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“But now I shall tell you God’s will in this matter……Know this too: that if some pope concedes to priests a license to contract carnal marriage, God will condemn him to a sentence as great, in a spiritual way, as that which the law justly inflicts in a corporeal way on a man who has transgressed so gravely that he must have his eyes gouged out, his tongue and lips, nose and ears cut off, his hands and feet amputated, all his body’s blood spilled out to grow completely cold, and finally, his whole bloodless corpse cast out to be...

Robin Teresa Beck, 59, lived through 12 lesbian relationships over the course of 35 years before her dramatic conversion to the Catholic faith and healing from homosexuality, just five years ago. Read LifeSiteNews’ coverage of Robin’s dramatic story here. Read the full interview here. Beck spoke with LifeSiteNews over the phone from her home in Michigan in the Detroit area about everything from the impossibility of creating a healthy gay relationship, to why lesbian relationships can never fulfill the emotional needs of women, to how she believes God looks on people struggling with homosexuality, to how the Church should approach...

One could make a career of responding to all of the nonsense that "Public Orthodoxy" spews on a regular basis. Recently, Ashley Purpura has made the unlikely argument that the services of the Church somehow promote gender fluidity, in her [dare I presume her binary gender?] article: "Beyond the Binary: Hymnographic Constructions of Orthodox Gender,"which begins with the manifestly ridiculous assertion: "Much like gender itself, Orthodox understandings of gender span a spectrum of diverse views." Of course, anyone with any concern for the truth who actually knows anything about the Orthodox Church knows that this is not even slightly...

We don’t look to The Wall Street Journal for its religion reporting. But a recent piece stands out. It shows American Catholicism at a crossroads. It’s rare that a single decision decides the future of a church in a nation. But we face such a moment now. As the Journal explains, the bishops will vote on a crucial staff post. Who will lead the Church’s pro-life efforts? The vote is down to two candidates — Cardinal Blase Cupich, of Chicago, and Archbishop Joseph Naumann, of Kansas City — who represent the ideological poles of the U.S. church and have articulated...

Fr. Wei Heping, 41, died in mysterious circumstances, his body dumped in a river in Taiyuan (Shanxi). For the police claim he committed suicide. Family members are not allowed to even see the autopsy report. For Card. Zen the Holy See (which "is not necessarily the Pope") seeks a compromise at all costs with the Chinese government, risking "to sell out the faithful Church". Justice and Peace publish a booklet about Fr. Wei, not to forget. Hong Kong (AsiaNews) - Card. Joseph Zen, Emeritus Bishop of Hong Kong, has asked God to save the Holy See "from the brink of...

On the world stage, Pope Francis’s star is burning brighter than ever, now even as nuclear peacemaker between the United States and North Korea. But even within the Church he finds himself at grips with a piecemeal world war, a strange war that he himself has contributed to unleashing, absolutely convinced that it will come to a good end.Jorge Mario Bergoglio is unquestionably an innovator. But in method, before it can be seen in results.He always introduces the innovations in little doses, on the sly, perhaps in an allusive footnote, as he did with the now-famous footnote 351 of the...

Archdiocese of Washington Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning – A Homily for the 32nd Sunday of the Year Msgr. Charles Pope • November 11, 2017 • Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere, RomeThe Gospel this Sunday presents a number of practical principles of preparation. As always the Lord has a way of teaching us in a very memorable way. Let’s look at four principles taught in the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins. In the end we will find that the Lord turns the tables on us. I. Procure your Provisions – The text says, The kingdom of...

When the nation’s Catholic bishops gather in Baltimore next week for their annual fall meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), they’ll attempt to set an agenda in reaction to two of the world’s most closely-watched and consequential figures: Pope Francis and U.S. President Donald Trump. While the priorities of the pontiff will be instrumental in shaping their focus, it will likely be the actions of the president that yield the most immediate responses. Since Trump was elected in November 2016, the conference has issued nearly 100 more statements than the previous year -a clear indication of...

This past June it was announced that the new Irish prime minister would be conducting a referendum on the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution of Ireland, to be held in 2018.  This amendment, as it currently stands, enshrines protections for unborn children in Ireland.  The general weakening of the Catholic faith in Ireland and the finger-wagging of the anti-life UN (Useless Nincompoops) are two factors. The Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child, along with other pro-life groups, are engaged in a battle to save not only countless Irish babies, but the vestiges of the Catholicism that at one...

“Francis Speaks About Abolishing Celibacy” Modernist Munich Cardinal Marx has declared that Pope Francis speaks with his councilors about abolishing priestly celibacy. As a member of Council of Cardinals, Marx is one of Francis’ closest councilors. Marx spoke at a meeting of the Committee of Catholics in Bavaria in Munich on Friday. The Austrian theologian Paul Zulehner, a rabid enemy of the Catholic Faith and foe of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, was invited to speak at the same meeting. He expressed his conviction that Francis will abolish celibacy “if nobody shoots or poisons him”. The German Church has...

