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The Vatican declared in 2021 that same-sex relationships cannot be blessed because God “cannot bless sin.” And now less than three years later, Pope Francis has authorized blessings for same-sex couples. What exactly does Pope Francis want LGBTQ Catholics to do in response to his shocking declaration? The Pope has a huge responsibility to clarify his hopes and dreams for LGBTQ Catholics, especially since “some Catholic bishops in Africa, Poland and elsewhere say they will not implement the new Vatican policy allowing blessings for same-sex couples.”Does the Pope want these couples to view homosexual behavior as less sinful than fornication...

[Catholic Caucus] Pope Francis: How much lower can we sink?Text of a talk given to the Latin Mass Society in London on November 24th, 2023. Mr. Sire’s audio of this talk can be heard here.When Joseph Shaw proposed this talk to me in early September, I suggested the title “Pope Francis: how much lower can we sink?”, but the fact is that since then we have been overtaken by events. Over the past eleven years we have all seen Pope Francis’s pontificate in a trajectory of accelerating descent into more and more overt betrayal of Catholic doctrine, but I must...

1.“Catholics worship statues.” This stereotype is painful to hear. Not only is this completely false, but it is ludicrous. Despite the fact that there are 801 millions Protestants world-wide, according to the Pew Research Center, my rant will be geared towards our brothers and sisters in the United States. In this country, approximately 51.5% of people are Protestant Christians. Realistically, most of these families have pictures in their home, which is completely normal, right? Right. They have pictures of their loved ones, both living and deceased. Is it not hypocritical then to say that Catholics are idol worshipers, when these...

The vocal pivot from such traditional social issues marks the first time U.S. Catholic bishops have publicly asked those seeking the White House to heed the admonitions of Francis' June encyclical, said Bishop Richard Pates of Des Moines. In Francis' major teaching document, the leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics called for a "sweeping revolution" to correct a "structurally perverse" economic system that allows the rich to exploit the poor and has turned the Earth into an "immense pile of filth."

Pope Francis said he supports the idea of setting a fixed date for Easter Sunday, which for centuries has moved back and forth according to the lunar calendar. Easter and the Holy Week that precedes it is rooted in the Jewish Passover and fixed on the first full moon, which falls on the first Sunday after the spring equinox, March 21. […] The Orthodox Churches normally celebrate Easter a week after the Catholics. […] Historians and expert agree that a common date for Easter would encourage “reconciliation between the Christian churches.” …

On 22 June, just four days after Pope Francis promulgated the encyclical on the environment, Archbishop Bernardito Auza, Apostolic Nuncio and Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations gave a formal statement to the United Nations on the “Zero Draft, Post-2015 Development Agenda.” As an Apostolic Nuncio, the Archbishop represents Pope Francis himself and, in effect, is speaking on his behalf. In his statement he said: “We support the verbatim inclusion of the sustainable development goals and targets as in the Report of the OWG (Open Working Group).” (emphasis added) Toward the end of the statement, the...

Although papal infallibility is commonly found in popular conversation, how well the term is understood is another matter.“Christ giving Peter the keys of the kingdom” by Pietro PeruginoAs Danny Garland, Jr., pointed out in his recent article on “The Development of the Dogma of Papal Infallibility,” the term “papal infallibility” has a centuries-old history that stretches from Peter John Olivi, in the thirteenth century, through John Henry Newman, in the nineteenth century, and down to the present. 1In addition to being a well-known term with a lengthy history, “papal infallibility” is also highly symbolic: for Roman Catholics, it has often...

Q: There was a lecture at our parish and the guest-speaker said something in passing about the Pope making infallible decisions. He claimed that it has only happened twice in history! Do you know what he was talking about? I don’t know if this is even a canon-law question or not… –Kay A: This is indeed a canon-law question, since canon law (as we have seen numerous times before in this space) is driven by theology. Whenever an issue arises about who in the Church has the authority to do what, it’s generally safe to assume that canon law is...