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The Apostolic Letter, “Misericordia et Misera,” officially concluded the Extraordinary Holy Year of Mercy. In a certain sense, the publication of the letter also inaugurated a new phase of Pope Francis’s pontificate. The short document, published on November 21, contains three main decisions: the extension of the mandate to the Missionaries of mercy, that is, priests who were given the faculty for the Holy Year to absolve the five sins reserved to the Apostolic See; the extension of the validity of the confessions heard by members of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X (SSPX), better known as Lefevbrists; and...

Full Title:For the Record - In Latest Interview, Pope Attacks "Rigidity" in Seminaries and in Priestly Formation. Are Seminaries Soon to be Targeted for "Reform" by Francis? It is extremely difficult to keep up with the unending barrage of words from Pope Francis. One interview after another, press conferences, speeches, letters, phone calls, off-the-cuff remarks, daily homilies... the endless flow of words results in people knowing not so much what the Pope has exactly said on this or that topic, but rather the general run of this Pope's thinking and the main themes of his stated policies. Rather than being...

The “Donald Trump/Mike Pence Prayer Vigil” and “Heroes and Nation Prayer Thread” have combined to form the America Prayer Vigil prayer thread. Join with fellow FREEPERS to pray for our President and Vice-President-Elect and for America: Government, Family, Military, Business, Education, Churches, and the Media. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. I John 5:14 Religion forum threads labeled “Prayer” are closed to debate of any kind.

Father Matthew Despard had written a book about a powerful gay mafia in the Catholic Church in Scotland and is set to resign after pressure from the bishop.A Catholic priest at the centre of a gay mafia row is being pressurised to resign as parish priest after a three-year battle with the church. Father Matthew Despard was sent a three-page letter from Bishop of Motherwell, Joseph Toal, calling for him to quit his post at St John Ogilvie’s Parish in Blantyre. Father Despard wrote a book claiming that a “powerful gay mafia” was operating at the top of the Catholic...

Efforts to redefine marriage will ultimately, and always, fail, and as in the case of Elton John and David Furnish, will be revealed as folly. As Gamaliel warned the Sanhedrin concerning the Apostles of Jesus, “[I]f their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God. (Acts 5:38b-39)” As liberals work to hold onto their perverse legal redefinition of marriage, they are not merely battling conservatism, but God Himself, and that is always a losing proposition.

As four cardinals publicly challenge Pope Francis to answer five dubia that reduce to the single question “Do you mean to preach heresy and subvert the entire moral order?”, Dr. Jeff Mirus has enunciated the latest “mainstream” position respecting a wayward Pope who can no longer be defended seriously by any believing Catholic: ignore him. Mirus begins well enough by summarizing the grounds for legitimate, indeed morally obligatory, opposition to a Pope who seems intent on fulfilling his “dream” of “transforming everything” in the Church to suit an idiosyncratic “vision” that Antonio Socci has rightly dubbed “Bergoglianism.” Writes Mirus: We...

Countless Americans who woke up on the morning after the election sensed their prayers had been answered and a calamity had been averted. If we have been given this reprieve, then we should use it to turn back to God… To those Americans concerned about the moral state of the nation, the immediate reaction to the November 8 elections was one of enormous relief. It was as if a colossal amount of pressure was suddenly released. There was the thrill of something entirely unexpected. People were overjoyed beyond words. Adding to the intense drama, there was the sensation that a...

Two weeks ago, four cardinals published a so-called dubia — a set of questions, posed to Pope Francis, requesting that he clarify his apostolic exhortation on the family, “Amoris Laetitia...” Francis offered no reply... ...he produced a document, the as-yet-unclarified Amoris, that essentially talked around the controversy... This indirectness matters because within Catholicism the pope’s formal words, his encyclicals and exhortations, have a weight that winks and implications and personal letters lack. They’re what’s supposed to require obedience, what’s supposed to be supernaturally preserved from error... Francis...continued his practice of offering interviews and sermons lamenting rigidity and pharisaism and possible...

Considering the seriousness of the questions put to him by the cardinals, Pope Francis’ decision not to respond is incomprehensible. The cardinals have cautioned the Holy Father that consequences will follow his refusal of their dubia. Cardinal Burke explained in his interview with Edward Pentin that the Pope's lack of response may trigger a formal act of correction. Pentin asked, “What happens if the Holy Father does not respond to your act of justice and charity and fails to give the clarification of the Church’s teaching that you hope to achieve?"  To which Cardinal Burke replied, “Then we would...

Washington D.C., Nov 25, 2016 / 03:59 am (CNA).- When the Democratic Party makes its decisions about leadership at the end of the month, the House Minority Leader will be a self-proclaimed “pro-choice Catholic.”Both current House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, and her challenger, Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), profess to be Catholic but also support legalized abortion.Pelosi (D-Calif.) has been a member of the U.S. House of Representatives since 1987. She has consistently advocated in favor of legal abortion, and has earned high ratings from pro-abortion groups including Planned Parenthood Action Fund and NARAL.Ryan represents a district in Northeast Ohio...

