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Cardinal Burke expresses ‘respect…gratitude’ for man who threw Pachamama ‘idol’ in Tiber November 11, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Cardinal Raymond Burke praised the young man who last month threw Pachamama statues used in rituals connected to the recently concluded Amazon Synod into the Tiber river in Rome, saying he has “respect” for him and has “gratitude” for his “courageous witness to the faith.” In a new interview with The New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, Cardinal Burke for the first time commented on the Pachamama controversy that took place during the recent October 6-27 Pan-Amazon Synod in Rome. In this...

Pope Francis asked forgiveness Friday from Amazonian bishops and tribal leaders after thieves stole indigenous statues from a Vatican-area church and tossed them into the Tiber River in a bold show of conservative opposition to history’s first Latin American pope. Francis insisted that the carved wooden statues of naked pregnant women were brought to the Vatican for display during his Amazon synod “without any intention of idolatry,” undercutting conservative claims that they were symbols of pagan, idolatrous worship. He said carabinieri police had found the so-called Pachamama statues unharmed in the Tiber, and would consider letting the Vatican display them...

Like all accounts of God’s faithfulness, mine begins with a genealogy. In the late seventeenth century, my mother’s Congregationalist ancestors journeyed to the New World to escape what they saw as England’s deadly compromise with Romanism. Centuries later, ­American Presbyterians converted my father’s great-­grandmother from Coptic ­Orthodoxy to ­Protestantism. Her son became a Presbyterian minister in the Evangelical Coptic Church. By the time my parents were ­living in ­twenty-first-century Illinois, their families’ historic Reformed commitments had been replaced by non-denominational, ­Baptistic ­evangelicalism. This form of Christianity dominated my Midwestern hometown. My parents taught me to love God, revere the Scriptures,...

Next week, the city will celebrate its official, 2,767th birthday. According to a tradition going back to classic times, the brothers Romulus and Remus founded the city on 21 April in the year 753BC. But on Sunday it was reported that evidence of infrastructure building had been found, dating from more than 100 years earlier. The daily Il Messagero quoted Patrizia Fortini, the archaeologist responsible for the Forum, as saying that a wall constructed well before the city's traditional founding date had been unearthed. The wall, made from blocks of volcanic tuff, appeared to have been built to channel water...

Scholars discovered the 100-yard-wide (90-metre-wide) canal at Portus, the ancient maritime port through which goods from all over the Empire were shipped to Rome for more than 400 years. The archaeologists... believe the canal connected Portus, on the coast at the mouth of the Tiber, with the nearby river port of Ostia, two miles away. It would have enabled cargo to be transferred from big ocean-going ships to smaller river vessels and taken up the River Tiber to the docks and warehouses of the imperial capital. Until now, it was thought that goods took a more circuitous overland route along...

Archeologists have discovereed an ancient Roman canal, theme of the Romans, connecting the town of Portus, on the mouth of the Tiber River, to the river town of Ostia. According to the Telegraph: "Scholars discovered the 100-yard-wide (90-metre-wide) canal at Portus, the ancient maritime port through which goods from all over the Empire were shipped to Rome for more than 400 years.

BP has announced the discovery of yet another huge oil field in the Gulf of Mexico. At the same time, communist Russia is ready to work with Cuba to begin drilling 50 miles offshore Key West in the Gulf, and China is negotiating with Canada for the right to develop the vast oil resources in Alberta. Still, the Obama administration has remained resolute in opposing U.S. offshore drilling, Jerome Corsi's Red Alert reports. Found 250 miles southeast of Houston, the Tiber well was found under 4,132 feet (.8 mile) of water and was drilled to a total depth of 35,055...

In 1994 I was an Anglican priest on the Isle of Wight. I had a wife and two young children. We lived in a beautiful Victorian vicarage in the country. I had two beautiful Norman churches to look after. (Brading Church pictured above) My church was growing. My congregation were loving and kind. I wanted to stay there forever. Then the Church of England pulled the rug out from under me, and I began to plan a big adventure: swimming the Tiber. Here's some advice for Anglican priests who are now in the situation I was in then. If you're...

Ex-Protestants offer numerous reasons for their shift to Rome, but the arguments are far from cogent. The Wizard of Oz has fascinated adults and children alike for many years. You know the story well: a farm girl from Kansas finds herself in the middle of an unwelcomed adventure in an attempt to find the fanciful wizard, who, she hopes, will help her return home. After many trials and tribulations, she, along with her newfound friends, ultimately arrives at the Emerald City only to discover, much to her chagrin, that the "wizard" was really no wizard at all. He wasn't much...

Excerpt from an article in The Christian Century by Jason Byassee: When I ran into a friend from divinity school recently, we asked each other the normal catch-up questions. Then, in the same casual tone, she said, "So are you going to become Catholic?" It's not that odd a question these days in theological circles. Last year a string of theologians left their Protestant denominations for the church of Rome. The list includes three Lutherans—Reinhard Hütter and Bruce Marshall, theologians at Methodist seminaries (Duke and Southern Methodist), and Mickey Mattox, a Luther scholar at Marquette; two Anglicans—Rusty Reno of...

Introductions I am here because I am a convert to Catholicism from the Episcopal Church of the United States (ECUSA). My going from the ECUSA to the Catholic Church was a long journey, filled with every emotion known to man. It was a journey measured in decades, not in weeks or months or years. Along the way, I had some help; the woman I would eventually marry, a priest to whom I would eventually make my first and darkest confession, a priest that eventually confirmed me, a sponsor who later became a deacon. A great many Episcopalians have recently started...

The departures from the Episcopal Church -- or from Anglicanism altogether – of such good people as Al Kimel should give both the orthodox and the revisionists in that denomination pause. It should give the revisionists pause. They should consider that something just might be wrong with the direction they are leading ECUSA when Fr. Kimel and a flood of the faithful are leaving or being driven out. Of course, some have the attitude of the woman who told a conservative at the last General Convention, “Why don’t you just leave, so we can be more inclusive?” Hopefully, most revisionists...

ROME (Reuters) - Experts are scratching their heads in concern and confusion over what has happened to Rome's Tiber river where tons of dead fish have floated to the surface and algae have spread like the plague. Environmentalists say the phenomenon may have wiped out two-thirds of the fauna in a five-kilometer (three-mile) stretch of the river that runs through the heart of the city. Tons of dead fish have floated to the surface since July 15, leaving a stench hanging over the city center. Even eels, the Tiber's hardiest denizens, have leapt onto the banks to escape the water....