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Archbishop Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, the new Jesuit prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). said he is "in a deep and spontaneous harmony" with Pope Francis. The archbishop was speaking during a recent visit to the pope's homeland, Argentina.BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - Argentina’s Catholic University’s Theology Faculty hosted the first International Symposium of Catechesis in Buenos Aires and Latin America on July 11-14. Organized by the Superior Institute of Catechesis in Argentina, which belongs to the Commission of Biblical Catechesis and Pastoral Care of the Argentinian bishops’ conference, the symposium had among its participants...

Cardinal Müller Questions Cult of Personality Around Pope Francis [Katholisches] "Every Catholic, especially every bishop and every cardinal, has a positive and constructive relationship with the Pope. But this is anything but courtly manners and the groveling of subordinates, against which Pope Francis always spoke." "That means that not everything he does and says is, from the outset, already perfect and unquestionable." "There should be no personal cult and a pope-touching tourism."Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, prefect of the Roman Congregation for the Congregation of the Doctrine and the Faith, no longer in office, on Pope Franziskus, report of the German Press...

Inner vision Having a deep understanding and connection with God is more satisfying than physically seeing God 7/12/2017 Monsignor Charles Pope Question: You said in a previous answer, “We need not presume that we will see God with our physical eyes.” This confuses me, because St. Paul says of heaven that we shall see God “face to face” (1 Cor 13:12). Can you elaborate? — Name, location withheld Answer: My use of the word “presume” does not exclude physical seeing altogether but seeks to avoid reducing the beatific vision to natural seeing (light hitting our retina). But while not...

July 22, 2017 Feast of Saint Mary Magdalene Reading 1 Sgs 3:1-4bThe Bride says:On my bed at night I sought himwhom my heart loves–I sought him but I did not find him.I will rise then and go about the city;in the streets and crossings I will seekHim whom my heart loves.I sought him but I did not find him.The watchmen came upon me,as they made their rounds of the city:Have you seen him whom my heart loves?I had hardly left themwhen I found him whom my heart loves. OR 2 Cor 5:14-17Brothers and sisters:The love of Christ impels us,once...

The cardinal's plan is well intentioned, but the new lectionary and calendar would be too confusing if applied to the Old RiteAs Fr Raymond de Souza reports, Cardinal Sarah has called for the two ‘Forms’ of the Roman Rite, the 1970 ‘Ordinary’ Form (OF) and the more ancient Extraordinary Form (EF), to be ‘reconciled’. His reasons are confusing, but his proposals are unworkable.Writing in a French publication, La Nef, Cardinal Sarah explains: ‘ “Reform of the reform” has become synonymous with dominance of one clan over the other.’ He prefers the phrase ‘liturgical reconciliation’.The ‘Reform of the Reform’ is a...

“Today, Mosul is completely distroyed,” reports the city’s Syriac-Catholic Bishop Petros Mouche. “Everything needs to be rebuilt.” Visiting the Iraqi city, which was recently liberated from the Islamic State, the bishop told Aid to the Church in Need that it would be “a few years” before families could resume living in Mosul itself. For now, he said, some refugees have returned to see the condition of their old homes, but “one cannot permanently stay in Mosul.” “However, many people can return to the Nineveh Plains,” the bishop said. About 600 families have resettled in that area, finding work and rebuilding...

Representatives of the Assyrian, Chaldean and Syriac Christian political parties have produced a position paper which outlines their desire to establish self-governance.In the very land from which Christianity was born, the Faithful have suffered terrible, unspeakable oppression, blatant discrimination, torture and holy martyrdom at the hands of those who reject peace and love. Now, that the failed “ISIL” is in rapid retreat, having unleashed untold suffering on the region and deaths over the past three-years, plans are in the work to keep the remainder of Christians in the region safe from more unsolicited, gratuitous violence. A high-level European Parliament meeting...

TRANSCRIPT So the international fallout from the Vatican's hit piece against Trump, America's political conservatives and us, here at Church Militant, continues. Father Antonio Spadaro's bloated and nonsensical article last week made the almost unprecedented move of actually singling out this apostolate as an example of what is wrong in the Church these days. Now, that's rich, coming from a priest who has openly backed ordaining women as priests and is good buddies with practically every lover of the agenda of sodomy in the Church that exists. The essence of his condescending article is that an ecumenical effort has formed...

Years ago I was brought in as a priest to a psych ward in a VA hospital to work with a suicidal Vietnam veteran. His family was convinced that the root of his problem was not merely mental but diabolical. After spending some time with the tormented veteran, I agreed that something diabolical was at work. One thing I remember the veteran saying was that he “danced with the devil.” I shudder at the thought! So I prayed the Rosary with him, taught him the prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel and enrolled him in the scapular. For a while...

Greed: A Meditation on an Underreported Sin Msgr. Charles Pope • July 20, 2017 • One of the more underreported sins is greed. It is easy to conclude that greed is something manifested by “that other person,” who has more than I do. Yes, that rich guy over there, the one who earns a dollar more per hour than I do; he’s greedy, but I’m not.But honestly, does any one of us ever come to a point in our life when we say, “I earn more than enough money. I’ll just give the rest away”? Not on your life!Almost...

