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It is the cornerstone of the magisterium of the pope. Who exalts it as a salvific value, but at the same time condemns it as an enemy to be fought. A philosopher analyzes this unresolved contradiction of the pontificate ROME, July 11, 2016 – The reception of the major magisterial acts of Pope Francis ranges between two extremes. On one side there is the almost universal chorus of applause that his environmentalist encyclical “Laudato Si’” enjoys, especially outside of Catholicism. On the other side there is the ever more conflictual dispute, in this case above all within the Church, stirred...

The Ark Encounter, a full-scale, 510-foot long model of Noah's Ark, has opened to the public in Grant County, Kentucky.  It is the largest timber frame structure in the United States and the largest free-standing timber frame structure in the world. I find this fascinating in light of biblical prophecy, specifically 2 Peter 3:3-10: Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” But...

Some Thoughts on Recent Tragedies and Racial Tensions Msgr. Charles Pope • July 10, 2016 • For some twenty-four of my twenty-seven years as a priest I have lived in and ministered to largely African-American parishes and communities. It has been a great blessing to me spiritually, liturgically, and personally.As you may imagine, I get a lot of questions from people when racially charged events appear in the news. I’m asked what my parishioners think as well as what I think.This past week began with the death of two African-American men, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, in interactions with...

Pope Francis has established a tech-savvy track record as Pope, and now in addition to breaking records on Instagram and becoming the first Pope to use Google Hangouts, he will give World Youth Day pilgrims a new electronic app. From the creators of 2011’s “YouCat” youth catechism, a new version of the book called the “DoCat” has been developed, which intends to present the Church's social teaching in a creative style more attractive and comprehensible to youth. The new book will be launched during World Youth Day in Krakow and given to young pilgrims by Pope Francis in the form...

Conservative and liberal prelates in the Catholic Church have put forth sharply different readings of Pope Francis’ teaching on divorce—a situation complicated by the pontiff’s own ambiguity.

Love Lightens Every Load – A Homily for the 15th Sunday of the Year Msgr. Charles Pope • July 9, 2016 • One could easily reduce today’s Gospel to trite moralisms: Help people in trouble; Be kind to strangers; etc. While these are certainly good thoughts, I would argue that it is about far deeper things than human kindness or ethics. This is a Gospel about the transformative power of God’s love and our need to receive it. It is not a Gospel that can be understood as a demand of the flesh.Let’s look at the Gospel in three...

Catholics Without a Priest God's Providence Will Provide by Fr. Demaris Professor of Theology Missionary of St. Joseph, at Lyon, France, 1801 Editor's Preface During the French Revolution very many Bishops and priests were martyred for their faith as were many outstanding laymen also martyred. Church property was seized by the Masonic government. That left the people without their priests and without a place to go to Mass and receive the sacraments. It was during that period that a Father Demaris wrote the following letter to the concerned Catholics of his day. At the present time (the year 2004), the...

Archbishop Charles Chaput is "not Christian"? That's the claim made by Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, who disagrees with the archbishop's recent directive to priests in his archdiocese to deny communion to gay, divorced and unwed couples. Kenney, who was raised in an Irish Catholic family and who attended St. Joseph's Preparatory School, tweeted his dissatisfaction with the archbishop's statement:

The Lake Garda Statement Regarding the “Catholic” Apotheosis of Luther Final Session of the 24th Annual Roman Forum Summer Symposium Feast of Saints Cyril and Methodius July 7th, 2016 Our civilization is so sick that even the best efforts to prop up its few tottering remnants manifest the pathetic illness that has step by step brought the entire structure crumbling down. The disease in question is a willful, prideful, irrational, and ignorant obsession with “freedom”. But this is a malady that gained its initial effective entry into Christendom in union with the concept of the natural world as the realm...

Archbishop Chaput has just come out with pastoral guidelines for the implementation of Amoris Laetitia (AL) in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. The guidelines unswervingly maintain the Church’s bimillenial discipline precluding the admission to Confession and Holy Communion of public adulterers who divorce and civilly “remarry” and decline to cease their adulterous sexual relations: With divorced and civilly-remarried persons, Church teaching requires them to refrain from sexual intimacy. This applies even if they must (for the care of their children) continue to live under one roof. Undertaking to live as brother and sister is necessary for the divorced and civilly-remarried to...

Archbishop Blaise Cupich of Chicago ranks as one of the most progressive (if not heretical) bishops in the United States. His disdain for Catholic morality is all-too-well known. To wit: As bishop of Spokane Washington he forbade his priests from participating in the 40 Days for Life campaign. When the Supreme Court passed a ruling on "gay mowwidge", the statement he uttered was, at best, limp-wristed lip service to marriage. He issued a statement claiming that gun control and immigration are equal in importance to baby-slaughter. He advocates violations of Canon 915. Despite all these serious and blatant shortcomings, the...

