[Editor’s Note: This is the third installment in a series on “Vatican II and Theological Paradigms” by Michel Therrien, STL, STD, exploring the root causes of internal divisions and polarization in the post-conciliar Church, particularly the debate over the possibility...
Anyone who has played youth baseball or softball has seen a backstop, a large structure made of chain-link fencing that is erected behind home plate to serve as a barrier in case a wild pitch or errant throw gets past...
[Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series on “Vatican II and Theological Paradigms” by Michel Therrien, STL, STD, exploring some critical issues in the post-conciliar Church, particularly the root causes of internal divisions and polarization. In this series,...
The work of theology, in addition to looking over what we know and what we can extrapolate from divine revelation or from the observable world around us, also inherently involves a certain amount of speculation. Sometimes our theological speculation involves...
Back in 2014, Cardinal Walter Kasper gave a lecture across two days, February 20 and 21, for an extraordinary Consistory of Cardinals in Rome on the topic of marriage and the family. He spoke at the invitation of Pope Francis....
Looking over the websites of Newman Guide-approved Catholic liberal arts colleges that a younger friend of mine was weighing going to a few years back, I noticed a pattern. While this pattern was stronger at some colleges than at others,...
As I shared last week, Sacred Heart University hosted a panel discussion entitled, “Francis: Is a Schism on the Horizon?” The discussion was organized and moderated by the Canadian academic and writer Michael W. Higgins and was hosted by Sacred...
For as long as we Christians have been doing theology, that is, seeking to understand our faith, we have been asking questions about salvation. How are we saved? From what do we need to be saved? Who will be saved?...
The sixth and final chapter of Dei Verbum is about how the Bible is actually used and its fundamental importance in the Church. The chapter begins by saying that listening to the Bible at Mass stands on par with receiving...
There is a picture by the Russian painter Nicholas Roerich called “The Mother of the World.” First executed in 1924 and then painted again in 1937, the image shows a haloed woman enthroned on some sort of mountaintop, wearing a...
In my last essay, I took aim at Pelagianism, a heresy from Late Antiquity, which Pope Francis has frequently targeted in its perceived modern forms in his teaching. In this essay I will discuss Gnosticism, the other major heresy whose...
In the late fourth and early fifth centuries AD, a monk and theologian known to history as Pelagius advanced a novel understanding of the relationship between free will and grace. Pelagius, who hailed from somewhere in the British Isles and...
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