It has become common in certain Catholic circles to label Pope Francis (and the post-Conciliar Church) as “modernist.” This term is applied to stand in opposition to “tradition,” a fundamental Catholic value. After all, Tradition (with capital “T”) is one of the modes of transmission of the Word of God. The Church teaches,...
I am a busy husband and dad with a demanding job, so reading a lengthy papal document is not the easiest thing to take the time to do, nor is it typically high on my list of things to do. That said, over the last week I read Pope Francis’s latest encyclical, Fratelli...
Pope Francis’s recent encyclical, Fratelli tutti, presents fraternity as a necessary, Christocentric ingredient of and precondition for the betterment and advancement of society. Though the language of “fraternity” has not made many appearances in previous social encyclicals, and struck many readers as suspect because of its association with Masonry (to which the Catholic...
Fratelli Tutti is a signature encyclical—not only of Francis’s papacy, but for the Catholic Church. During a pandemic, when the world seems to be at a political, social, religious, and ecological tipping point, comes a papal encyclical on “fraternity” and “social friendship.” I am calling Fratelli Tutti “Pope Francis’s love letter to the...
Here’s a Saturday night special — In recent months, we’ve written about an unusually popular Catholic apocalyptic movement based in a modified version of millenarian beliefs (the idea that there will soon be a literal 1,000-year period of peace, when Christ will reign “spiritually” on earth), and we have highlighted two key figures...
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