Today, Pope Francis celebrated his 83rd birthday. According to Vatican News, The Church and the world [are] celebrating together with him in an outpouring of affection. Thousands of e-mails have been arriving, along with letters from children. Millions of people have chosen social networks to communicate their thoughts and prayers beneath a picture...
Over the last couple of months, the Brazilian-born group Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) has landed in the public eye, drawing attention for its hostility to Pope Francis and rejection of the Church’s stance towards those marginalized in society. Despite this attention, the Church in the United States has largely ignored the group....
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 stupid?” canard. This catchphrase has been repeated in a mantra-like fashion by those...
I want to address now, from this land of Cochabamba, peasant par excellence, to you, Quechua peasants, men of the “bronze lineage”, who from time immemorial populate these valleys and are at the roots of Bolivian nationality; that you have given to the world your nutritional and medicinal findings such as potatoes, corn...
Today has brought the news that James D. Conley, Bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska and successor of the archconservative stalwart Fabian Bruskewitz in that diocese, has taken an indefinite leave of absence from his ministerial duties, due to serious mental health issues. Bishop Conley himself writes: I also want to tell you about my...
Today is the 50th anniversary of Pope Francis’ ordination to the priesthood. Pope Francis’ vocation to the priesthood and its significance for him is expressed in the motto of his papal coat of arms, “miserando atque eligendo”. The motto is explained by the Vatican in this way: The motto of Pope Francis is...
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 Church is in decline, but sadly the Church’s response (and by Church I...
Part one is here, part two here. In her book Waiting for the Apocalypse: A Memoir of Faith and Family (2009), Veronica Chater provides a moving account of what it was like to grow up in a traditionalist Catholic family during the 1970s. Her father, Lyle J. Arnold, Jr. (who was a regular...
This is the first in a projected series of essays dealing with the phenomenon of “loneliness,” beginning with a discussion of the loneliness described to Pope Francis in the “youth encounter” in Tokyo, and moving from there into a broader view. In Japanese-American author Ruth Ozeki’s 2013 novel A Tale for the Time...
On the feast of the Immaculate Conception, December 8th, Pope Francis has named Cardinal Tagle as the New Prefect of the Congregation of the Evangelization of Peoples. This position (also called “The Red Pope”) is considered a top Vatican post, overseeing mission territories of the Church. He is the second Asian to be...
Earlier today, my mother, Patricia Lewis, passed away at home after a long illness. She was surrounded by family and friends when she drew her last breath. Just before her final moments, my brother and I sang the first two verses of one of her favorite hymns, “Immaculate Mary.” Due to December 8...
Ellie follows me on social media. She doesn’t like Pope Francis and is always looking for clues that she correlates with her daily overdose injections of LifeSiteNews, Remnant, 1P5, NovusOrdoWatch, Rorate, and Arroyo to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Vicar of Christ is the personification of evil, the devil...
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