there is the Church
St. Cyprian was a bishop of Carthage. He died a martyr’s death in 258. His skill in Latin was so impressive that he was considered the Church’s best Latin writer until Augustine and Jerome. Cyprian was key to resolving the Novatianist schism. As such, he had quite a lot to say about the evils of schism. If you doubt whether this man has something to teach you about faithfulness, just look at his final conversation...
“The Breasts of His Own Tender Love” Motherhood needs a cultural reboot. Perhaps no institution is as roundly mocked, belittled, and discounted as motherhood. Our society neglects mothers and discards them when it finds them burdensome. There’s an urgent need for a renaissance of the mom. Above all, we need a rebirth of faith in the Motherhood of God. Some think seeing God as our Mother will undermine the fact that he is our Father,...
Back in July 2018, Cardinal Gerhard Müller said that Catholics can safely ignore the Pope’s efforts to create an environmental conscientiousness in the Church. In what I can only describe as one of the silliest and most dangerous positions I’ve ever seen a cardinal publicly express, Müller told The Australian, “Environmental policy is nothing [sic] to do with faith and morals. Those issues are for politicians and for people to vote for the party they...
John Calvin, the Reformation theologian in Geneva who lead the development of Protestant theology, was nothing if not a brilliant mind. Calvin’s contributions to the history of theology are almost always wrong, but they are so skillfully wrong that I cannot help but be impressed by their intricacy. One example of this is Calvin’s perception of the numinous, a concept not elucidated until 1917 by the Lutheran Rudolf Otto. In his most famous work, The...
If even the Pope is corrupt, it means that I was drastically wrong about him. I have been drastically wrong before: I was once a Protestant! If even the Pope is corrupt, it means that I thought someone an eminently holy man who was not. It means that I still have much to learn about the love of God– but when has that not been the case? It is a lesson in humility and humiliation,...
“Proclaim that mercy is the greatest attribute of God. All the works of My hands are crowned with mercy.” -Divine Mercy in My Soul, paragraph 301 “I desire mercy and not sacrifice. For I have come to call not the righteous, but sinners.” (Matthew 9:13) I am an addict. The matter of my addiction is between God and me but, because there is a Church and I am a part of it, it’s also between...
The Holy See has published a new document, Ecclesiae Sponsae Imago, addressed to bishops outlining instructions on the Order of Consecrated Virgins within their dioceses. This Instruction was put forward to answer questions being asked by many women and bishops across the world concerning the Order and how it ought to operate. An innocuous enough topic, affecting a small though invaluable minority in the Church, this has nevertheless (and, by now, predictably) become a target...
In my view, Laudato Si’ has been intentionally ignored by various factions within the Church, who have consequently done the devilish work of keeping the Faithful from even considering the letter. The demands of the Pope are too much for some to bear, so they have decided that they will not let the Faithful decide whether they will bear them. All the dissenting groups have, however, taken the same course to accomplish their goal, and...
In the pontificate of Francis, Bishop of Rome, there are a number of accusations which perpetually plague the peace of the people of God. So and so insists that the Holy Father is too vague while such and such declares that he is too nefariously definitive. This man says he is far too liberal in his religion and that newspaper says that he is still trapped in the old Catholic ‘conservatism.’ Still another says that...
It’s fairly evident that the debate over Amoris Laetitia has mostly stayed within the domain of a very small subset of Catholics: those who follow Vatican affairs closely, those who consume EWTN and other Catholic media, and those who enjoy reading papal encyclicals and theological writing. The typical practicing Catholic, thankfully, is quite unaware of the civil war that’s raging in academia, within the walls of the Vatican, and (perhaps most intensely) on social media....
“We do not really want a religion that is right where we are right. What we want is a religion that is right where we are wrong.” — G.K. Chesterton; “The Catholic Church and Conversion” There’s a character that every Catholic apologist worth his salt has come across pretty often. It’s the so-called “freethinker.” A freethinker will generally tell you all about how the Catholic Church wants to stifle Reason. Namely his reason. He will boast...
What I am about to propose, for those of you who might be interested in a plausible explanation, is a hypothetical scenario that might explain the missing paragraph from the original news reports on Pope Emeritus Benedict’s letter, as well as the deliberately blurred text in the accompanying photograph. If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve already read a more than a handful of papal critics claiming that this is “proof” that there’s a conspiracy...
“There is more value in a little study of humility and in a single act of it than in all the knowledge in the world.” — quote attributed to St. Teresa of Avilla Shortly after Pope Francis’ election, an awful meme went viral on social media, probably done by uneducated folk who don’t know better. This meme featured a side by side photo of Popes Benedict XVI and Francis at the same spot, but sitting...
“The Church seeks to find different ways of demonstrating not simply a desire to accompany people where they are, but also to show we are walking with them in the concrete situations of their lives toward the truth, and so we can hear them and they can begin to hear us. In Amoris Laetitia, the Church is asked to proclaim the saving love of Jesus with joy. It invites us to be particularly aware of...
«Though I command languages both human and angelic — if I speak without love, I am no more than a gong booming or a cymbal clashing.» — 1 Cor 13:1 (NJB) A common complaint being leveled against Pope Francis all the time is that his idea of accompaniment for sinners, especially sinners of the flesh, lacks truth (i.e. making the doctrine clear at all times possible, so as to direct the sinner into correcting his behavior)....
«No prophecy of scripture is made by private interpretation. For prophecy came not by the will of man at any time: but the holy men of God spoke, inspired by the Holy Ghost.» — 2 Pet 1:20-21 (DRV) When I was rediscovering my faith, around the beginning of Pope Benedict’s pontificate, I relied heavily on the Catholic Answers Forums to learn more. At that time, I noticed that many of the discussions there were focused...
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