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Rome) Since last September there have been rumors, now it has become reality. Pope Francis has removed the US Cardinal Raymond Burke as Cardinal Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura and appointed him Cardinal Patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Thus, the cardinal is removed from Church leadership, to which he belonged as head of the Supreme Court. Vindictive Retaliation by Pope Only a few weeks after the completion of the Synod of Bishops the "sending away" of the cardinal appears as revenge and retaliation by Pope Francis. So the reigning pope seems to have acted in quite a...

Featured Term (selected at random:PANTOKRATOR Greek title of God, "the all mighty." It is also a familiar image of Christ depicted as ruling from heaven. All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

Archdiocese of WashingtonA Homily for the Feast of St John Lateran By: Msgr. Charles PopeToday is the Feast of St. John Lateran in Rome. This is the Pope’s true Cathedral (not St. Peters). And thus, in celebrating this Feast, we celebrate the unity of the Church. The Pope’s work is to unite and strengthen the members of the Church whom the devil would like to sift (divide) like wheat (see Lk 22:31ff). On this feast we do well to examine a few teachings about the Church that the readings supply.I. The Shock of the Church - One of the more...

The Eponymous Flower breaks an update on the demolition at the Congregation for Divine Worship. Pope Francis continues to purge the liturgical sensibility of his predecessor, Benedict XVI. On 5 November it was announced in the daily bulletin of the Holy See that Pope Francis had appointed a new Under-Secretary for the Congregation for Divine Worship. What was not there is that the two other undersecretaries were also dismissed. The Congregation has had no Cardinal Prefect since the beginning of October, after Pope Francis sent back the previous head of the dicastery, Cardinal Antonio Cañizares as archbishop of Valencia in...

The natural law requires sacrificeIn the first place it is to be seen that the Natural Law requires us to sacrifice. Saint Thomas states in the first place that there are three main types of laws. There is first and foremost human laws (positive laws), there is the Natural Law, and lastly there is the Divine and Eternal laws. It is precisely the Natural Law that we will focus in for this specific article. The natural law is basically the “structure which God creates in man so that he inclines man to specific types of actions. He designs man to...

Bishop Athanasius Schneider is well-known for his excellent books Dominus Est: It is the Lord, and Corpus Christi: Holy Communion and the Renewal of the Church in which he argues for greater reverence for the Blessed Sacrament and particularly for a return to the practice of receiving Holy Communion in the traditional manner, kneeling and receiving on the tongue. I heard him speak and had the privilege of meeting him in 2009 in Estonia and again earlier this year at a meeting of the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy. Bishop Schneider is a holy man and has a great love for...

Trumpets of Warning! — Part III    AFTER Mass several weeks ago, I was meditating on the deep sense I’ve had the past few years that God is gathering souls to himself, one by one… one here, one there, whoever will hear His urgent plea to receive the gift of His Son’s life… as though we evangelists are fishing with hooks now, rather than nets. Suddenly, the words popped into my mind: The number of Gentiles is nearly filled.This, of course, is based in Scripture: …a hardening has come upon Israel in part, until the full number of the Gentiles comes...

Featured Term (selected at random:FIRST CRUSADE The mainly French expedition (1096-99) inspired by Pope Urban II, which ended with the capture of Jerusalem in 1099. Godfrey of Bouillon (d. 1100), who was one of the leaders of the crusade, was elected ruler of Jerusalem. He called himself "Defender of the Holy Sepulcher," refusing to call himself king or to wear a crown, "through respect for Him who had been crowned in that place with the crown of thorns." All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

The interview of Cardinal Burke with Spanish Catholic weekly Vida Nueva is now very well-known due to the expression, "a rudderless ship", but taken out of context. Below, you will find the full translation of the interview (we thank Rorate's Spanish-language partners at Adelante la Fe - Rorate en Español for providing us the original text) Interview Raymond Leo Burke "It seems to many that the Church's ship has lost its compass." US Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke is considered one of the representatives of the Curial sector most resistant to change, as he demonstrates by deeming "critical" the current moment,...

The Rhine and Tiber have clearly merged into one filthy polluted river washing over faithful Catholics like the rising floods of Noah. Kasper, Marx and others from Germany continue to scandalise the faithful and debase the truth all under the watchful eye of Jorge Bergoglio, the man whom the Grand Lodge of Italy remarked that with him "nothing will be the same." The Synod on the Family became a cesspool of dissent where over half the bishops, though not the two-thirds required, actually wanted some kind of accommodation for Holy Communion for divorced and remarried Catholics and unrepentant sodomites. It...

