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In an effort to promote the so-called new paradigm surrounding the interpretation of Pope Francis’ 2016 apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love), three seminars were held last month for invited bishops and select theologians at three Catholic universities around the country. The group of theologians invited is noteworthy not because of their expertise on the topics of marriage and family, but because of their public opposition to some of the Church’s long-taught traditions. Called “New Momentum Conferences on Amoris Laetitia,” the seminars were spearheaded by Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, fresh from his February speech on Amoris Laetitia at Cambridge University in England,...

LifeSiteNews reported a few days ago the inspiring piece of news that in Poland, 140,000 Catholics signed a petition to their bishops asking them to protect their teaching “from German errors.” At the same time, the German bishops had their spring assembly, during which they invited speakers who described the Polish Catholics as understandably “backward” due to their own Communist history and separation from the West and its ongoing discussions.Let us first consider the affirming report about the strong traditional faith of the Polish Catholics. As LifeSiteNews wrote (emphasis added): Over 140,000 Poles have signed a petition asking the nation’s...

The new Catholic ‘paradigm’ would mean ‘accompanying’ sinners right into hell Alan Keyes Follow Alan amoris laetitia , bible , blase cupich , catholic Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it. (Matthew 7:13-14) Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.  You will know them by their fruits. (Matthew 7:15)...

Former Head of US Bishops Doctrine Committee: faithful must mount response to Church leadership's attack on her identity. Capuchin Father Thomas Weinandy, a member of the Vatican’s International Theological Commission and former chief of staff for the U.S. Bishops' committee on doctrine says the Church’s leadership is attacking her identity and calls on the faithful to mount a ‘robustly positive’ response. The thrust of Fr. Weinandy's landmark speech at the University of Notre Dame in Sydney, Australia, Feb. 24 was that, only when Catholics grasp that the Church’s unity, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity are under attack by the Church’s current...

The age-old use of proportionalism came to the fore at a recent Vatican conference on Pope Paul VI’s 50-year-old encyclical and the apostolic exhortation ‘Amoris Laetitia.’ Father Maurizio Chiodi, a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life, recently gave a speech at the Jesuit-run Gregorian University in Rome defending the use of contraception. Father Chiodi’s address, entitled “Rereading Humanae Vitae in the Light of Amoris Laetitia,” was given at a conference dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the publication of Humanae Vitae (The Regulation of Birth). Does this portend a doctrinal push similar to what we’ve seen on the matter...

Everyone remembers Fr. Thomas G. Weinandy for the open letter he sent to Pope Francis last summer, and which he himself made public on November 1 on Settimo Cielo:> A Theologian Writes To the Pope: There Is Chaos in the Church, and You Are a CauseToday, Saturday February 24, he returns to the fray with the conference that he gave this morning in Sydney, organized by Notre Dame University of Australia.In it, Fr. Weinandy describes and denounces the attack of unprecedented gravity that some of the “pastoral” theories and practices encouraged by Pope Francis are carrying out against the “one,...

The teaching of the apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia has been the subject of a great deal of debate since the promulgation of that document. Various interpretations of this teaching have been presented, and the differing interpretations have been used both to denounce the document as heretical and to defend it as in harmony with the teaching of the Church. Pope Francis has recently acted to clarify the meaning of the most contentious section of Amoris laetitia through a statement in the October 2017 issue of the Acta apostolic sedis, the journal that publishes the official acts of the Holy See...

The Nicene Constantinopolitan Creed (381 AD) professes that we believe in One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.  Each mark, in its fullness, must be properly conceived and articulated, and yet only together, in their perichoretic relationship, do they form the theological foundation of the Church’s authentic self-understanding.  Without them the Church’s own self-identity would become opaque, possessing no discernable defining character, and so would be exposed to any and every imposed guise – either by herself or from without.  Moreover, these four ecclesial marks are most fully expressed and most abundantly nurtured within the Eucharist liturgy.In this talk I will...

The cardinal believes reception of Communion depends on 'conscience'. Does his reasoning add up?The man sitting a few feet away from me – spry and youthful for his 68 years, polite, unflappable – does not look like a firebrand. But Cardinal Blase Cupich has been a controversial figure since at least 2011, when as Bishop of Spokane he discouraged his priests and seminarians from attending pro-life vigils. More recently, he has argued that reception of Communion ultimately depends on an individual’s “conscience” – which observers have struggled to reconcile with the Church’s prohibitions regarding, say, pro-abortion politicians or the divorced...

“For mental health reasons, I do not read the websites of this so-called “resistance”. I know who they are, I know the groups, but I do not read them, simply for my mental health... Some resistances come from people who believe they have the true doctrine and accuse you of being heretical. When I find no spiritual goodness in these people, for what they say or write, I simply pray for them”. These are some of the words that Pope Francis addressed to the Jesuits during the talk behind closed doors on 16 January last in Santiago de Chile. The...

The Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon, Manuel Clemente, has published an official statement in which he endorses giving Holy Communion to those who are divorced and invalidly remarried in some circumstances. The statement, posted on the patriarchate’s website, is called “Note regarding the reception of chapter VIII of the apostolic exhortation ‘Amoris Laetitia.’” According to the cardinal, the note’s purpose is to implement the teaching of Amoris Laetitia in light of two other documents: “the correspondence between the bishops of the Pastoral Region of Buenos Aires and the guidelines given to the priests of the Diocese of the Pope (Rome) by...

Cardinal Cupich to people living in sin: “No, you shall not die the death.” Made a cardinal by Pope Francis, who elevated him to the vertices of ecclesial power by installing him as Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago and appointing him to the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Bishops as well as the Congregation for Catholic Education, Blase Cupich is spearheading what can only be called the movement to destroy Catholic teaching concerning marriage and procreation that Francis officially launched with Amoris Laetitia (AL). In my last column I discussed George Weigel’s trenchant comment that “the Church doesn’t do paradigm shifts” because...

Rabbi Dr Fishel Szlajen cited traditional Jewish lawRabbi Dr Fishel Szlajen, who sits on the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life, has said scripture justifies abortion in cases of rape, or if the unborn child has serious disabilities.In a largely pro-life article posted on Spanish-language site InfoBae, Dr Szlajen condemns abortion on demand, describing it as a crime that has been turned into a right. “‘The right to decide what to do with one’s own body’” manipulates and intentionally obscures the fact that we are dealing with “two distinct humans” he said.However, he goes on to say that there is a...

On February 6 the Pontifical Academy of Sciences run by the controversial Argentinean Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo re-tweeted from its Twitter account “Casina Pio IV” a New York Times article entitled: “No Children Because of Climate Change? Some People Are Considering it.” The re-tweet produced strong reactions. Paweł Chojecki, an US-style Protestant preacher in Lublin, Poland, commented underneath, “Today the Vatican is promoting a diabolical depopulation teaching! This is not a church of Christ.”

Chicago’s Cardinal Blase Cupich just gave a big speech defending Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation. From the National Catholic Reporter‘s take: The third of Cupich’s principles calls the conscience of the individual person an “essential” element in the task of discerning how God is calling them to live their life.The cardinal cites at length from paragraph 303 of the exhortation: “Conscience can do more than recognize that a given situation does not correspond objectively to the overall demands of the Gospel. It can also recognize with sincerity and honesty what for now is the most generous response which can...

Introduction    Thank you for the invitation to be with you this evening. I welcome this opportunity to contribute in some small way to the important work of this institute.   “…curiosity about Catholicism is at an all-time high in Pope Francis’ pontificate.” I did not write those words. They appear on the webpage introducing the goals of the Von Hügel Institute. That growing curiosity in Catholicism, the site explains, is spawned by a recognition that Pope Francis is tapping into a yearning the Institute is attempting to address, namely the need for a worldview of reality, a catholic - with...

In an interview with news agency Kathpress last week, Msgr. Alejandro Cifres, chief archivist for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, confirmed that a papal commission is reviewing Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical reaffirming the Church's teaching on contraception. The admission contradicts earlier Vatican denials that such a commission exists.  In May 2017, Italian journalist Marco Tosatti broke the story that Pope Francis, in collaboration with Pontifical Academy for Life head Abp. Vincenzo Paglia, was "about to appoint — or [may] even have already formed — a secret committee to examine and possibly study changes to the Church's position on contraception," as...

Published as received. The author of the letter is an ecclesiastic with advanced specialized scholarly training, and one who has held significant teaching posts in Italy and abroad, but who also dedicates time and energy to pastoral care.He is the same one whose letter www.chiesa published in January of 2016, on the deterioration in the “quality” of sacramental confessions, a deterioration that does not appear unrelated to the impact on many of the faithful of certain remarks of Pope Francis emphasized by the media.In this new letter he highlights the baselessness of the arguments recently adopted - mainly in a...

Editor’s Note: The following interview with Bishop Marian Eleganti O.S.B was conducted by Dr. Maike Hickson on behalf of OnePeterFive. Eleganti is Auxiliary Bishop of the Diocese of Chur, Switzerland and the Youth Bishop of the Swiss Bishops’ Conference. Bishop Eleganti has signed, a few days ago, the “Profession of the truth about sacramental marriage” of the bishops of Kazakhstan which responds to the confusion stemming from the post-synodal exhortation Amoris Laetitia.Maike Hickson (MH): You have signed a few days ago the statement of the Kazakh bishops concerning Amoris Laetitia in which the traditional Catholic moral teaching is being confirmed and...

His Excellency Elmar Fischer, bishop emeritus of Feldkirch, Austria, has signed the “Profession of Immutable Truths about Sacramental Marriage,” LifeSiteNews confirmed on Monday. Bishop Fischer is the tenth prelate to sign the profession.  As has been widely reported, three bishops in Kazakhstan – Tomash Peta, Jan Pawel Lenga, and Athanasius Schneider – issued a Profession of the Immutable Truths about Sacramental Marriage on Dec. 31, 2017.  The profession was made public on Jan. 2, 2018.   In the document, the three bishops solemnly professed the Church’s received teaching and discipline regarding sacramental marriage and the limited conditions (see Familiaris Consortio, n. 84) under which...