Introduction : Saint Peter Julian Eymard was born in the Diocese of Grenoble, France on February 4, 1811 in the town of La Mure. An Extraordinary Passion for the Blessed Sacrament took root in his heart from a young age. After a number of years in the Marian Sanctuary of Our Lady of Laus, Peter Julian met Father Touche, an Oblate of Mary Immaculate who seeing the beauty of the young man's soul advised him to direct his life towards the Priesthood by studying Latin and receiving Holy Communion more often. Peter Julian Eymard was ordained a Priest at the...

Introduction : Saint Bridget, daughter of Birgir -- Royal Blood Prince of Sweden was born about the year 1302 of highly pious parents. Having lost her virtuous mother soon after birth, little Bridget was raised by one of her highly virtuous aunts. She could not speak before the age of 3, but as soon as she spoke, she began praising God. In early childhood, serious discourses on Religion pleased her and grace powerfully filled her heart so that only pious readings attracted her. At the age of 10, she was particularly touched by a sermon she heard on the Passion...

Many folks have been expressing a great deal of excitement that Cardinal Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, made an exhortation calling for the Novus Ordo to be offered Ad Orientem. I agree with Rorate Caeli in finding this excitement badly misplaced. That is to say, his words, while nice and comforting to conservative/traditional ears, perhaps, are meaningless in any real, effective sense. Nothing will change, as they did not change after Cardinal Arinze many times called for Latin in the Mass and Communion received on the tongue. The fundamental issue, as Rorate notes, is that modernists/progressives do...

Sister Lucia dos Santos, one of the three children who witnessed the Marian apparitions at Fatima, died in 2005. But before her death, she predicted that the final battle between Christ and Satan would be over marriage and the family. So says Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, who reports that the visionary sent him a letter with this prediction when he was Archbishop of Bologna, Italy. This reported statement by Sister Lucia, expressed during the pontificate of Saint John Paul II, was recently revisited by the Desde la Fe (From the Faith) weekly of the Archdiocese of Mexico, in the midst of...

When Israel Was a Child I Loved Him - A Meditation on the Heavenly Father’s Love Msgr. Charles Pope • July 7, 2016 • We recently pondered the story of Hosea’s marriage and through it had a glimpse into the heart of God. In today’s reading from Hosea, we get another look into the heart of the Father, not from the perspective of God as husband, but as Father to Israel. In this passage we get another moving portrait of a God who loves tenderly and immensely but who is also grieved at His son’s rebelliousness and all the...

(Washington) Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia has been attacked by the media as an "enemy" of the Pope, because he interpreted the Post-Synodal Letter Amoris laetitia in the light of Catholic moral teaching and Sacraments. Archbishop Blase Cupich of Chicago has been appointed at the same time by Pope Francis as a member of the Congregation for Bishops, and will continue to have a decisive influence on the appointment of bishops in the United States. The two events are emblematic of the pontificate of Pope Francis and his relationship with the Church in the United States. The Church in the...

Austrian Catholic website kath.net reports that on 7 July, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn published an interview in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, in which he said that Amoris Laetitia is a binding doctrinal document. From now on, says Schönborn, all the previous magisterial texts concerning marriage and the family “have to be read in the light of Amoris Laetitia.” Schönborn also said in this interview – a fuller excerpt of this text has now been published in English in the Jesuit journal Civiltà Cattolica – that it is “obvious” that Amoris Laetitia is an act of the Magisterium since it...

Jesuit Father Antonio Spadaro, editor of the journal La Civilta Cattolica, interviewed Cardinal Christoph Schonborn about Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation “Amoris Laetitia” and reaction to it. The journal provided Catholic News Service with an English translation of the interview and its website — www.laciviltacattolica.it — was scheduled to post selections in English from the interview at 3 p.m. Rome time today. Here are two of the questions and answers: Father Spadaro: Some have spoken of AL as a minor document, a personal opinion of the pope (so to speak) without full magisterial value. What value does this exhortation possess? Is...

CFN intro: Leftist Cupich is notoriously pro-homosexual. He is now positioned by Francis to recommend men of his ilk to become bishops in the United States. The Francis disaster continues full throttle and will further poison the Church in America and worldwide. Oremus - jv Crux Staff, July 7, 2016 By naming Archbishop Blase Cupich of Chicago to the Vatican's all-important Congregation for Bishops, Pope Francis effectively has positioned him, in tandem with Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C., to be the American "kingmakers" on this pope's watch. Pope Francis on Thursday named Archbishop Blase Cupich of Chicago to the...