Free Republic

When will the pope resign?For many Catholics unhappy about the direction of travel of the Church under Pope Francis, if and when he will resign are perhaps the most asked questions. This is not distasteful or idle court gossip. The Catholic Church is a hierarchical organisation directed in outlook and ideology by its leader, who a small College of Cardinals elect. This doesn’t mean the College can ignore sentiment within the Church, especially in an era when attendance is falling – including in unlikely places – and with the power of social media Catholics have a megaphone. So, it is...

While the Pope is in the Hospital…While the Pope is recovering in the hospital (best wishes for Jorge Mario Bergoglio that he gets well), it is only natural to reflect, by analogy, on the state of health of the Catholic Church.Multiple analyses now, both from the “right” as well as the “left,” say that the diagnosis is frightening: a comatose state. The number of people who go to church is decreasing, vocations are falling dramatically, the number of those who believe in eternal life and the resurrection continues to decrease. The “ABCs” of the faith are crumbling day by day...

Pope Francis Blesses a Lesbian, Her Family, and Her Writing For KidsOnce again Pope Francis makes a human gesture that challenges the Church orthodoxy. Will official teachings change? The latest in a long list of dust-ups came this week when Francis apparently gave his blessing to Francesca Pardi, a children’s book author who happens to be lesbian and who has a title on the list of banned books in the Venice school district that has sparked a feud between Venice mayor Luigi Bugnaro and the likes of Elton John. In the wake of the fiasco in Venice, during which one...

CNA Staff, Jun 20, 2020 / 08:55 pm MT (CNA).- After the toppling of a saint’s statue in San Francisco, the city’s archbishop said Saturday that important protests over racial injustice have been “hijacked” by a mob bent on violence. “What is happening to our society? A renewed national movement to heal memories and correct the injustices of racism and police brutality in our country has been hijacked by some into a movement of violence, looting and vandalism,” Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone said in a statement June 20. The archbishop’s statement came after a statue of St. Junipero Serra was torn...

When Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio became the new Catholic pope in 2013, he chose the name of Francis to indicate that his pontificate would be one of mercy and compassion for the poor and needy—for such is the reputation of his eponym, Saint Francis of Assisi: “the man of poverty, the man of peace, the man who loves and protects creation,” said Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, as to why he chose that name. St. Francis (1182-1226) is indeed known for all those qualities. But he was known for something else that his modern day namesake fails to live up to:...

The Portiuncula (small portion) refers to the land in Assisi, Italy, that belonged to the Benedictines. On this land  was an old church dedicated to the Virgin Mother of God but abandoned. The great St. Francis had great devotion to the queen of the world and when he saw that the church was deserted, he began to live there constantly and repair it.  He heard that the angels often visited it, so that it was called St. Mary of the Angels. The Benedictines wanted to give Francis the church but in order to remain faithful to Lady Poverty, Francis rented it from them...

The names of the tech workers in this story have been changed.Ten thousand miles from Silicon Valley, in a room near the Black Sea, Yegor Karpenchekov dreams of money. At night, while the rest of Odessa sleeps and cocaine smugglers drift in and out of the port under cover of darkness, Yegor logs onto FaceTime and talks to a 70-year-old woman in San Francisco. Her name is Sally Faubion, and five months ago she recruited Yegor from the freelancer marketplace UpWork to code her apps. She believes "divine intervention" brought them together; for Yegor, it was likely $20 per hour...

Morris tells me the recyclical Laudato Si’ is subtitled: “Pope Francesco’s Amazing Climate Theatre,” and how appropriate this is. The recyclical provides fun for all the family: there’s something in the show for everyone: global warming enthusiasts, liberals, Buddhists, atheists, New Age hippies, greens, and everyone who enjoys those lovely pictures of Saint Francis surrounded by corgis, hummingbirds and My Little Pony, without asking awkward questions like, “What did Francis say about sin?” At the heart of this recyclical is the popular image of Saint Francis surrounded by cuddly animals, and this is where we find the real theological and...

Irish Central reports: "Pope Francis continues to amaze. He married 20 couples on Sunday in Rome several of them “living in sin” having had children outside marriage. 'The people getting married on Sunday are couples like many others,' the diocese of Rome said in a statement. 'Some already live together, some already have children.' The Pope said marriage was 'real life, not some TV show.' In marrying them he he kicked away one of the bulwark beliefs of the sex-obsessed hierarchy in the old church, the belief that sex outside marriage was a heinous and immoral act. All of us...

St. Francis of Assisi today is often thought of in revolutionary, avant-garde images: the merchant’s son who stripped naked in public to renounce his worldly possessions and attachments, the mystic who preached to the birds, the friar who embraced lepers, and the erstwhile evangelist who crossed enemy lines during a crusade to preach to a sultan. St. Francis indeed was all these things. But as for the St. Francis who lamented abuses of the liturgy, submitted to Church authority, displayed the utmost respect for the clergy, and also debated the meaning of the gospels with the same sultan—we don’t hear...

Chesterton and Saint Francis | By Joseph Pearce This essay appears in Joseph Pearce's new book Literary Giants, Literary Catholics. Chesterton enjoyed a lifelong friendship with Saint Francis of Assisi. As a small boy, long before he had an inkling of the nature of Catholicism, Chesterton was read a story by his parents about a man who gave up all his possessions, even the clothes he was wearing on his back, to follow Christ in holy poverty. From the moment the wide-eyed Gilbert first heard the story of Saint Francis, he knew he had found a friend. As such,...

...In ''all initiatives with pastoral aspects," the Franciscans ''will have to request and obtain the consent" of Assisi's bishop, who will in turn ''hear the opinion" of the Umbria regional bishops conference and the Italian conference, Benedict's decree declared. The future papal delegate will ''perpetuate, with his moral authority, the close bonds of communion" between the Vatican and the sacred places in memory of Saint Francis.... Benedict's decree is a benchmark in the evolution of his seven-month-old papacy, many church observers say. So far, his reign has been an exercise in the tightening of practice to match church doctrine as...

One thing I always get from the story of Saint Francis is a lesson on renewal in the Church. The authorities of a corrupt church, like authorities everywhere, tend to worry about structures and organizations and control and property.