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Pope Francis: Mission AccomplishedAbove: when Time Magazine named Pope Francis person of the year in November 2013. On May 9, 2019, I argued that the way to wreck the institutional Catholic Church would be to use the Church’s own weapons against herself, especially the power and primacy of the pope.The Catholic Church, of course, is indefectible; but I argue now that Francis has accomplished the mission of ruining the temporal manifestation of the Church. As Archbishop Fulton Sheen had foreseen, we now have the “ape of the Church… emptied of its divine content.”“That’s a bit dramatic,” you’re thinking. “Did Francis...

The Good, the Bad, and the Fiendishly Synodal at the National Eucharistic CongressEucharistic revival and synodality go together. Or to put it another way, I believe that we will have true Eucharistic revival when we experience the Eucharist as the sacrament of Christ’s incarnation: as the Lord walking with us together on the way.” (Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, November 14, 2023)In his essay about converting to Catholicism in The Road to Damascus, Evelyn Waugh wrote of the self-evident logic that led him to conclude that if Christianity was true, the Catholic Church must be...

[Catholic Caucus] In New Synodal Document, U.S. Bishops Rejoice at Creating a Safe Harbor for Everyone Except Catholics“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in the clothing of sheep, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.” (Matthew 7:15) On May 28, 2024, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops published its “National Synthesis of the People of God in the United States of America for the Interim Stage of the 2021-2024 Synod.” Relatively few people will take time to read the insignificant document, and those who do will likely find it to be generally incoherent. Whether it is a deliberate...