This Is the New Normal
Six months ago, my unborn son died. He was 22 weeks old. My wife and I are still grieving him and, if we are honest, we will grieve him for the rest of our lives. I don’t mean, of course,...
Tagged: Pope Francis
Who we know God is
Recently I’ve been struck by a verse in chapter seventeen of John’s Gospel. Jesus is with his apostles during the last supper, offering a long prayer, and at one point he says to his Heavenly Father, “Now this is eternal...
Cardinal Burke’s Poisoned Well
In a recent interview with the National Catholic Register, Cardinal Raymond Burke once again criticizes an apostolic exhortation from Pope Francis. Querida Amazonia, the result of the most recent synod on the Amazon, summarizes Pope Francis’s vision of the Amazonian...
Understanding Synodality
Since Francis was elected pope, a number of words have entered the Church’s lexicon that–while not new by any means–represent the priorities and focus of his vision for renewal in the Church. Terms such as accompaniment, encounter, clericalism, throwaway culture,...
Respecting Continuity in Church Teaching
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...
The New Americanism, Part Four: Religious Submission
Related to the problem of liberty, noted Pope Leo XIII, is the Americanist view that “all external guidance [that] is set aside for those souls who are striving after Christian perfection as being superfluous or, indeed, not useful in any...
Married priests and Querida Amazonia: my thoughts
“This sanctity is what protects and has always shielded the Church from every positivist and manipulative ideological reductionism (…) The synodal perspective does not cancel out antagonism or surprises, and neither do conflicts get solved by syncretic solutions of ‘consensus,’...
Querida Amazonia: A Call for Authentic Inculturation
Vatican City — In his latest apostolic exhortation, Querida Amazonia, Pope Francis calls for “authentic” inculturation in the Amazon, so as to allow for the creation of a Church which truly bears the features of the region and the culture of...
10 Essential Quotes from Querida Amazonia
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...
Making things right
One of the criticisms I heard about my article on the papal hand-slapping controversy was that I was trying to excuse Pope Francis of his wrongdoing. Of course, I was very clear in my article that the Pope had not...
The Pandora’s Box of Catholic Antisemitism
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...
The Living Bridge to LGBT Catholics
Earlier this month I attended a talk by Dr. Mary Healy, professor of Sacred Scripture at Sacred Heart Major Seminary, during the 2020 Encounter Conference on the topic of Christian unity. Dr. Healy proposed a wonderful image for ecumenism that...
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