“[T]he other face of the same vice is the Pelagianism of the pious. They do not want forgiveness and in general they do not want any real gift from God either. They just want to be in order. They don’t want hope they just want security. Their aim is to gain the right...
“Our defense of the innocent unborn, for example, needs to be clear, firm and passionate, for at stake is the dignity of a human life, which is always sacred and demands love for each person, regardless of his or her stage of development. Equally sacred, however, are the lives of the poor, those...
Throughout the history of Christianity there have always been people who read Scripture, Patristics, Magisterial documents and other things and used the conclusions they drew to argue that the Church—whether through the teachings of Pope or Council—had gone wrong and, to get back in the right, needed to adopt their own interpretation of...
On the day he found out he had an aggressive form of leukemia, my father received the Sacrament of Reconciliation for the first time in 53 years. Many faith traditions place an emphasis on atoning for wrong done. In the Catholic Church, we believe in confessing sins in Reconciliation to be absolved of...
Certain Catholics who oppose the decisions and teachings of Pope Francis (or other recent popes) proudly announce their “orthodoxy” by citing certain Scripture and Church documents—the latter frequently from the time of St. Pius X—in order to argue that the more recent statements they dislike must be heretical. Their behavior is very much...
My great-grandfather, Pawel Turowsky, came to the United States from the Russian Empire in 1907. Two years before, the failed Russian Revolution of 1905—harbinger of the successful Revolution twelve years later—had been brutally crushed by the Tsar’s forces. A wave of state-sponsored violence against Russia’s Jewish population, scapegoated for the rebellion, soon followed....
As I reflected today on my upcoming move to be nearer to most of my family and to some of my roots, I have had a strong feeling of denouement. Sixteen months ago, I went looking for Jesus’ Church in San Francisco, and somehow I found it in Rome. Now it feels like...
The Day for Life (…) every year highlights the value of human life and the absolute duty to defend it, from conception to its natural end. (…) That’s why the defense of life has as its fulcrum the welcoming of those who have been conceived and remain inside the maternal womb, sheltered by...
My son was due to be born this week. For a few months now, I’ve been driving by the cemetery where we buried him, occasionally visiting him, each time a reminder of that life that was and could have been. As we commemorate the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and we remember all...
The worldwide storm in reaction to news that the French publisher Fayard was releasing a book written by “four hands” — those of the Pope Emeritus and Cardinal Robert Sarah — was provoked not just by its content (confirming that celibacy was a mandatory condition for the priesthood) so much as by the...
Paul Moses recently published a fascinating article in Commonweal titled “Unheeded Warnings: How Vatican Diplomacy Failed to Prevent the Iraq War,” in which he reveals, for the first time, a letter that Pope John Paul II sent to President George W. Bush in 2003, during the lead-up to the US invasion of Iraq....
It appears we have reached a stalemate. Cardinal Sarah has given his version of events of how the book, From the Depths of Our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church, came to be written. Archbishop Georg Ganswein has also given his version of events on behalf of Pope Emeritus...
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