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Cardinal Coccopalmerio's book is only the latest example of Catholic teaching being questioned A few weeks ago, the Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica published a startling article on women priests. Its arguments were familiar: the author, deputy editor Fr Giancarlo Pani, asked readers to consider whether an all-male priesthood might perhaps be outdated. “There is unease,” Fr Pani wrote, “among those who fail to understand how the exclusion of woman from the Church’s ministry can coexist with the affirmation and appreciation of her equal dignity.” What is startling is that this appeared in a journal edited by one of the...

Vatican heavyweight Cardinal Reinhard Marx said there may be tensions within the Roman Catholic Church but stressed Pope Francis has the full support of his senior cardinals. The German cardinal and archbishop of Munich and Freising was asked at a news conference on Wednesday (Feb. 15) why nine cardinals who advise Francis on the Vatican’s economic and structural reforms felt the need to defend the pope in a statement issued on Monday. “We didn’t want to make a great drama but it was time to repeat that we support the pope and we are together with him,” said Marx, who...

Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio has published a book on Amoris LaetitiaA senior Vatican cardinal has argued that the divorced and remarried can take Communion when it is impossible for them to avoid having sex. Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, has published a book on Amoris Laetitia. The cardinal says that a couple should have “absolution and access to the Eucharist as long as – I repeat – there is the impossibility of immediately changing the situation of sin.” St John Paul II and Benedict XVI reaffirmed the Church’s perennial teaching that divorced and remarried Catholics...

Then the angel that talked with me went forth, and said unto me, Lift up now thine eyes, and see what is this that goeth forth. And I said, What is it? And he said, This is an ephah that goeth forth. He said moreover, This is their resemblance through all the earth. And, behold, there was lifted up a talent of lead: and this is a woman that sitteth in the midst of the ephah. And he said, This is wickedness. And he cast it into the midst of the ephah; and he cast the weight of lead upon...

Clarifications on the Biblical Flood Narrative Msgr. Charles Pope • February 14, 2017 • As we read the flood story in Tuesday’s daily Mass, I feel that a few clarifications are in order.While we are not required as Catholics to interpret every detail of the flood story literally, there does seem to be some evidence (preserved in many ancient cultures) of a flood or “mega event” that drastically reduced the size of the human race. In addition, genetic, geological, and anthropological information point to a period some 70,000 years ago during which humans almost vanished from the planet [*].How...

The Bible makes it very clear that babies and children do not go to hell...even if their parents are wicked.

“[Jesus] said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.’ ” - Luke 24:44 Facing the prospect of losing Europe to Protestantism, Roman Catholics convened a council to respond to the Protestant Reformers and their ideas. This gathering, the Council of Trent, met on and off from 1545 to 1563. Trent is one of the most important councils Rome has ever held, as it codified Roman Catholic dogma regarding justification, the sacraments,...

Yesterday, we told you about the new book from Cardinal Coccopalmerio, entitled, The Eighth Chapter of the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia. Today was the Vatican press conference for the release of the book, but the author didn’t come. 1P5 contributor Oakes Spalding comments: Cardinal Coccopalmerio failed to show up, pleading a “diary clash.” This was later explained as a conflict with a meeting at the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.In his short work, published by the official Vatican publishing house on February 8, Coccopalmerio had argued that all the sacraments including communion should be open to those “living in situations not in line with traditional...

SOURCELoosely translated from the original Italian Drafts Part III: the big "renovations" of Bergoglio "Fra Cristoforo I'll tell you a story. Last Thursday, in one of the Bar present in front of the Porta S. Anna (front of the Vatican State), go out for coffee a Monsignor (very near Bergoglio), in his fifties, and a layman.The discussion falls on "dubia". The Monsignor, with making "sufficient" says: "The Pope will never answer to" dubia "of the 4 cardinal. [He] will never fall to their level. Francis has much bigger projects, which do not stop Italy. The only hitch in this period...

Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, head of a Vatican office that interprets Church law, writes that Catholics in “non-legitimate” situations can receive Communion as long as they want to change their situation but cannot act on their desire because doing so would lead to further sin.ROME- Catholics who find themselves in what the Church considers “non-legitimate” situations, such as being divorced and civilly remarried, can receive Communion as long as they want to change their situation but cannot act on their desire because doing so would lead to further sin. That’s the final word, at least according to the Vatican’s key interpreter...