In the Daily Telegraph of November 4 this year appeared a very jolly story about an Austrian woman who had incurred excommunication for purporting to have been ordained to the Priesthood (God bless her, she has retaliated by now claiming the Episcopate!!). The journalist began his story thus: "Excommunication is traditionally reserved by Catholicism for the very worst of sinners and is a sanction rarely invoked today". Well, the dear old Torygraph has failed to keep herself up-to-date on that subject. Excommunication is, for some bishops, the Fashionable Fad in today's caring, compassionate Catholic Church of Pope Francis! Excommunication, even,...

Washington D.C., Nov 6, 2014 / 08:41 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In the wake of an intense Synod on the Family, a leading voice supporting admission to Communion for divorced and remarried Catholics said different sides on Church debates should not use Pope Francis' words to bolster their own agenda. Speaking at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 6, Cardinal Walter Kasper aimed to explain Pope Francis and his pontificate. The emeritus president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity spoke as the recipient of the 2014 Johannes Quasten Award. In attempting to understand the Pope,...

Featured Term (selected at random:IMMOVABLE MOVER God as the ultimate cause of all motion or change in the universe, himself remaining unchanged. The term used by Aristotle and later by St. Thomas Aquinas, i.e., motor immobile, where motor means the one who changes, and immobile is unchangeable. All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

Faith Brings Comfort, But Not at First – A Reflection on a Teaching by Peter Kreeft By: Msgr. Charles Pope For ongoing education and spiritual growth, I am always reading. One of the books I am currently reading is Peter Kreeft’s Angels and Demons. As most of you know, I have often expressed concern that angels have been sentimentalized and even trivialized. Most people’s conception of angels is far from what the Bible describes! If you have read Peter Kreeft, you know that very few people can express things as well as he does. Thus I would like to give you...

Forgive me, Lord, if I use your words for an admonitory parable. You said to the Pharisees, “What man among you, having a hundred sheep, and learning that one of them has wandered into the wilderness, will not leave the ninety nine and go after the lost sheep? And when he has found it, will he not call his friends and say, Rejoice with me, for I have found the sheep that was lost?” That is why you came among us, to call sinners back to the fold. Not to pet and stroke them for being sinners, because that is...

They are coming for the Doctrine. 1600+ years ago, when noxious Arian heresies were proposed to a group of bishops, they bishops didn’t just politely sit their awaiting their turn to vote, they did not wait for a mid-term report to be released, they went on the attack, to the extent of St. Nicholas breaking Arius’ jaw. They would not listen to the heresies (as Saint John advised), pandemonium broke out in the hall (in the presence of the Emperor of all the civilized world), and the orthodox bishops stormed out. I pray our bishops get some of the zeal...

In June of this year, the largest Presbyterian denomination in America voted to allow their clergy to perform same-sex “marriages” within the church, thus joining the ranks of other Protestant denominations, such as the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Episcopalian Church, and United Church of Christ.This “evolution” of theology and “modernizing” of church doctrine is a trend that I predict we’ll continue to see in non-Catholic Christian circles for years to come, and not just with marriage. Today, nearly all Protestant denominations support and even advocate the use of artificial birth control, and many allow at least some level of support for...

Featured Term (selected at random:VINCIBLE IGNORANCE Lack of knowledge for which a person is morally responsible. It is culpable ignorance because it could be cleared up if the person used sufficient diligence. One is said to be simply (but culpably) ignorant if one fails to make enough effort to learn what should be known; guilt then depends on one's lack of effort to clear up the ignorance. That person is crassly ignorant when the lack of knowledge is not directly willed but rather due to neglect or laziness; as a result the guilt is somewhat lessened, but in grave matters...

Why Did Christ Humble Himself in the Face of Evil? By: Msgr. Charles PopeEarlier this week we read the magnificent hymn from Philippians, which sings of the Humility of Jesus:Have among yourselves the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus,Who, though he was in the form of God,did not regard equality with Godsomething to be grasped.Rather, he emptied himself,taking the form of a slave,coming in human likeness;and, found human in appearance,he humbled himself,becoming obedient to death,even death on a cross (Phil 2:5-8).Why this incredible humility? The Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, had always enjoyed His Father’s love...

Editor’s note: it is not our standard practice to publish excerpted content from another publication as one of our features. In this instance, however, we believe that the significance of the post-synodal interview with Bishop Athanasius Schneider warrants the full attention of our readers. In an interview with the Polish magazine Polonia Christiana, Bishop Athanasius Schneider, Auxiliary of the Archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana, Kazakhstan, offers strong criticism of the proceedings of the recent Extraordinary Synod on Marriage and Family, which he predicts “will remain for the future generations and for the historians a black mark which has stained...