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This has been the most incredible week in my over 30 years of dealing with Catholic Church controversies and negligences on the life and family issues. Finally, many bishops are seeing the deceitful manipulations within the Church towards evil agendas and are heroically, fiercely, and very publicly acting to defend the Church from the wolves within. We are witnessing real men coming forward to lead. These are what we have always expected and hoped bishops would be, but have so infrequently seen in recent decades. For many of us, we have waited a long, long time for this. I pray...

"The general feeling is one of huge relief," says an influential professor at a Pontifical University. "On Thursday, at around noon, John Paul II operated a miracle at the Synod." That was the hour when the uprising began against the man carefully chosen by Francis, his own first Cardinal, Lorenzo Baldisseri - dearly prized by Bergoglio for the inestimable services rendered before and during the 2013 Conclave - picked over a year before the Synod to orchestrate both assemblies, in 2014 and 2015, so that they could reach the results willed by the Pope without any dissension. It was a...

I wish to offer some reflections on the Synod, given as “bullet points” in no particular priority order. I would also encourage readers to refer to my May/June editorial, in which I anticipated some of the problems that I thought might emerge and which, unfortunately, have emerged. • The shroud of secrecy surrounding the presentations by the bishops and various lay presenters was most regrettable and most unnecessary. Never before in the modern history of synods have the media and the Catholic faithful been shut off from the conversations occurring in the Synod Hall. It is passing strange that this...

There’s only one way to stop this. Cardinal Pell, it’s rumored today, stood up during the proceedings on Thursday when the Synod leaders seemed to have decided on their own authority not to publish the reports of the small groups, presumably because they were uniformly tough on what’s been too soft. He slammed his hand on the table and said, “You must stop manipulating this Synod.” That forced a general vote – and the reports were published. Robert Royal, The Catholic Thing Hattip to Father Z. One of the heroes emerging from the Synod is George Cardinal Pell. It is...

Hello, everybody. I’m 19 years old, and %100 pro-life. I’m also an atheist. But before you decide to stop reading this, you deserve to know a few things about me. I was born and raised in a Catholic family. I was baptized a month old, went to Sunday school, and went to church every Sunday. Okay, I went most Sundays. I also know that there are other divisions of Christianity, as well as other religions, and I respect your spirituality, what ever it may be. I stopped breathing twice the day I was born. They doctor didn’t think I would...

In an exclusive interview with The Brody File, Senator Ted Cruz says pastors being hauled off to jail by the government for preaching against homosexuality is a “real risk” in the future. ““I think that is a real risk,” Cruz tells me. “Some in the media ridicule that threat saying there is no danger of the government coming after pastors. That is the usual response.” But he adds: “The specter of government trying to determine if what pastors preach from the pulpit meets with the policy views or political correctness of the governing authorities, that prospect is real and happening...

VATICAN CITY — Inaccurate media reports about Church teaching on homosexuality published after the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family’s midterm relatio was released are an attempt to pressure the Church to change its perennial teaching, a cardinal who is also a synod father has said. Cardinal Robert Sarah, president of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, emphasized to CNA Oct. 16 that “what has been published by the media about homosexual unions is an attempt to push the Church [to change] her doctrine.” “The Church has never judged homosexual persons, but homosexual behavior and homosexual unions are grave deviations...

A half-century after the historic changes of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Francis is showing his intent to drive a comparably ambitious agenda for the Roman Catholic Church in the 21st century. The current synod of bishops in Rome, called by Francis to encourage reform and modernization, set a ringing tone of compassion this week with an opening call for a more welcoming attitude toward gay people, unmarried couples, divorced Catholics who remarry, and children in these unions. The bishops’ report on their first week of private discussions did not immediately change church doctrine. But it signaled the pope’s determination...

Just a quick question. As we all know now, Cardinal Kasper gave an interview which Ed Pentin of the Register and Zenit reported on in which he denigrated the African bishops. When the outrage ensued, he denied ever giving the interview and said he'd never said any of those things. Pentin, however, taped the interview. But here's my question. If he hadn't, Pentin's career would've been harmed. Possibly irreparably. Would Cardinal Kasper have admitted to the interview or simply watched another man's life be possibly destroyed? There's no answer. But perhaps we have our answer in that Cdl. Kasper is...

While Pope Francis has been silent about many of the controversial matters being debated at the Synod, both in the lead-up to the Synod and in the Synod Hall, veteran Vatican watchers say he has been obliquely making his views known through other avenues, including through some of his close advisors, as well his homilies at his private morning masses. When it comes to advisors, none have sparked more speculation than Cardinal Walter Kasper, with debate swirling for months about whether Pope Francis himself personally supports Cardinal Kasper’s controversial proposal to allow divorced and remarried Catholics to receive communion in...

