De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

You may have missed this story in The Catholic Herald on Monday which reports that Tina Beattie, Theologian, professor of 'Catholic Studies' at Roehampton University, and advisor to CAFOD’s Theological Reference Group, has signed a letter to the Polish Bishops’ Conference supporting “early, safe and legal” abortion. The letter follows proposals by the Polish government to make abortion illegal in the country. Tina Beattie was one of the organisers of the letter. She set up a secret Facebook group – her words – in order to brainstorm the letter’s wording and solicit signatures. The actual letter is an extraordinary piece of pseudo-intellectual sophistry which is nothing short of embarrassing from an academic perspective, wrong on every point—every few words contains a categorical error, a lie, a fallacy or a heresy. It's wrong on liberty, autonomy, conscience, legality, concepts of freedom and rights and their precedential axiomatic principle of the inalienable ...

Fr. Alexander Lucie-Smith is a Catholic priest, doctor of moral theology and consulting editor of The Catholic Herald . On Twitter he is @ALucieSmith  and is appearing at the Guild Apologetics evening in Soho on the 4th May see here for details . He knows his stuff, and has given me permission to post his response to the disgraceful letter to the Polish Bishops reported by The Catholic Herald here . The recent letter to the Polish Bishops on the subject of the abortion laws in Poland, signed by Professor Tina Beattie and many others, requires comment, as it will confuse and bewilder many Catholic readers. Most of the signatories are unknown to me, but I am very sorry to see in the hundred or so names several well-known writers such as Jean Porter of Notre Dame University, and Janet Martin Soskice of Cambridge University, both reputable academics. They like the rest of us have the duty, as Catholics, to uphold Church teaching. It is a pity that they have signed a ...

This is the definite and approved text of Bishop Athanasius Schneider's statement on Amoris Laetitia which has been emailed to a friend of mine with a request that it be disseminated. The paradox of the contradictory interpretations of « Amoris laetitia » The recently published Apostolic Exhortation « Amoris laetitia » (AL), which contains a plethora of spiritual and pastoral riches with regard to life within marriage and the Christian family in our times, has unfortunately, within a very short time, led to very contradictory interpretations even among the episcopate. There are bishops and priests who publicly and openly declare that AL represents a very clear opening-up to communion for the divorced and remarried, without requiring them to practice continence. In their opinion, it is this aspect of sacramental practice, which, according to them, is now to undergo a significant change that gives AL its truly revolutionary character. Interpreting AL with reference to irregular c...