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If, as a result of the process of discernment, undertaken with “humility, discretion and love for the Church and her teaching, in a sincere search for God’s will and a desire to make a more perfect response to it” (AL 300), a separated or divorced person who is living in a new relationship manages, with an informed and enlightened conscience, to acknowledge and believe that he or she are at peace with God, he or she cannot be precluded from participating in the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist (see AL, notes 336 and 351). I wonder what would happen...

The Hardening of Hearts Caused by the Deceit of Sin Msgr. Charles Pope • January 15, 2017 • Last week at daily Mass (Thursday of the First Week of the Year) we read from the Letter to the Hebrews. In it was an important admonition, especially appropriate for our times:Encourage yourselves daily while it is still today, so that none of you may grow hardened by the deceit of sin (Heb 3:12).Collectively speaking, we been hardened by the deceit of sin. Many of us who are older remember times when sins that are openly practiced (and even celebrated) today...

In an open letter on the state of the church and priestly ministry in Germany, a group of 11 German priests from the Cologne archdiocese have urged the church to open the priesthood to both men and women and to make priestly celibacy voluntary. They underline seven essential points for the future of the church, including the following: "We urgently need to forge ahead with courageous initiatives on the question of admission to the priesthood. It makes no sense continuously to ask the Holy Spirit for vocations while at the same time excluding women from the priestly ministry.""Celibacy often leads...

Google Ttranslation: Francis wants to accelerate the process of canonization of Pope Montini, DARÍO MENOR (ROME) | The Church is on the way to having a new Holy Pontiff: Paul VI. Three years after beatifying him, Francisco shuffles the possibility of canonizing him during 2017, accelerating the times by exempting the need for a new miracle. Jorge Mario Bergoglio would thus promote the ascent to the altars of Giovanni Battista Montini following the same path as John XXIII, who was first beatified by John Paul II in 2000 after a process of use, and then inscribed in the book of...

The Palestinian embassy to the Holy See was inaugurated on Saturday. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas thanked Pope Francis for his support of the country’s new embassy to the Holy See.“This is a sign that the Pope loves the Palestinian people and loves peace,” Abbas told the Pope on Saturday before heading to the inauguration of the Palestinian embassy to the Holy See in Rome.The Pope welcomed Abbas with open arms, embracing the president and saying, “It is a pleasure to welcome you here.”“I am also happy to be here,” Abbas replied.The Vatican said the two leaders spoke privately of the...

The last time Italian journalist Emiliano Fittipaldi wrote an exposé about corruption at the heart of the Roman Catholic Church, it landed him in a Vatican court facing a possible jail sentence on charges that he had illegally obtained confidential church papers in the course of his reporting.Now, six months after the 42-year-old reporter was cleared of all charges, Fittipaldi is taking on the church again. This time in a new book that accuses Pope Francis of doing “close to nothing” to stop clerical sexual abuse...around the world, despite the...pope’s frequent assertions that he has zero tolerance for...abuse...or those who...

The furious reaction from critics of 'Amoris Laetitia' to the Maltese bishops' guidelines implementing it suggests that behind the debates and arguments over Francis's apostolic exhortation 'The Joy of Love' is a very old-fashioned, and still unresolved, dispute within the Church over the role of conscience. The heart of the  Amoris Laetitia disputes, which flared up again at the weekend following the Maltese bishops’ guidelines on the admission of the divorced-and-remarried to the sacraments, is not doctrine or law but the role of conscience.Both critics and partisans of the exhortation have correctly detected a clear shift in magisterial teaching in...

It turns out that the most important footnote in 'Amoris Laetitia' may be one that's not there, because a key passage of the document is lifted almost verbatim from a 1995 essay in theology by Archbishop Victor Fernandez -- raising troubling questions about Fernandez's role as ghostwriter, and the magisterial force of his ideas. [EditorÂ’s note: In this essay, Professor Michael Pakaluk of the Catholic University of America examines the role of Argentine Archbishop Victor Fernandez, a theological adviser to Pope Francis, in Amoris Laetitia, the pontiffÂ’s document on the family. Crux invited Fernandez to respond, and his comments appear...

I want to say to you, about myself, that I am a child of this age, a child of unfaith and scepticism, and probably (indeed I know it) shall remain so to the end of my life. – Fyodor Dostoyevsky I find it on any showing quite ludicrous to suppose that, for nineteen of Christendom’s twenty centuries, Christians were credulous idiots ready to believe any tomfoolery the Bible fostered. . . For one thing, it would seem to me that our twentieth century, far from being notable for scientific scepticism, is one of the most credulous eras in all history....

