Francis’s papacy has sparked a fierce debate about the ability of the Magisterium to authoritatively interpret Tradition. Sadly, arguments about this matter typically end in a deadlock with the papal critics. Those of us who support Pope Francis often quote...
Pope Francis spoke to members of Italy’s National Catechetical Office today, and offered some words of encouragement and gratitude to catechists, who do such an important job of forming us in the faith. Earlier this evening, I took part in...
Earlier this month, Adam Rasmussen responded to Fr. Chad Ripperger’s theory of Church authority, summarizing it as an approach in which “any magisterial statements that do not define dogmas … may be questioned if they seem to contradict earlier statements.”...
Social media has given a big boost to Catholic traditionalism. What once was fringe has become almost mainstream, at least on the internet. When shared online, the teachings of the Catholic Church as set forth authentically by Pope Francis, his...
But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive opinions. (2 Peter 2:1 NRSVCE) In the context of my previous essay on Vatican II, we turn...
Anti-Francis Catholics frequently identify themselves as “orthodox” or as strict adherents to Church teaching. While doing so, they must reconcile those claims with the fact that they have chosen to reject the official teachings of the current pope as heretical...
There are, unfortunately, Catholics who think that defending Pope Francis involves tearing down his predecessors. Throughout his pontificate, they have portrayed almost everything Pope Francis has done as “finally correcting” the bad practices of his predecessors and ignoring the good...
This is the second installment of our series on the New Americanism. To read part one, click here. The heresy of Americanism was condemned in Testem benevolentiae, Pope Leo XIII’s 1899 letter to James Cardinal Gibbons, then Archbishop of Baltimore....
1. The title “Querida Amazonia” is Portuguese / Spanish for “Dear Amazon”–as in somebody’s female beloved, or the salutation of a letter. Oftentimes (not always), a papal document with a title in a vernacular language is meant to speak to...
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,...
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...
As I continue to work my way through the dreary Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin, I notice a good deal of what I call hijacking legitimate authority. By this I mean that he claimed his interpretation of Scripture was the true meaning...
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