De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

Finally, at the end, forced to resign as Liberal Party Leader, Farron understands. Last night Former Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron MP gave the Theos annual lecture for 2017 . Theos are a Christian think tank based in the UK. The organisation conducts research, publishes reports, and holds debates, seminars and lectures on the relationship between religion, politics and society in the contemporary world. Dan Hitchens found the most interesting dimension to the rage against Tim Farron when commenting on Jacob Rees Mogg's public profession of faith on the TV recently – to be the depth of subsequent anger at the “bigot” Rees-Mogg and his “utterly abhorrent” opinions. He goes on to suggest that: "Secular liberalism loves to shout about how Christian sexual ethics are wrong; but secular liberals are far less confident when it comes to their own positive beliefs. Whatever can be said about Catholic teaching, there are at least various well-elaborated philosophical...

I was a little bit shocked to see Cardinal Nichols publicly congratulate Prince Harry and his fiancé on their engagement yesterday given that she is a divorcée: I offer my congratulations to Harry and Meghan on the news of their engagement. We pray for their happiness as they prepare to make their life-long commitment to marriage. — Cardinal Nichols (@CardinalNichols) November 27, 2017 What do you think? Is this appropriate? One may argue that in making such a public statement, Cardinal Nichols is acting in his civic capacity only and thus this is perfectly civilised and reasonable. But what message does it send to his Catholic followers? Certainly I was not at all surprised to see this comment aimed at the Cardinal: As a divorcee denied the sacraments I find your comments inappropriate at best and lacking in any compassion for those you judge differently — Natalie Stafford (@tigernat7) November 27, 2017 It makes the excellent point of identifying very clear d...

Dr. Joseph Shaw has been reading 70's psychology and thinks he has figured out much of what informs Pope Francis' constant diatribes against "rigid" Catholics, just one of an ever growing collection of insults regularly launched at the faithful from the Holy Father, but certainly a favourite, often returned to. Dr. Shaw cites a passage by Peter Kelvin, The Bases of Social Behaviour , 1970, which he considers constitutes a concise characterisation of what progressives, in the Church and outside it, in the 1960s and 1970s, thought was wrong with their opponents. He also notes that "it also seems to match what Pope Francis has in mind when he talks about 'rigid' people. We don't have to imagine that he ever read Kelvin: these ideas which were widespread when the Holy Father was at an impressionable age." It is particularly interesting that the Holy Father seems very formed by a lot of these old "progressive" ideas from the 60...

Rorate Caeli draw our attention to the following valuable information: There is a great deal of good Catholic audio to be found on the internet nowadays. We want to alert our readers to things in particular. First, our friends at the Roman Forum have put a large number of lectures on Church History by John Rao up on Soundcloud . Included are the completed lectures of the current year (2016-2017), which is about the years 1794-1846, and all the lectures of last year (2015-2016), which was about the years 1748-1794. We encourage our readers to take a break from current events, and recall the Church’s struggles in previous centuries. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were periods in the Church’s life with many parallels to our own. The temptation to water down the faith, and try to make it palatable to modernity can be found then as now. And Rao masterfully shows how all attempts do so were counter-productive and disastrous, whereas attempts to recover the fullness of the Chur...

Sunday, November 26, 2017 Solemnity of Christ King of the universe Pope Benedict XVI Angelus, November 20, 2005 Today, last Sunday of the liturgical year, we celebrate the solemnity of Christ King of the universe. From the announcement of his birth, the only begotten son of his father, born by the virgin Mary, is called "King", in the sense of Messianic, that is, heir to the throne of David, according to the promises of the prophets, for a kingdom that will not end (CF. 1,32-33, the royalty of Christ remained completely hidden until his thirty years in an ordinary existence in Nazareth. Then, during the public life, Jesus inaugurated the new kingdom, which "is not of this world" (GV 18,36), and in the end he did it fully with his death and resurrection. Appearing risen to the apostles said: "I have been given every power in heaven and earth" (Mt 28,18): this power derives from love, which God has manifested in fullness in the sacrifice of his son....

The pro-homosexual organisation Quest was banned from the official Roman Catholic Directory for England and Wales by Cardinal Basil Hume, then-Archbishop of Westminster, because of the organisation's public dissent from Church teaching that called homosexual acts “intrinsically disordered.” The organisation had been listed in the directory as an approved Catholic organisation from 1992. In a letter explaining his decision to remove Quest from the directory, Cardinal Hume wrote at that time that if an organisation is listed, the “assumption must be that it accepts the church’s teaching set out in a manner that is in no way ambiguous.” “It is one thing for the Church officially to recognise a support group for Catholic homosexual men and women, struggling, as we all do, to live up to the demands of our shared Christian vocation,” he said, adding that it was clear that an explicit part of Quest’s agenda was “to encourage and recognise loving same-sex partnerships,” something...

