Following up on yesterday’s post about saturnos and rigidity, especially after reviewing the comments, I’d like to address a narrative that’s been advanced through much of his papacy: that he likes to “insult” priests, especially those who embrace orthodoxy, tradition, and Latin liturgy. One critic of Francis has received widespread publicity for publishing...
Hats are radical; only people that wear hats understand that. —Philip Treacy Last week, I highlighted a beautiful response from Pope Francis on his spiritual life, which he gave in a Q&A session with 24 local Jesuits in Mozambique during his pilgrimage to Africa early last month. Social media and reactionary Catholic outlets,...
A major part of Taylor Marshall’s argument in Infiltration rests upon highly dubious traditionalist interpretations of the ‘secrets’ associated with two famous Marian apparitions, thus providing another link between Infiltration and fringe Catholic conspiracy theory and apocalypticism. In this third part of my look at Infiltration (see parts one and two), I will...
Critics of Pope Francis on social media use many terms to describe his defenders, including “papolator,” “ultramontanist,” “pope-worshipper,” and “bergoglian.” A more clever but less-frequently used name is “Mottramist.” Mottramism is a reference to Rex Mottram, an extremely unsympathetic character from Evelyn Waugh’s classic novel Brideshead Revisited. It’s an intriguing allusion; however, the...
We just lost our baby. At 22 weeks. Grief is one of those primordial human emotions, along with shame, that was born in the darkness of sin. Like shame, grief has its positives and negatives. I truly and deeply feel the loss of our child; the pain and emptiness is pervasive and life-altering. ...
Pope Francis’s travels receive a great deal of media coverage. From his public celebrations of Holy Mass to his audiences with world leaders; to his visits with the local sick or imprisoned; to his comments aboard the airplane and his famous and free-wheeling in-flight press conferences, nearly every aspect of his voyage is...
****UPDATE 11/11/19: In an interview with Ross Douthat, published in the New York Times on Saturday, Cardinal Burke responded to a question on his position regarding the validity of Francis’s papacy. Douthat: You believe Francis is a legitimate pope? Burke: Yes, yes. I’ve had people present to me all kinds of arguments calling...
Where Peter Is received some criticism last week in the wake of breaking news regarding the wrangling in the Vatican that took place over the proposed ‘synodal way’ of the Church in Germany. Some asked why we weren’t issuing breathless condemnations over this allegedly real schism in the Church. I don’t know if...
In the last several days, many Catholics have been discussing Pope Francis’s comments about a potential schism in the Church, specifically in reference to a movement (in the U.S. Church and elsewhere) that is highly critical of Francis and his teachings. In his comments, Francis described the causes of schism, suggesting that they...
Reading through Christus vivit recently, I found a section labeled “Dreams and visions” (§§192-197), a six-paragraph-long exegesis of Joel 3:1: “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” I would...
I’ve seen a lot of confusion in the past year about the Church’s new teaching on the death penalty that was issued last summer when Pope Francis changed paragraph 2267 of the Catechism. One of the key misconceptions I’ve heard is that this new teaching is simply the prudential opinion of the pope...
I wonder if Catholics realize how irrelevant we have become. Actually, it’s worse than that. I wonder if Catholics realize how irrelevant we have made the Gospel of Jesus Christ. While the sowers of the Gospel all locked inside the walls of an insular Church, the devil is ravaging the fertile soil that...
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