The recently published North American Final Document for the Continental Stage of the 2021–2024 Synod (NAFD) confirms suspicions that the discussions at the October 2023 Synod on Synodality will almost certainly center around the alleged failure of the Church to be inclusive, welcoming, and respectful. The supposedly aggrieved include well over half of the faithful: … Read more
In 2018, the scandal involving then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick shocked the Catholic world. McCarrick had a global presence; he operated at the highest levels of the Church, and he enjoyed the highest esteem—both among Catholics and more broadly. But then it was revealed that he had been grooming and sexually abusing young men for decades. It … Read more
Imagine if a cardinal of the Catholic Church were to publish an article in which he condemned “a theology of eucharistic coherence that multiplies barriers to the grace and gift of the eucharist” and stated that “unworthiness cannot be the prism of accompaniment for disciples of the God of grace and mercy.” Or what if … Read more
In Jack London’s The Iron Heel and Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here, America’s wordsmith class created a bogeyman treasured by the cultural left ever since: a fascist takeover of the country. As Helen Alvaré shows in her superb new book, Religious Freedom After the Sexual Revolution, the real threat to our freedom—especially our “first … Read more
In March, Pope Francis removed Daniel Fernández Torres from his bishopric of Arecibo, Puerto Rico. According to Fernández, his removal came without formal explanation and without due process. The bishop readily conceded that he had been out of step with his Puerto Rican colleagues on several issues: his refusal to cosign a statement on the … Read more
It’s Pride Month. Former George W. Bush speechwriter and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson sees no downsides to gay liberation. “The advance of same-sex marriage, it seems, has generally ended in cake and dancing.” He’s ready to celebrate the triumph of the Rainbow Reich. Not me. I’ll pass on the champagne and free condoms. By … Read more
How many Catholic schools are really just public schools with a Mass requirement attached, plus an elective or two of theology? Many schools feature lots of Catholic talk on the website, but when it comes to the actual books assigned and knowledge tested, Catholicism pretty much disappears. English, history, civics, arts, math, and science courses look … Read more
The Synod on Synodality risks becoming a project of fruitless navel-gazing; reform will only happen if the Church remembers that she exists because of Christ and “in order to evangelize.” Ever so slowly, the “Synod on Synodality” is beginning. A preparatory process of “listening and dialogue” in parishes and dioceses throughout the Catholic world has … Read more
Many grandees of the Catholic Church in Europe are falling in with the Rainbow Reich. Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg is president of the Church’s partner to the E.U. bureaucracy, the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union. In a recent interview with Germany’s Catholic News Agency, he asserted that the Church’s current … Read more
We live in a turbulent time; a time that’s similar, in some ways, to the various Reformations of 500 years ago. History, of course, doesn’t repeat itself. History is a creation of unique and unrepeatable people. So the gulf between Europe in 1521 and our circumstances today, in 2021, is huge. But patterns of human … Read more