January 16, 2017 Monday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time Reading 1 Heb5:1-10Brothers and sisters:Every high priest is taken from among menand made their representative before God,to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins.He is able to deal patiently with the ignorant and erring,for he himself is beset by weaknessand so, for this reason, must make sin offerings for himselfas well as for the people.No one takes this honor upon himselfbut only when called by God,just as Aaron was.In the same way,it was not Christ who glorified himself in becoming high priest,but rather the one who said to him:You...

The “lineamenta” (guidelines) of the forthcoming synod on young people, published January13, paved the way to a new path for the synod. Much has changed since the times when it was thought that the Synod of Bishops was going to gain more importance in the Curia – the chair of the first meetings of the heads of Vatican dicasteries under Pope Francis was Cardinal Baldisseri, the General Secretary of the Synod of Bishops. In the meantime, a major role for the Synod of Bishops in papal elections, on the basis of a plan of Pope Paul VI, was rumored. At...

Under another entry here a commentator asked: Can absolution be granted where no purpose of amendment exists? If granted, with no purpose of amendment, does it even ‘take’? No. And No.In normal circumstances, when there isn’t danger or some other odd condition, in order to absolve a penitent who is sui compos (conscious, able to make a confession, etc.) the priest must be reasonably certain that the penitent 1) has actually confessed a sin (even a previously confessed and absolved sin is enough), 2) has, in that moment, at least imperfect sorrow for sin (attrition – fear of punishment), and...

“A number of miracle stories turn out in the light of form criticism to be projections of the experiences of Easter back into the earthly life of Jesus, or anticipatory representations of the exalted Christ. Among these epiphany stories we should probably include the stilling of the storm, the transfiguration, Jesus’ walking on the lake, the feeding of the four (or five) thousand and the miraculous draught of fishes. The clear purpose of the stories of the raising from the dead of Jairus’s daughter, the widow’s son at Naim and Lazarus is to present Jesus as Lord over life and...

Vatican City, Jan 14, 2017 / 10:39 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Saturday it was announced that Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston has yet another reason to come to Rome, with his appointment as the newest member of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Already a member of the Pope’s Council of Cardinals and President of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, O’Malley’s appointment to the CDF, announced in a Jan. 14 communique from the Vatican, adds yet another major role to the list of duties he is accumulating. Headed by Cardinal Gerhard Muller, the CDF...

Most of my readers have never been pope, and probably only one or two ever will be, so you don't realise how difficult the job of a pope is. You probably think that it just involves sitting around in Rome eating pasta, going to Mass, and occasionally saying something about Catholic doctrine. And the latter ought to be easy enough, as just about every issue under the sun has been discussed by previous popes, so you don't have to say anything original, although you can of course rephrase things in your own words. On no account try to change any...

The Vatican will once again be used as a forum to advance population control. Pro-abortion advocate Paul Ehrlich, father of the modern population control movement and author of the 1968 best-seller "The Population Bomb," has been invited to speak at the Vatican during the February 27-March 1 conference that will discuss "how to save the natural world." This is deplorable when we consider the possible millions of deaths globally that he and his ideas may have indirectly been responsible for over the past five decades. Is the Vatican deliberately seeking to put the unborn to death? The Stanford biologist, who...

If, as a result of the process of discernment, undertaken with "humility, discretion and love for the Church and her teaching, in a sincere search for God’s will and a desire to make a more perfect response to it" (AL 300), a separated or divorced person who is living in a new relationship manages, with an informed and enlightened conscience, to acknowledge and believe that he or she are at peace with God, he or she cannot be precluded from participating in the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist (see AL, notes 336 and 351).» In brief: yes to communion...

Pope Francis is extending his controversial overhaul of the Vatican's liturgy department, adding a host of new advisers after an initial shake-up removed some leading conservative cardinals.

Just yesterday I was lamenting to some colleagues about how weary I've become of the ongoing and escalating debate over Amoris Laetitia and its interpretation. "I would be happy," I said, "to not write of it again." Knowing full well the topic was not going away. Quite the contrary. So, I am not happy. But this really isn't about feelings, is it? Or is it? The bishops of Malta, in a pastoral letter signed January 8th by the Archbishop of Malta, Charles J. Scicluna, and the Bishop of Gozo, Mario Grech, have offered their "Criteria for the Application of Chapter...

Distinguished canonist Ed Peters, at his indispensable blog In The Light Of The Law, has posted in the wake of what we must now call…The Maltese FiascoThe Bishops of Malta issued a dreadful set of guidelines for the implementation of the objectively ambiguous bits of Amoris laetitia, Ch. 8. These are the bits that the Four Cardinals (Brandmüller, Burke, Caffarra, Meisner) – and the rest of the rational, honest world – want clarified. The Four Cardinals submitted five formal questions or Dubia to the Holy Father and to the CDF. Since its release, Amoris laetitia has caused confusion, anxiety,...