Yesterday, I posted HERE about the release of the booklet by Card. Coccopalmerio, Prefect of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts. It was ballyhooed as The Response™ to the Five Dubia of the Four “intransigent” Cardinals, who are dissenters because they are defending doctrine. The Cardinal’s booklet, which had a veneer of official approval because it was published by the Vatican Press, was to be publicly presented today.Yesterday I made two main points.First, the booklet cannot by any reasonable person be thought to be The Response™ to the Five Dubia of the Four Cardinals. The Response™ must come from His Holiness...

Evelyn Waugh’s character Charles Ryder described his friend Sebastian’s protracted acts of self-destruction as “a blow, expected, repeated, falling upon a bruise, with no smart or shock of surprise, only a dull and sickening pain and the doubt whether another like it could be borne” (Brideshead Revisited, 1945) . I thought of Waugh’s words as I read, in the wake of the Maltese Disaster and the German bishops’ slightly more nuanced program to the same effect, some excerpts translated from Francesco Cdl. Coccopalmerio’s new, short book on Pope Francis’ Amoris laetitia.If the excerpts I read are accurate, the President of the Pontifical...

Then I turned, and lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and behold a flying roll. And he said unto me, What seest thou? And I answered, I see a flying roll; the length thereof is twenty cubits, and the breadth thereof ten cubits. Then said he unto me, This is the curse that goeth forth over the face of the whole earth: for every one that stealeth shall be cut off as on this side according to it; and every one that sweareth shall be cut off as on that side according to it. I will bring it forth, saith...

How Is Adam’s Sin Different from Eve’s? Msgr. Charles Pope • February 13, 2017 • In yesterday’s post, we explored the details of original sin and learned that there are subtleties and stages to it that can teach us something. Original sin was more than eating a piece of fruit; there were things that led up to it, both externally and internally.I also mentioned that it was worth exploring how the sacred text speaks of the “Sin of Adam” and differentiates it to some extent from the sin that Eve commits. Biblically, original sin is properly denoted as the...

“These words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (vv. 6–7). - Deuteronomy 6:6–9 Commentators on Scripture during the medieval era developed a complex means of interpreting the Bible known as the quadriga. According to the medieval quadriga, every biblical passage had a fourfold meaning—a literal sense, a moral sense, an allegorical sense, and an anagogical sense. To know the literal or...

All sorts of rumors are now swirling about current events in the Church: Cardinal Burke has been cancelling engagements. Why?Cardinal Muller has resigned from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Was he forced or was it voluntary?A formal correction of the Pope has already been made in private and is about to become public.The Pope and his allies are intending to radically revamp the Novus Ordo Mass to make it even more amenable to Protestants and others.And these come against the background of significant public events and incidents: The official and public endorsement of a heretical understanding of...

Pope Francis has never liked the Anglicans who become Catholic. He prefers that they stay where they are, and has said so. Meanwhile, however, he has received as a legacy from his predecessor, Benedict XVI, a special ordinariate set up in 2012, which takes care of none other than the faithful of the Unites States and Canada who have converted from Anglicanism.This ordinariate goes by the name of the Chair of Saint Peter and operates as an immense diocese headquartered in Houston, Texas. It is in charge of more than forty parishes. Its liturgies enshrine the Anglican tradition, which is...

Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, has written a new book, released just a few days ago on February 8. The short, 30-page text is entitled, The Eighth Chapter of the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia. Two facts — that it was printed by the Libreria Editrice Vaticana and that a press conference on its release has been scheduled tomorrow at the Vatican — gives the unmistakable impression, similar to the L’Osservatorio Romano publication of the Maltese bishops’ exhortation guidelines before it, that the text has implicit papal approval. It is unclear if any intended significance has been placed on...

In the shallow, liberal, Italian Catholic weekly Panorama we are informed about a booklet now out over the name of Card. Coccopalmerio, Prefect of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts.  It is ballyhooed as “the response” to the Five Dubia of the Four “intransigent” Cardinals, who are dissenters because they are defending doctrine. Of course it can’t be that, can it?  The response to the Dubia should come from the Holy Father (to whom they were submitted) or from the CDF (whose Prefect has spoken unofficially about the issues but who hasn’t issued anything official).Beware. When you read Panorama your IQ is likely to...