A week after the appearance of the Spadaro-Figueroa rant against American conservatives, I am still shaking my head with disbelief, wondering how a semi-official Vatican journal could have published such a harshly partisan and grossly misinformed analysis of American politics. I am not alone. Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia was characteristically polite but firm in his critique, describing the already infamous Civilta Cattolica essay as “an exercise in dumbing down and inadequately presenting the nature of Catholic/evangelical cooperation on religious freedom and other key issues.” Archbishop Chaput—who has been a prime mover in Catholic-Evangelical cooperation, and thus implicitly a target...

[CATHOLIC CAUCUS] The current situation of the unprecedented crisis of the Church is comparable with the general crisis in the 4th century, when the Arianism had contaminated the overwhelming majority of the episcopacy, taking a dominant position in the life of the Church. We must seek to address this current situation on the one hand with realism and, on the other hand, with a supernatural spirit – with a profound love for the Church, our mother, who is suffering the Passion of Christ because of this tremendous and general doctrinal, liturgical and pastoral confusion. We must renew our faith in...

Immersed in current news, we forget that the past is not really “past” in significant ways. Much of the news of the day is not so new at all. In relation to Islam especially, the past is far from over. We are simply watching it emerge from the hibernation it entered after the formal dissolution of the 600- year reign of the Ottoman Empire in 1923.British writer Hilaire Belloc, writing in the 1930s, put no date on Islam’s re-emergence. But while the West’s attention was elsewhere, he predicted its inevitability: Millions of modern people . . . have forgotten all...

July 21, 2017 Friday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time Reading 1 Ex 11:10—12:14Although Moses and Aaron performed various wondersin Pharaoh's presence,the LORD made Pharaoh obstinate,and he would not let the children of Israel leave his land. The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt,"This month shall stand at the head of your calendar;you shall reckon it the first month of the year.Tell the whole community of Israel: On the tenth of this monthevery one of your families must procure for itself a lamb,one apiece for each household.If a family is too small for...

Dissident Fr James Martin To Address DC Priest Symposium This September From Canon212, we have learned that the Washington Theological College, located at 401 Michigan Avenue, NE, Washington DC 20017 will be conducting an "Alumni Days 2017" gathering.  As you can see from this flyer, (and by the way, dear chancery moles, I downloaded it so if it "disappears", I can make it "reappear)" dissident Father James Martin, will be the keynote symposium speaker.   His topic is strangely called "Encountering Jesus: Meeting The Jesus Of History And The Christ Of Faith".  Why are "Jesus" and "Christ" separated in that...

Today, 19 July, there appeared a new interview with Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. It is an interview which he had given in early July to the prominent secular German news agency DPA (German Press Agency); this means that this interview is now being picked up by numerous news outlets. We shall now quote from the German newspaper Die Welt and its own report on this interview. Even though many of the published media stories have stressed that part of the new interview in which Cardinal Müller defends himself –...

A road trip on a weekend and making sure you can still get to Mass can sometimes result in a very pleasant surprise and a holy experience.Quite recently Marjorie (my fiancée) and I were returning home over the weekend from a car trip to Ohio. Not wanting to miss Mass, we looked online at Mass times for the areas we would be traveling through on Saturday afternoon. Expecting to be driving near Uniontown, PA about four o’clock, we found several churches that had four o’clock Saturday afternoon Masses listed.But our travel plans were slightly delayed driving over the mountainous region...

Are the three remaining “dubia” cardinals – Cardinals Burke, Caffara, and Brandmüller – at fault for publicizing the five questions they posed to Pope Francis, and for publicizing the fact that the pope did not respond either to those questions or to a later request for an audience? Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna thinks they have done a disservice to the Church and to the Holy Father. Speaking in Limerick, Ireland on July 13th he said: “The question of these dubia is for me mainly a question of procedure. That cardinals, who should be the closest collaborators of the pope,...

Why is it that Catholic bishops seem to be plumping for Muslims? Why do they issue statements about Islam that are dishonest and misleading? Why do they appear to be so intent on protecting the image of Islam? If you’ve asked yourself these questions, you’re not alone. Given current events and the historical record of Islam’s aggressive campaigns against the Christian West, the rational thinker could be forgiven for believing that the leaders of the Christian world might just want to pay a bit more attention to contemporary anti-Christian violence — thousands of terror attacks, beheadings, stabbings, kidnappings, rapes, torching...

Concelebration in the Roman Colleges (3) Today: a couple of dogs that failed to bark in the night. (1) Dog A is the CDW, still nominally under the direction of the disgraced not-sufficiently-bergoglian Cardinal Sarah. There is no evidence in the Working Paper which we are considering that the CDW was consulted. Yet the Working Paper is exclusively about a liturgical matter! Here we have another example of bergoglian method: the dodge of not entrusting something to an actually relevant dicastery. There would, you see, be the terrible risk that they might not come up with the right answer. After...