By Unknown - Archives des jésuites de France, CC BY-SA 3.0 , Link Teilhard de Chardin was a French idealist philosopher and Jesuit priest who trained as a palaeontologist and geologist and took part in the discovery of Peking Man. He conceived the vitalist idea of the Omega Point (a maximum level of complexity and consciousness towards which he believed the universe was evolving) and developed Vladimir Vernadsky's concept of noosphere . His posthumously published book, The Phenomenon of Man , set forth a sweeping account of the unfolding of the cosmos and the evolution of matter to humanity, to ultimately a reunion with Christ. In the book, Teilhard abandoned any literal interpretation of Creation in the Book of Genesis in favour of allegorical and theological interpretations. The unfolding of the material cosmos, is described from primordial particles to the development of life, human beings and the noosphere, and finally to his vision of the Omega Point in the future, ...

I found an interesting German report here which suggests that Cardinal Sarah has failed to respond to Pope Francis' request to publicise his response to statements by the Cardinal on the Internet ( as outlined in this post from October 23rd ). The post suggests the deadline was discovered by research from Katholischen Nachrichten-Agentur ( KNA ) but I have not been able to verify this. As the Dom Radio report states, Pope Francis decree " Magnum Principium " specified that the national episcopal conferences are responsible for the translation of liturgical texts. The moto proprio said episcopal conferences need only confirm these translations with Rome. So if there is there a concern about the change, no alternative translations should be written. Cardinal Sarah, however, considers that the final decision should remain with Congregation for Divine Worship . At least that is the result of a post that Sarah let be published on the French Internet portal, L'Hom...

At last! The Pope has taken some time off his busy schedule of sacking faithful prelates, insulting faithful lay people and giving interviews to left-wing Atheists to speak to Raymond Arroyo about his papacy in this revealing interview:

There's genuine surprise across the Catholic internet today as news breaks that the strongly pro-life Joseph Naumann, Archbishop of Kansas City, beat quasi-catholic Cardinal Blase Cupich, Archbishop of Chicago, to be the next head of the U.S. bishops' pro-life efforts yesterday. The Catholic Herald  reports the story with the telling headline: The bishops voted for Archbishop Joseph Naumann over the cardinal, who is seen as a 'Pope Francis bishop'. This is because Cupich has been twice promoted by Pope Francis: to Archbishop of Chicago, and then to the College of Cardinals. He has also been appointed to the influential Congregation for Bishops. Before this Pontificate, he was known as the bishop who asked priests and seminarians not to pray outside abortion centers  and who locked Catholics out of their parish during the Easter Triduum to prevent them from holding Traditional Latin Masses . The parish was forced to conduct its Good Friday liturgy on the si...

The English Weekly Edition of L'Osservatore Romano publishes an article attacking dissenters of Amoris laetitia , saying Pope Francis supports the Kasper proposal (explicitly rejected at the two Synods). By anyone's standards this would seem quite extraordinary, but it is also printing verifiable error! This paragraph (below) is completely ridiculous as well as being verifiably false. What an extraordinary thing for L'Osservatore to print?! This question has been addressed before, by Jesus Christ. It was also addressed in Familiaris Consortio  (no. 84) which upheld the Church’s perennial practice of “not admitting to Eucharistic Communion divorced persons who have remarried,” unless they “take upon themselves the duty to live in complete continence.” Pope St. John Paul II actually emphasises the permanence of the discipline by insisting that it is “based on Sacred Scripture” (84). In 1994, after a number of bishops and theologians had put forward certain p...

Cardinal Walter Brandmüller and Cardinal Raymond Burke pictured at a Pontifical High Mass in St. Peter's basilica to mark the 10th anniversary of Summorum Pontificum, Sept. 16, 2017. (Edward Pentin photo) Cardinal Burke: I again turn to the Holy Father and to the whole Church, emphasizing how urgent it is that, in exercising the ministry he has received from the Lord, the Pope should confirm his brothers in the faith with a clear expression of the teaching regarding both Christian morality and the meaning of the Church’s sacramental practice. In a Nov. 14 interview with the National Catholic Register , Cardinal Raymond Burke has made a final plea to the Holy Father to clarify key aspects of his moral teaching, saying the gravity of the situation is “continually worsening.” Since Amoris Laetitia was published in April 2016, some bishops’ conferences, drawing on the exhortation, have said certain civilly remarried divorcees can now receive the Sacraments depending on their ...

A number of friends have drawn my attention to Melanie Phillips' article above which addresses the crazy news coming out of the Church of England at the moment regarding the ever pernicious and aggressive transgender agenda. This is further to a "bullying Guidance" document released to CofE schools, which, much like the disgraceful Catholic Education Service document released recently, purports to be about stopping bullying whilst actually being a tool to further a clear anti-Christian agenda with the most impressionable children. This prompted the resignation of one of the Archbishop of Canterbury's closest advisers at the weekend, as I reported here . With regard to this resignation, Melanie Phillips suggests: Ashworth’s protest, however, is a far deeper one about the church’s general embrace of secularism. The true message of Christianity, she says, risks being drowned out by people who prefer to discuss social justice because “if we talk about sin...