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It’s really not that often one can say with certainty that we witnessed history being made at a specific moment, but Saturday brought such an occasion with a Vatican announcement that Pope Francis had accepted the resignation of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick from the College of Cardinals. It’s an unprecedented move in the United States, the first time an American cardinal has ever renounced his red hat, and it’s the first time anywhere in the world has exited the college altogether facing accusations of sexual abuse. It is, therefore, the most tangible confirmation to date from Francis that when he says...

PFLUGERVILLE The suspected Austin serial bomber who apparently killed himself early Wednesday as authorities closed in on him was Pflugerville resident Mark A. Conditt, local and federal law enforcement sources told the American-Statesman and KVUE. As the sun rose, neighbors of the 23-year-old, who was home-schooled growing up and went to Austin Community College, struggled to wrap their minds around the news that he was the suspected bomber.

The Boston Globe is ending its involvement with Crux, the web site that the Globe established less than two years ago to reach a Catholic reading audience.

Explanation: Have you ever seen the Southern Cross? This famous constellation is best seen from Earth's Southern Hemisphere. Captured from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the four bright stars that mark the Southern Cross are visible just above the horizon in the featured image. On the left of this constellation, also known as The Crux, is the orange star Gamma Crucis. The band of stars, dust, and gas rising through the middle of the image mosaic is part our Milky Way Galaxy. Just to the right of the Southern Cross is the dark Coal Sack Nebula, and the bright nebula at...

In a recent letter to The New York Times, Marquette theologian Daniel Maguire suggested that the Catholic Church was headed toward a three-way schism.Writing about Pope Francis’ reforms to the annulment process, Maguire predicted: Catholicism is going the way of its parent, Judaism. In Judaism there are Reform as well as Conservative and Orthodox communities. This arrangement is not yet formalized in Catholicism, but the outlines of a similar broadening are in place …. While conservative and orthodox Catholics welcome this annulment concession by the Vatican, reform Catholics don’t need it. Their consciences are their Vatican. Reform Catholics, whose numbers are swelling,...

The Rise of Know-Nothing “Catholic” Journalism As events make clearer by the day, Pope Francis is attempting to do at the level of the universal Church what he did as rector of the Jesuits in Argentina: impose his idiosyncratic Latin American vision of the Faith, combining dogma-free popular piety with radical progressivism—the latter undermining the former as we see with the mass defections from the Church in Argentina and throughout Latin America. Only this explains a Pope who tells the common people to be on guard against the deceptions of the Devil at the same time he affirms atheists, Protestants,...

CHICAGO — Back in 1997, journalist Jonathan Kwitny published a biography of Pope John Paul II called “Man of the Century.” The idea was that the biography of John Paul cut across all the great dramas of the 20th century, from Nazism and Communism to the upheaval in the Catholic Church caused by the Second Vatican Council. By the same logic, one could argue that Cardinal Francis George of Chicago was the American churchman of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, because there’s almost no story in which he wasn’t a lead actor. George played a key role in...

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the United States and Egypt are discussing an agreement which would see the Middle East, including Israel and Iran, become a nuclear free zone. The Daily Telegraph newspaper in England reports that President Obama is threatening to turn the peace process over to the international community if it remains deadlocked until the fall. In the meantime there may or may not be a resumption of talks on Monday, depending on who you're listening to. All of this ignores the most salient factor of all. Peace between Israel and the Palestinians is not possible...