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In 2005, then Pope Benedict quoted from an obscure medieval text which declared that the Prophet Mohammed, founder of the Islamic faith, was "evil and inhuman", enraging the Muslim population and causing attacks on churches throughout the world before an apology was issued. Reacting within days to the statements, speaking through a spokesman to Newsweek Argentina, then Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio declared his "unhappiness" with the statements, made at the University of Regensburg in Germany, and encouraged many of his subordinates with the Church to do the same. "Pope Benedict's statement don't reflect my own opinions", the then Archbishop of Buenos...

The logo for the "Humanum" conference, to be held held November 17-19 at the Vatican’s Pope Paul VI Hall. (Photo: www.humanum.it/) In golf, a “do-over” is a called a “mulligan”. At the Vatican, might it be called a “post-synodal conference”? October’s Synod on the Family proved disappointing to many. Fraught with controversy and confusion, some believe church leadership missed an opportunity to propose clear and effective doctrine. Reportedly, bishops raised their voices. One pounded his fist on his desk in disgust. But a year out from next fall’s summit, some Vatican leaders are already trying to retake important ground,...

I can't subject myself to the articles about Pope Francis demotion and exile of Cardinal Burke posted by long suffering Catholic journalists who have been luring our children into adultery and sexual debauchery, but I have been reading the headlines. I have also been fielding questions from readers who tell me stories about how their relatives and loved ones have put adultery on full throttle, citing the counterfeit deposit of faith Pope Francis has generated with his...I am groping for charity here...statements and actions contrary to Church teaching and obfuscation of teaching. These journalists have been permitted to use the...

Rome) Since last September there have been rumors, now it has become reality. Pope Francis has removed the US Cardinal Raymond Burke as Cardinal Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura and appointed him Cardinal Patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Thus, the cardinal is removed from Church leadership, to which he belonged as head of the Supreme Court. Vindictive Retaliation by Pope Only a few weeks after the completion of the Synod of Bishops the "sending away" of the cardinal appears as revenge and retaliation by Pope Francis. So the reigning pope seems to have acted in quite a...

VATICAN CITY — American Cardinal Raymond Burke, who championed campaigns to deny Holy Communion to Catholic politicians who support abortion, was removed by Pope Francis from another top Vatican post on Saturday. The removal of Burke as head of the Holy See's supreme court was widely expected in Catholic Church circles. While he was archbishop of St. Louis, from 2003 to 2008, he led fellow American bishops in campaigns to stop giving Holy Communion to Catholic politicians who support legalized abortion. He has questioned some of the pontiff's pronouncements and approaches. Last year, Francis took Burke off the Vatican's powerful...

Bishop Athanasius Schneider is well-known for his excellent books Dominus Est: It is the Lord, and Corpus Christi: Holy Communion and the Renewal of the Church in which he argues for greater reverence for the Blessed Sacrament and particularly for a return to the practice of receiving Holy Communion in the traditional manner, kneeling and receiving on the tongue. I heard him speak and had the privilege of meeting him in 2009 in Estonia and again earlier this year at a meeting of the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy. Bishop Schneider is a holy man and has a great love for...

His Eminence Raymond Card. Burke is now Patron of the Knights of Malta. This is not the usual way of doing things, as it has been pointed out before. First, the position is usually saved for a Cardinal who is in the twilight of his career… although during this pontificate this may still be true. Keep in mind that, since His Eminence is pretty young for a Cardinal, in the next pontificate, another Pope could snap his fingers and make Burke Prefect of a Congregation. Second, now that Card. Burke is no longer the Prefect of a Dicastery, he is...

The interview of Cardinal Burke with Spanish Catholic weekly Vida Nueva is now very well-known due to the expression, "a rudderless ship", but taken out of context. Below, you will find the full translation of the interview (we thank Rorate's Spanish-language partners at Adelante la Fe - Rorate en Español for providing us the original text) Interview Raymond Leo Burke "It seems to many that the Church's ship has lost its compass." US Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke is considered one of the representatives of the Curial sector most resistant to change, as he demonstrates by deeming "critical" the current moment,...

The Rhine and Tiber have clearly merged into one filthy polluted river washing over faithful Catholics like the rising floods of Noah. Kasper, Marx and others from Germany continue to scandalise the faithful and debase the truth all under the watchful eye of Jorge Bergoglio, the man whom the Grand Lodge of Italy remarked that with him "nothing will be the same." The Synod on the Family became a cesspool of dissent where over half the bishops, though not the two-thirds required, actually wanted some kind of accommodation for Holy Communion for divorced and remarried Catholics and unrepentant sodomites. It...

Washington D.C., Nov 6, 2014 / 08:41 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In the wake of an intense Synod on the Family, a leading voice supporting admission to Communion for divorced and remarried Catholics said different sides on Church debates should not use Pope Francis' words to bolster their own agenda. Speaking at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 6, Cardinal Walter Kasper aimed to explain Pope Francis and his pontificate. The emeritus president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity spoke as the recipient of the 2014 Johannes Quasten Award. In attempting to understand the Pope,...