“It’s Not About Me”: National Vocation Awareness WeekKathleen Beckman “This is not about me. My vocation story is all about God.” These words of Bishop Michael C. Barber, S.J., were spoken at a Magnificat Prayer Breakfast that I attended in Oakland, California. His testimony, along with nineteen other clergy is now published in a new book titled, Holy Orders: A Collection of Inspiring Clergy Testimonies.Bishop Barber’s vocation story is filled with surprising twists and turns in a tumultuous time of the Church. He was faithful to what the Lord asked along the sometimes-confusing way. In the end, he was ordained...

The unity of the Church would be “destroyed” if bishops’ conferences, not the Vatican, had the final word over translations of liturgical texts, said Cardinal Gerhard Müller in a recent interview.  The former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith expressed reservations in an interview with Passauer Neue Presse published Wednesday about Pope Francis’s recent liturgical reform that allowed bishops to oversee and approve translations. “The ultimate authority in the case of doubt cannot lie with the Episcopal Conferences, which would destroy the unity of the Catholic Church in faith, confession and prayer,” the cardinal said, as...

The word casuistry has two meanings: “(1) a resolving of specific cases of conscience, duty, or conduct through interpretation of ethical principles or religious doctrine, (2) specious argument.” It is very easy for the first meaning to collapse into the second, especially when one is dealing with an ethical principle that is a negative precept of the natural law respecting intrinsically evil actions that are always and everywhere wrong, regardless of the situation in which they occur.  Such is the case with the dogged defenders of Chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia (AL), which opens the door to absolution and Holy...

“Hypocrites!” That’s what Bishop Mark Seitz called Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton last summer when Paxton led a group of officials defending the Constitution. Meanwhile the bishop admitted that he had never publicly corrected, much less condemned, Catholic Cong. Beto O’Rourke, his 100 percent pro-abortion U.S. representative. Well. While El Paso’s petulant prelate maintains his right to remain silent, let’s take a look at what his alleged “hypocrite,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, has been up to. Last week, Paxton went into federal court to defend SB 8, a Texas law prohibiting “dismemberment abortion.” “I will always fight to protect...

"It's a raucous, hand-waving affair that doesn't even look Catholic at all" With its shrinking flock and declining number of priests, the bishop of Pittsburgh is turning to the Charismatic Renewal for a solution. A Pittsburgh diocesan committee called On Mission for the Church Alive is charged with managing the decline in the number of Catholics in the pews by merging, grouping and consolidating parishes. The group also seeks to make the best of the diocese's bad situation by solidifying community bonds and strengthening the faith lives of the few remaining parishioners. One way the diocese is seeking renewal, according...

Yoga position? While the Church hasn’t definitively declared yoga wrong, prudential judgment points to avoiding it Msgr. Charles Pope November 5, 2017 10/25/2017 Yoga position? Question: Does the Catholic Church disapprove of yoga for exercise or to assist meditation?— Rita Malone, Norwood, Massachusetts Answer: The Church generally distinguishes between physical postures of yoga and the philosophy or religion from which they come (see the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “On Some Aspects of Christian Meditation,” Nos. 26-28). The adoption of a physical position, even if originating in a religious system other than Christianity, is permissible provided the posture...

The Subversion of the Magisterium: “Permitting” intrinsic evil within the Churchby John-Henry Westen, co-founder and editor-in-chief of LifeSiteNews.comdelivered at “Humanae Vitae at 50: Setting the Context”, Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas, Rome, 28 October 20-17 From the perspective of a journalist, the world is experiencing a revolution in the Catholic Church. The secular media have been speaking about a monumental change in Catholic teaching on morality, particularly sexual morality already for nearly four years. Already in 2013 countless headlines spoke of the Pope’s admonition to not to speak of “abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods” all...

A Christian couple in the Canadian province of Alberta have been told by local Catholic Social Services and the provincial government that they are unfit to adopt children because they accept Biblical teaching regarding the immorality of homosexual acts, according to their attorneys at the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms. The married couple, whose initials are given as “C.D. and N.D,” have filed a civil suit against the province alleging religious discrimination, and calling the decision to reject their candidacy for adoption “unreasonable and void by virtue of arbitrariness, bias, bad faith, as well as breaches of procedural fairness and...

Catholics who insist that the faithful are duty-bound to submit to a pope whose teachings clearly contradict previous popes and even the Bible inadvertently fulfill the “crude protestant caricature of papal authority,” wrote Catholic academic Dr. Edward Feser.  “Protestants sometimes accuse Catholics of believing that a pope has the authority to make up new doctrines or even to contradict Scripture,” wrote Feser, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Pasadena City College in California, in an article published in Catholic World Report October 30.  According to the “crude protestant caricature of papal authority,” if a pope “decided one day to add a...

Yesterday, 9 November, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, gave yet another interview, in which he continues to try to explain his own position with regard to the current debate about Pope Francis’ post-synodal exhortation, Amoris Laetitia. With his new statement, he contradicts the claims of the Filial Correction, which, as summarized on the official website of the effort, “states that the pope has, by his Apostolic Exhortation Amoris laetitia, and by other, related, words, deeds and omissions, effectively upheld 7 heretical positions about marriage, the moral life, and the reception...