Unlike everyone else who witnessed the Holy Father taking a phone call in the middle of a General Audience in St. Peter’s Square the other day, I was not the least bit surprised. And why should I be, since I was the one who made the call? No sooner had I dialed the number than … Read more
In 132 AD Emperor Hadrian punished a Jewish insurrection by leveling all of Jerusalem. His engineers selected Calvary as the site of the Forum and capital of the new city Aelia Capitolina. He erected a statue of Jupiter over the Holy Sepulcher, and of Venus over the spot where Christ was crucified. In Bethlehem, Hadrian … Read more
Any alert Catholic paying attention over the past 60 years well knows the familiar slogan of this article’s title. Well, almost. That last word in the title was never an original part of the slogan. Therein lies a story—and a lesson. In the raucous wake of the ending of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) a … Read more
Recently here at Crisis Magazine, Casey Chalk published “The Protestant Doctrine That Gave Us Pro-Trans Churches,” detailing the impossible tangle that results from sola scriptura and offering a fine summary of the classic Catholic case for why there must be a God-appointed interpreter of the Bible, since it is not self-interpreting. As a Roman Catholic … Read more
Fifty years ago, then-Fr. Joseph Ratzinger and Ida Friederike Görres were watching their era’s equivalent of a livestream of the implosion of the Church in Europe. And they were asking the same questions about the “reformers” in the Church that many of us are asking today: Why are they so optimistic about their efforts that … Read more
Our current pope turns a blind eye to the sins of the CCP. A few years ago, I taught a course focusing on Chinese transnational crime and money laundering. During class discussion, I was asked by one of the students: “If you could wave a magic wand that would transform the People’s Republic of China … Read more
Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind… Romans 12:2 To be fair, Cardinal McElroy didn’t call for the Church to ordain women. And, technically, Cardinal Cupich hasn’t called for the Church to condone homosexuality. Rather, what Cardinal McElroy said is that “the exclusion of men and women because … Read more
This past half-century or so has seen the word love dragged through the mud. Once a queen; now a harlot. No surprise that beneath this strain the word has lost its luster. Repeated blows have so flattened its majesty that it can mean anything; and thus, it means nothing. In the past few years, this … Read more
If there’s one thing that’s true of today’s Catholic Church, it’s that Jesuits gonna Jesuit. Fr. Thomas Reese, S.J., America’s second-worst Jesuit, has a history of undermining Church teaching while maintaining plausible deniability. It’s the modern Jesuit way. So while he typically won’t outright deny Catholic teaching on the pelvic issues the Catholic Left is … Read more
The recently deceased Cardinal George Pell wrote a few years ago about his evolving views on the question of how many will be saved. In the 1970’s, he subscribed to a broadly inclusivist view of salvation; as he put it, “I expressed the hope, perhaps expectation, that few would be consigned to hell.” He was … Read more