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Francis said the church's marriage annulment process should be more efficient and perhaps even free of charge, and he decried any attempts to exploit it for profit. "Some procedures are so long and so burdensome, they don't favor (justice), and people give up," the pope said. "Mother church should do justice and say: 'Yes, it's true, your marriage is null. No, your marriage is valid.' But justice means saying so. That way, they can move on without this doubt, this darkness in their soul." The pope made his remarks Nov. 5, in a meeting with...

Forgive me, Lord, if I use your words for an admonitory parable. You said to the Pharisees, “What man among you, having a hundred sheep, and learning that one of them has wandered into the wilderness, will not leave the ninety nine and go after the lost sheep? And when he has found it, will he not call his friends and say, Rejoice with me, for I have found the sheep that was lost?” That is why you came among us, to call sinners back to the fold. Not to pet and stroke them for being sinners, because that is...

They are coming for the Doctrine. 1600+ years ago, when noxious Arian heresies were proposed to a group of bishops, they bishops didn’t just politely sit their awaiting their turn to vote, they did not wait for a mid-term report to be released, they went on the attack, to the extent of St. Nicholas breaking Arius’ jaw. They would not listen to the heresies (as Saint John advised), pandemonium broke out in the hall (in the presence of the Emperor of all the civilized world), and the orthodox bishops stormed out. I pray our bishops get some of the zeal...

The Church and the world do urgently need intrepid and candid witnesses of the whole truth of the commandment and of the will of God, of the whole truth of ChristÂ’s words on marriage. Modern clerical Pharisees and Scribes, those bishops and cardinals who throw grains of incense to the neo-pagan idols of gender ideology and concubinage, will not convince anyone to either believe in Christ or to be ready to offer their lives for Christ - said + Athanasius Schneider Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana, Kazakhstan in interview with Izabella Parowicz. Your Excellency, what...

•Ofsted to check schools 'actively promote' British values to children•Education department insists schools will not have to teach gay rights•But spokesman confirms pupils must be taught gay people are not 'inferior'Schools found ‘indoctrinating pupils about gay people’ will face being closed down under new rules designed to promote ‘British values’, the Government confirmed today. The Department for Education insisted it was ‘nonsense’ to suggest teachers would have to give lessons on gay rights. But a spokesman insisted Ofsted, which has introduced the new rules the wake of the Islamist Trojan Horse plot to radicalise pupils in Birmingham, was right to...

This is my response to the Plural Marriage in Kirkland and Nauvoo essay posted last week to LDS.org. A couple of years ago I was talking to my 16-17 year old Sunday School class about polygamy. They raised it – not me. Our conversation was about the early practice of Mormon polygamy and how it came about. The girls in the class turned up their noses and looked aghast while one boy responded to Joseph Smith’s revelation on polygamy with a snort, and a, ‘Yeah right! That’s convenient!’ To say that polygamy has been a singular nuisance to the...

Editor’s note: it is not our standard practice to publish excerpted content from another publication as one of our features. In this instance, however, we believe that the significance of the post-synodal interview with Bishop Athanasius Schneider warrants the full attention of our readers. In an interview with the Polish magazine Polonia Christiana, Bishop Athanasius Schneider, Auxiliary of the Archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana, Kazakhstan, offers strong criticism of the proceedings of the recent Extraordinary Synod on Marriage and Family, which he predicts “will remain for the future generations and for the historians a black mark which has stained...

It surprised me to see The Daily Beast use the word "savior" today. What wasn't so surprising was that it appeared over the headline, Pro-Hillary PAC Gears Up After Dems Bomb. So Hillary Clinton isn't just the Democratic front runner for 2016, but liberals actually view her as a god who will save them and the world.

The Vatican's doctrinal chief Cardinal Gerhard Müller says that bishops have been "blinded by secularized society" and are being pulled away from the teachings of the Catholic Church. The prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith made his comments in an interview with the popular Polish website Nasz Dziennik, according to Breitbart. He said that "unfortunately, representatives of the Church, including bishops," have been so influenced by secular society that they have been "pulled far from the central question of the faith and the teachings of the Church." The prefect blamed the media, international organizations, and various...

Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke emerged from the recent, tempestuous Extraordinary Synod on the Family as a champion of orthodox Catholic sexual morality just as Pope Francis has removed him from the Church’s most senior canon law posting. However, if you sit across the Church leadership’s widening cultural gap from the former archbishop of St. Louis, as Alicia Ambrosio, producer and host of Vatican Connections on Canada’s Salt and Light Television, evidently does, you see him as stuck in “an ivory tower” cut off from “the messiness of life” that homosexual Catholics contend with. Now a testimony from one of...