Twitter allegedly blocked a new online campaign designed to support the Houston pastors who were subpoenaed by the city's lawyers demanding that they turn over their sermons dealing with homosexuality, gender identity or the city's first openly lesbian mayor, Annise Parker. The #HoustonWeHaveAProblem campaign and petition were created by Faith Driven Consumer, the same organization that supported and helped to reinstate Phil Robertson to "Duck Dynasty" after he was thrown off the show for his comments about homosexuality surfaced from a GQ interview.

I must say, I am impressed… Father Z publishes the translation of the story published by Marco Tosatti on La “Stampa”. The extent of the events yesterday cannot be underestimated. It is obvious that a deep malcontent was already there. It is also obvious Francis, Kasper and Baldisseri thought they could keep treating the bishops like the pussycats they have been in the last nineteen months (and for a long time before then). What has happened afterwards could, one day, be remembered as the turning of the tide. Notice the dynamic. As rather often in life, it needs for only...

The news from the Synod this day is improved. Thanks be to God, many, yes many of the bishops and synod participants have articulated how deficient and misleading the “rough draft” Relatio was. Keep praying! The struggles to lay hold of and articulate with clarity God’s stunning teaching on Holy Matrimony and family in a doubtful world will continue.But, frankly, even at the moment Jesus uttered his unequivocal insistence that marriage was one man and one woman in an indissoluble bond, many were stunned and scoffed, If that is the case of a man with his wife, it is...

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Cardinal George Pell said working-group reports from the Synod of Bishops on the family finally give a true picture of the assembly's views, counteracting what he characterized as a misleading midterm report. "We wanted the Catholic people around the world to know actually what was going on in talking about marriage and the family and, by and large, I think people will be immensely reassured," Cardinal Pell, prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, told Catholic News Service Oct. 16, the day the reports were published. "We're not giving in to the secular agenda; we're not...

Reverend Billy Graham, arguably the most well-known and respected evangelical preacher of the last 50 years, said in a recently published commentary that America was “founded by men who believed in prayer” and that prayer can turn “the tide of history,” adding that while “America is just as wicked as Sodom and Gomorrah” and deserves “the judgment of God,” this judgment can be lessened through prayer. “Even though America is just as wicked as Sodom and Gomorrah ever were, and as deserving of the judgment of God, God would spare us if we were earnestly praying, with hearts that had...

The death sentence of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman and mother of five children, was upheld by the Lahore High Court in Pakistan on Thursday. Bibi has been convicted of blasphemy for drinking from the same bowl of water as Muslims and making derogatory comments about the prophet Muhammad. "The case against Asia Bibi is a great example of how Christians and other religious minorities are abused in Pakistan by fundamentalists wielding the controversial blasphemy laws. The blasphemy laws were originally written to protect against religious intolerance in Pakistan, but the law has warped into a tool used by extremists...

Manny Pacquiao recently revealed that he pities professional boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. and suggested that he should get to know God instead of flaunting his wealth as Mayweather is known to do. Pacquiao made the comment after Mayweather posted several photographs on his Instagram account, showing Pacquiao knocked down in his past fights with the caption, "Miss Pac Man is broke for a pay day." "I'm not affected by it. I pity him and I pray that someday he would change his ways. He should fear God. 'For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world...

VATICAN CITY – The final version of the relatio from the Exraordinary Synod on the Family will get a vote on Saturday and probably not released until Sunday at the earliest, but Cardinal George Pell warns that those expecting support for a “secular agenda” had better be prepared for disappointment. Catholic News Service interviewed Pell, who serves in the Vatican as prefect for the Secretariat for the Economy, at the end of the circoli minori process. Pell said the draft relatio was “tendentious, skewed,” and broadly opposed on the synod floor when discussed: Cardinal George Pell said working-group reports...

Police Investigation Into Rabbi And Recordings of Women Is Expanding By Peter Hermann October 16 The prominent Georgetown rabbi accused of recording women at his synagogue’s ritual bath had numerous computers and storage devices in his home along with files of women undressing, according to a search warrant filed in D.C. Superior Court. Police arrested Barry Freundel, rabbi of Kesher Israel Congregation, on Tuesday and searched both the synagogue on N Street NW and Freundel’s home, a few blocks away on O Street. In two affidavits unsealed Thursday, police said the investigation is expanding beyond the six women mentioned in...

FULL TITLE: AP confirms: "Outed" Forte exclusively responsible for "Gayspel", only ONE Father had even mentioned issue in Synod Hall Bruno "Outed" Forte From Nicole Winfield's Associated Press article on Synod special secretary Abp. Bruno "Outed" Forte. We post it here for the record of the history of the most embarrassing document in Catholic history, and its most infamous passage, where Forte sneaked his own "New Gospel": Erdo has already "outed" the official who wrote the section on gays, Monsignor [Archbishop] Bruno Forte, appointed by Pope Francis as the special secretary to the synod. Forte is an Italian theologian known...