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Meanwhile, even as – as some people claim – there are within the Church those who wish to bring her down. There are – as is patently clear to anyone with a brain – there are outside the Church those who wish to bring her down.Rather, chop off her head.I saw this at Tempi (Italian HERE): La bandiera nera sventola sull’Obelisco di San Pietro: la rivista dello Stato islamico festeggia la “crociata fallita”The black flag waves over the Obelisk of St. Peter: the magazine of the Islamic State celebrates the “failed crusade” The “crociata” in this case refers to the...

In a dramatic shift in tone, a Vatican document said on Monday that homosexuals had "gifts and qualities to offer" and asked if Catholicism could accept gays and recognize positive aspects of same-sex couples. Roman Catholic gay rights groups around the world hailed the paper as a breakthrough, but Church conservatives called it a betrayal of traditional family values. The document, prepared after a week of discussions at an assembly of 200 bishops on the family, said the Church should challenge itself to find "a fraternal space" for homosexuals without compromising Catholic doctrine on family and matrimony. While the...

ROME (CNN) – Using strikingly open language, a new Vatican report says the church should welcome and appreciate gays, and offers a solution for divorced and remarried Catholics who want to receive Communion. “Regarding homosexuals, it went so far as to pose the question whether the church could accept and value their sexual orientation without compromising Catholic doctrine,” said John Thavis, a former Rome bureau chief for Catholic News Service. The Rev. James Martin, an author and Jesuit priest, called the report's language on gays and lesbians "revolutionary." “Homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community. Are...

Wed Oct 8, 2014 - 10:59 am EST Pope Francis distances himself from ‘very conservative’ bishops John-Henry Westen Follow John-Henry By John-Henry Westen catholic , pope francis , synod on the family ROME – In an interview released on the opening of the Synod on the Family, Pope Francis distanced himself from “very conservative” bishops, adding however that he enjoys "debating" them as long as they are "intellectually well-formed."In an interview with the pope, published October 5, reporter Joaquín Morales Solá at Argentina’s La Nacion newspaper asked if he was “worried” about the recent book by five cardinals opposing Kasper’s...

A shockingly blunt title indeed. But as entirely predictable events unfold in the New Synod Hall—wherein, we are told, all things will be made new—why should we bother with nuance? After all, we have a Pope who is no friend of nuance and whose intentions could not have been more crudely expressed over the past eighteen months of astonishing insults and denigration of practically all the elements of apostolic and ecclesiastical tradition. Francis has clearly been preparing for this moment since the day of his election, if not before, and now it has arrived in all its inglorious splendor. Beneath...

The secular-progressive media is hell-bent on trying to shape an image of Pope Francis as a fellow liberal-progressive, just like them. Give him more time, the media suggests, and he’ll soon be allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion, allowing gays to marry within the Church, ordaining gays, ordaining women, endorsing the HHS mandate, praising Planned Parenthood, and who knows what else.It’s an incessant, incestuous, exasperating image that liberals in the media are pushing with abandon. Almost every one of Francis’ actions or statements is contorted to try to remake the man, and thus his Church, in their (the...

Will the Pope write him back and explain how “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence”?

One of the wisest clerics in the traditional Catholic world, Father Claude Barthe, wrote a short note for the highly regarded French Catholic periodical L'Homme Nouveau on the Holy See communiqué on the meeting between Cardinal Müller and Bishop Fellay yesterday. He paid attention to the key words, as well as to words that are missing, and how they represent a high point in the evolution of relations between the Apostolic See and the Society of Saint Pius X. Father Barthe, by the way, is the main chaplain of the remarkable Populus Summorum Pontificum pilgrimage to Rome, taking place a...

Cardinal Walter Kasper, a close influence on Pope Francis, says it is up to parents to decide how many children to have ahead of global gathering of Roman Catholic bishops to discuss the family A leading reformist Cardinal close to Pope Francis has hinted at the possibility of a reinterpretation of the Roman Catholic Church’s blanket ban on artificial contraception. Cardinal Walter Kasper said it was “the responsibility of the parents” to decide how many children they should have. He also said that so-called natural family planning, which is promoted by the Church as an alternative to contraception, also...

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis has ordered a review aimed at simplifying the Church's procedures for annulments, the Vatican said on Saturday, a move that could make it easier for Catholics to end marriages. A statement said Francis had appointed an 11-member commission of canon lawyers and theologians to propose reform of the process, "seeking to simplify and streamline it while safeguarding the principle of the indissolubility of marriage". An annulment, formally known as a "decree of nullity," is a ruling that a marriage was not valid in the first place according to Church law because certain pre-requisites, such...

