August 21, 2019
by Joshua Hren
We have had our “Year of Mercy.” Now it’s time we had a Year of Justice. Of course, a Year of Justice wouldn’t be the antimony of the Year of Mercy—but, rather, its necessary corollary. A person is said to be merciful, Aquinas observes, when he knows sorrow in his heart (miserum cor) over the miseries [...]
September 4, 2018
by John M. Vella
The underlying premise of conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat’s recent book, To Change the Church, is that the Catholic Church is conservative because her claims and demands only make sense if there is 1) a core and agreed-upon set of doctrines and 2) a clear link to New Testament teachings and to the early [...]
November 28, 2017
by Julia Meloni
“The reality of the apostasy of faith in our time rightly and profoundly frightens us,” said Cardinal Burke in honor of Fatima’s centenary. In 1903, Pope St. Pius X declared himself “terrified” by humanity’s self-destructive apostasy from God: “For behold they that go far from Thee shall perish” (Ps. 72:27). How much more “daunting,” said [...]
January 24, 2017
by Richard A. Spinello
It has been nine long months since the publication of Amoris Laetita, but there is still no end in sight to the confusion and turmoil it has unleashed within almost every corner of the Catholic Church. Bishops have now turned to the excruciating task of implementation as they try to elicit the pastoral implications of [...]
December 28, 2016
by John M. Grondelski
A recent issue of the Italian daily Avennire suggests the next possible front in the effort to accommodate the sacraments to “pastoral” problems (at least as Cardinal Walter Kasper sees them): intercommunion. The December 9 issue features a brief interview in which Kasper reflects on Pope Francis’s October 31-November 1 visit to Sweden to mark the [...]
April 18, 2016
by Monica Migliorino Miller
By now many hundreds if not thousands of commentaries have been penned on Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia (AL). They range from condemnations to lavish welcomes and then those analysts somewhere in the middle who praise the good and hold back criticism. In this mix there are the particularly odd responses as the one [...]
February 2, 2016
by Fr. George W. Rutler
No better example of a tendency of the most famous to be most quickly forgotten, is Albert Schweitzer. He lived ninety glorious years as theologian, musician, missionary, physician, and ranked at the top of each. His Nobel Peace Prize in 1952 was almost an afterthought, for by then he was what Blessed Teresa of Calcutta [...]
November 18, 2015
by John M. Grondelski
Mercy featured prominently in the polemics surrounding the recently concluded Synod on the Family. Mercy was frequently counterpoised to dogma as an appeal to dilute ecclesiastical practice, and admit to Holy Communion those who are now “remarried.” Cardinal Kasper went so far as to publish a book between the 2014 and 2015 Synod sessions: Mercy: The [...]
November 9, 2015
by John M. Grondelski
The admission of divorced and “remarried” Catholics to the Eucharist was one of the neuralgic issues at the recently concluded Synod on the Family. The German Episcopal Conference in general and Cardinal Walter Kasper in particular had been agitating for change in ecclesiastical discipline to allow some divorced and “remarried” Catholics to Holy Communion, with [...]
November 4, 2015
by Donald S. Prudlo
The Archdiocese of Milan is one of the most ancient and honored in the Latin Christian world. Named the Ambrosian See, it was the seat of St. Ambrose, and possessor of an ancient and venerable western liturgical rite of its own. Milan, the mighty city on the Lombard plain, has ever been at the crossroads [...]
November 3, 2015
by James Kalb
In recent decades the Church has softened her public witness for the truth of the Catholic vision of things. That tendency became much stronger after the Second Vatican Council, and can even claim some support from statements such as the address of Bl. Paul VI at the Council’s close. The change has corresponded to a [...]
October 23, 2015
by Thomas D. Williams
Like the good German that he is, Cardinal Walter Kasper has a wonderful capacity of persistence. Like a dog with a bone, he is able to keep fighting against incredible odds long after a lesser man would have packed up his things and gone home. The case in point is, of course, the question of [...]
October 13, 2015
by Robert L. Kinney III
Although it is unpleasant to discuss, there is a medical disorder (sometimes called “pica”) in which a person desires to eat non-nutritive, non-food substances like glass, plastic, dirt, wood, and apparently almost anything else one could imagine. Besides their disordered desire to eat harmful things, people with pica otherwise seem to be normal and are [...]
September 29, 2015
by Joseph Arias
One of the questions commonly raised in relation to the proposal of Cardinal Walter Kasper that the Catholic Church should admit to sacramental penance and Holy Communion certain civilly divorced and “remarried” individuals—who continue to act as if their second “marriage” were valid—is whether the Church’s traditional prohibition of this proposal is a matter of [...]
September 18, 2015
by Austin Ruse
I understand spin. Spin is not lying. It is capturing the narrative. If your side does not capture the narrative, the other side will. The other side most likely will have the media on their side so capturing the narrative is so much easier for them. Still, you must try. Therefore, I fully understand the [...]
September 14, 2015
by Marie Meaney
Cardinal Müller, head of the CDF, condemned German heterodoxy at a book signing in Regensburg recently. In what can only be described as a philippic, Müller spoke of growing ideological tensions within the ecclesiastic establishment, as members attempt to change Church teaching regarding the divorced and remarried over and against truth and ecclesiastical unity. With all available [...]
September 8, 2015
by Tom Gourlay
With the Year of Mercy just around the corner, it is fitting to return to what is perhaps the greatest explication of the doctrine of mercy in recent years, that of Pope, now Saint, John Paul II in his encyclical Dives in Misericordia. Like Pope John Paul II before him, Pope Francis has made mercy [...]
June 11, 2015
by Monica Migliorino Miller
In a recent interview with EWTN journalist Raymond Arroyo, Cardinal Walter Kasper stated that Pope Francis never approved his “proposal” that would permit divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Holy Communion. Most of those commenting on Kasper’s clarification focus on this aspect of The World Over interview. After all, this seems to be something of [...]
April 13, 2015
by Samuel Gregg
“But they should not tell us too much what we have to do.” Such were the words used by the German theologian Cardinal Walter Kasper to describe what he thought of African contributions during the 2014 Synod on the Family as Catholic bishops and laity gathered to discuss challenges facing the family in the modern [...]
January 19, 2015
by Marie Meaney
St John the Baptist gave his life in the defense of marriage. The German bishops, by coming out in favor of Cardinal Kasper’s proposals on divorced and remarried Catholics, took the side of Herod. In effect, they concluded that St. John’s position was too antagonistic and decided to issue a letter of congratulations to Herod [...]