I have obtained a draft version. Sources tell me that the New Decalogue will be promulgated soon after the four cardinals are beheaded. 1. I am the LORD your Pope: you shall not heed strange Popes before me. 2. You shall not take Yes or No questions to me. 3. Remember the late 1960's and keep them holy. 4. Please report dissident relatives to the proper authorities. 5. You shall not discard that which can be re-used. 6. Life is complicated. 7. Let it go. 8 You shall bear false witness against your neighbor if it favors the progressive cause....

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., 72, was born in Concordia, Kansas, in 1944. He attended Catholic schools in the area before joining the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin, St. Augustine Province, in 1965. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1970. He served as a teacher and pastor an in a variety of roles in his community. He was ordained Bishop of Rapid City, South Dakota, in 1988, and appointed Archbishop of Denver in 1997. Pope Benedict XVI appointed him Archbishop of Philadelphia on July 19, 2011, and he was installed as the 13th bishop and ninth archbishop of...

In E.T. v. Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board, (ON Super. Ct. Jus., Nov. 23, 2016), an Ontario (Canada) trial court rejected an attempt by the father of two elementary school students to require his children's school to notify him in advance of specific curriculum areas being taught to his children so he could withdraw them from classes, lessons or activities that conflict with his Greek Orthodox religious beliefs.  The father contended that he has an obligation to protect his children from "false teachings," including moral relativism and issues surrounding human sexuality. While the school had a religious accommodation guideline and the parent...

A week after the election, the Huffington Post published a blog entry in which Progressive Christians suggested what like-minded Christians should do in order to “take back their faith.” Still reeling from the election in which Donald Trump was elected president, several progressive Christians pondered the necessary steps to draw a stronger contrast between their brand of kindhearted progressive Christianity, and the kind of conservative, evangelical Christianity that helped elect Donald Trump. The responses were predictably representative of left-wing Christianity, which centered on re-emphasizing social justice issues and identity politics as the “loving,” compassionate, anti-Trumpian counterpart to the hate-filled Christianity...

The Catholic charity, Aid to the Church in Need, has designated today as Red Wednesday. Mancunians know this tag for another reason, but it is being coopted and elevated by ACN to signify the day on which we take time for special remembrance who are persecuted for their faith. We are encouraged to donate if we can, or to pray and ideally to attend Mass, and as a sign to the world, to wear something red today.Given the headlines in the Catholic press and blogosphere the last week or two, it is hard not to think of certain red-clad cardinals....

Abandoning a belief in absolute moral norms would be a catastrophe for the ChurchEveryone is talking about the dubia, and so I will too, not that there is much need, given the already excellent and authoritative commentary that has come from a variety of sources, as, for example the scholar monk Dom Hugh Somerville-Knapman and the much respected Bishop Athanasius Schneider, the prelate who works at the very margins of the Church in Kazakhstan. Indeed, what need is there for commentary at all, when one of the authors of the dubia is Cardinal Caffarra, perhaps the greatest of our theologians,...

After the wonderful news yesterday that Bishop Athanasius Schneider has come publicly to the aid of the courageous Four Cardinals who are challenging Pope Francis over the much-contested post-synodal exhortation Amoris Laetitia, a second Polish Bishop – after Auxiliary Bishop Józef Wróbel of Lublin, Poland – has now raised his voice in a similar way. Bishop Jan Watroba, President of the Council for the Family of the Polish Bishops’ Conferences, has now made a statement where he declares that he believes that the publication of the Four Cardinals Letter is “not reprehensible.” According to the Catholic newspaper Die Tagespost, Watroba...

ROME, November 24, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Pope Francis has praised the 1960s German moral theologian Bernard Häring, one of the most prominent dissenters from Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, for his new morality which the pope said helped “moral theology to flourish.” "I think Bernard Häring was the first to start looking for a new way to help moral theology to flourish again," he said in comments, published today by La Civiltà Cattolica, that were given during a dialogue with the Jesuit order which was gathered for its 36th general Congregation on October 24, 2016 in Rome. Pope...

In a wide-ranging off-the-cuff question-and-answer session with Jesuit delegates in Rome, Pope Francis had two big topics on his mind: the decline of politics, and the rise of rigidity in seminaries. Lamenting that “big politics” has descended into “small politics,” Pope Francis says politicians generally are “on the wane” and no longer capable of building unity out of diversity.“Countries [today] lack those great politicians who were able to spend themselves seriously for their ideals and were not afraid of dialogue or struggle, but went ahead, with intelligence and with the charism specific to politics,” he told the Jesuits in Rome on October...

November 23, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – After months of successful pro-family marches protesting an attempt to amend the constitution to create homosexual “marriage,” Pope Francis’ new apostolic nuncio to Mexico has come with a perplexing message for Mexicans: Don’t march, but rather enter into “dialog” over the gay agenda. Archbishop Franco Coppola, a career diplomat with the Holy See who has served as nuncio to several African countries, arrived in Mexico on September 29. He soon began commenting on the struggle underway in the country over a proposed set of reforms by Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto to amend the constitution...