In which Teófilo reflects about two recent developments in the Church, the onslaught against the Culture of life, the words of Pope Francis, and the five non-negotiable moral teachings of the Church, and the letter Teófilo wrote to Pope Francis a year ago. Brethren: Peace be with you. As you know, I am and always will be a faithful son of the Church and servant of the current Successor of Peter. That loyalty is based upon faith and it is unconditional. I make no excuses for disobeying Pope Francis or any Pope whatsoever, even when he speaks as a personal...

A leading reformist Cardinal close to Pope Francis has hinted at the possibility of a reinterpretation of the Roman Catholic Church’s blanket ban on artificial contraception. Cardinal Walter Kasper said it was “the responsibility of the parents” to decide how many children they should have. He also said that so-called natural family planning, which is promoted by the Church as an alternative to contraception, also has an “artificial” element. His comments in an interview with The Tablet, the Catholic weekly, are likely to reopen debate about one of the most contentious areas of Catholic teaching just weeks before a special...

ROME, Italy – Security has been tightened in Saint Peter's Square after intelligence services intercepted a possible plan to attack the Vatican, Italian media reported on Saturday, September 20, increasing fears that Pope Francis could be in danger. A foreign security service alerted Italy this week after intercepting a conversation between two Arab speakers which referred to "a demonstrative act, Wednesday, at the Vatican," Il Messaggero daily reported. Wednesday is the day the pope holds his weekly general audience in the square in front of Saint Peter's Basilica. Checks by Italy's anti-terrorism unit revealed that one of the speakers passed...

The Council of Cardinals has concluded a 3-day session, during which the nine papal advisers discussed a plan to merge several pontifical councils. The Council also began drafting a new apostolic constitution on the organization of the Roman Curia. In a briefing for reporters on September 17, Father Federico Lombardi, the director of the Vatican press office, said that the Council of Cardinals has now completed its work on the economic affairs of the Vatican, with the inauguration of the new Secretariat for the Economy, under Cardinal George Pell, and the Council for the Economy supervising his work. The Council...

With the Vatican’s Synod on the Family fast approaching and Pope Francis’ call to the Catholic Church to be a “field hospital for sinners” more focused on mercy than rules, lots of people are looking for hints at what the gathering of bishops will urge at the extraordinary synod next month. A wedding of 20 couples in St. Peter’s Square, some of whom cohabited prior to marriage, has CBS News hailing the “progressive Pope,” who’s progressively progressive. Or something: Many had been living together prior to getting married, which is forbidden in Catholicism. Some even have children.But none of...

Today's generation of nuns are progressive women, two things the Church isn't used to Nuns are an endangered species. They are dying and not being replaced. More Florida Atheist Kicked Out of City Meeting For Refusing to Stand During InvocationHate Crime Laws: What the Amish Beard Cutting Case Means for the Rest of UsBrits on Edge: Police Get Power to Seize Terror Suspect Passports NBC NewsSkiing Standoff Could Be Downhill Run for Park City NBC NewsMajor Shift: Germany to Arm Anti-ISIS Forces in Iraq NBC News If you think the news is bad now, a world without nuns would be...

The Vatican’s chief representative at UN headquarters in Geneva has repeated the call of Pope Francis for international leaders to stop the persecution of Christians and Yezidis in Iraq, “though the mechanisms of the United Nations.” Archbishop Silvano Tomasi told Vatican Radio that the Holy See has two objectives for its diplomatic efforts regarding the situation in Iraq: to seek international help to stop the violence against Christiand and Yezidis, and to provide international security for refugees returning to their native villages. Questioned about Boko Haram terrorism in Nigeria, the archbishop said that the international community should “support the Nigerian...

At The Spectator there is a must read piece by Damian Thompson for anyone who is puzzled about what Pope Francis may be up to, especially in regard to the Roman Curia.Here is an excerpt with my emphases: [...]As a Latin American who didnÂ’t know his way around Rome when he became pope, he approaches the Curia as an outsider. That is why the cardinals elected him. They did not imagine that this previously austere figure, who even as a prince of the church travelled on buses dressed as a simple priest, would turn on the charm for journalists and...

Pope Francis asked people to join him in prayer Aug. 19 after he learned that two of his little great nephews and their mother had died in a car crash in Argentina and his nephew was in critical condition. The dead were identified as the wife and two young sons of Pope Francis' nephew, Emanuel Horacio Bergoglio: Valeria Carmona, 39, Antonio Bergoglio, 8 months, and Joseph Bergoglio, 2 years.

Things are bad when even Pope Francis, known as a holy and peaceable man, is pragmatically calling for the world to act against the atrocities happening in Iraq. Things are very bad indeed when Archbishop Giorgio Lingua, the Vatican's nuncio to Iraq, recently told Vatican Radio concerning military action "This is something that had to be done, otherwise [the Islamic State] could not be stopped." Meanwhile, Chaldean Patriarch Louis Sako of Baghdad, who is also known as the Patriarch of Babylon, is saying the U.S. military strikes have been of little or no help, adding that "There is a need...