De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

Last night, the Irish Taoiseach (PM) Leo Varadkar confirmed that a referendum on Repealing the Eighth Amendment, and replacing it with a clause specifically enabling the Parliament to legislate for abortion. Not only would the right to life be stripped from unborn babies, the abortion regime being drafted is even more extreme than Britain's. This video explains why it is so crucial to #SaveThe8th . Please do take a minute to share it - especially with your Irish family & friends. This really is a battle of good against evil. And don't forget to pray that Ireland seizes this opportunity to lead Europe towards the light!

Fr Cor Mennen is a Lecturer in Canon Law at the Major Seminary of the Diocese of ‘s-Hertogenbosch (Netherlands) and Canon of the cathedral chapter of the diocese of ‘s-Hertogenbosch. He has posted a precise critique of Amoris Laetitia which lays bare the errors of the document as the crisis in the Church caused by Pope Francis and his minions continues to rage unabated. As the original is in Dutch, I had some help with the translation from Henk Rijkers . The Amorites and the heresy of sliding panels.   There are few who dare to accuse the pope and his entourage of formal heresy. There are two reasons for this.  Firstly, because the Pope and his papal court, together with the liberal bishops' conferences in the world (Malta, Argentina, Germany) e.g. do not directly contest the insolvability the marriage. On the contrary, they expressly say that they hold on to the indissolubility of marriage. Secondly, a charge of heresy would bring the Church into s...

As we start 2018 and Dioceses all over the UK (and beyond) are developing plans for the future (such as my own here ) we are being asked to discuss and consider a way forward as communities of believers as vocations dwindle and practising Catholics disappear even more rapidly. This has been discussed in numerous places with great clarity, perhaps most familiarly by Sherry Weddell in her book Forming Intentional Disciples , and most recently by Professor Stephen Bullivant in the Catholic Herald . Bullivant's article is concise and packed with valuable detail for anyone discerning the future direction of the Church. Key points are: There are more priestly retirements (or deaths) each year than ordinations.  A number of our seminaries have closed, the ones we still have are practically empty. Priest numbers fell between 1970 and 2014 by 48 per cent. Sunday worshippers fell by 55 per cent over the same period. In short, priest-to-worshipper numbers were better in 2014 ...

In December 2013, Pope Francis sparked hope that the Catholic Church was taking the scandal of clerical sexual abuse seriously as he created a group to advise him and future popes on how the church worldwide could protect children, appointing experts on the issue and even survivors of abuse to a new Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors . Four years later that commission has lapsed into an inactive state. Its members' terms of office, as set by the group's Vatican-approved statutes, expired last December (2017). Neither the pope nor the Vatican have made known when or if the current members will be reappointed or new members found. That Francis has allowed this lapse to occur has been broadly criticised from all quarters of the Catholic Church as deeply troubling. A commission without validly appointed members ceases to be a commission; its members may carry on their work but if they do, they do so as individuals without legal standing or vested authority ...

Bishop Juan Barros Madrid, centre, during a Mass celebrated by Pope Francis, far right, on Thursday near Iquique, Chile. The Pope said there was "not one single piece of evidence" that Bishop Barros had protected a peadophile priest. Credit Vincenzo Pinto/Agence France Presse - Getty Images The papal plane stunt provided a great smoke-screen from the Pope awarding a extremist lgbt / pro-abortion politician a Knighthood in the Pontifical Equestrian Order of St. Gregory the Great  (although this was pretty well hidden among a plethora of awful ecclesial developments over the last week as I noted  in this post ). But there was another, much bigger issue which this PR stunt was perhaps designed to cover up, as Robert Mickens (not the most traddy journalist on the planet) points out in this La Croix article: Pope Francis has been away in South America this past week and, while in Chile, he drew only modest crowds of supporters. It was the frostiest recept...

So, in a P.R. master-stroke, no one is talking about the extreme pro-lgbt, pro-abortion politician the Pope awarded  a knight in the Pontifical Equestrian Order of St. Gregory the Great. Now everyone is talking about a spontaneous marriage ceremony for a Catholic couple living in a civil, non-sacramental marriage for at least seven years it seems, during a flight in Chile today. The fact that unqualified Vatican PR staff immediately had to assure everyone the marriage was perfectly licit is practically a guarantee that it wasn't: Pope Francis performed on Thursday the first-ever papal marriage ceremony aboard the plane bound for Iquique, the final day of his Apostolic Visit to Chile! Greg Burke, Director of the Holy See Press Office, said the marriage was "totally legit" and "doctrinally OK". pic.twitter.com/F9KKzE4Omr — Vatican News (@VaticanNews) January 18, 2018 It is interesting to note, however, the couple’s account seems to contradict the d...

Fr. Longnecker has posted this review of Pope Francis’ speech at Chile’s pontifical university. It shows just how polarised things are between (in my opinion) those of us who are faithful to the Church and honest about the present situation and those who are sycophants with an agenda. What agenda? Well, some clearly want to change the Church; modernise it. Faggioli belongs to the Bologna School. He literally believes Vatican II was a second Pentecost, that subsequently founded a new religion pic.twitter.com/9AM5d5yw6z — Catholic Sat (@CatholicSat) July 28, 2017 Some have invested so much time and effort into refuting criticisms of this papacy, to show any crack of acknowledgement at this stage would constitute a totally collapse in credibility: Pope cathedral speech a fine example of a spiritual master leading a Church prone to temptations in desolation. #FranciscoEnChile — Austen Ivereigh (@austeni) January 16, 2018 It is Austen Ivereigh who draws Fr. Longnecker...

Pope Francis routinely honours, welcomes, greets, and entertains public sinners. No doubt many see in this imitation of Christ: When the Pharisees saw this, they asked His disciples, “Why does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” ~Matthew 9:11 This makes anyone criticising things like his honouring of Dutch abortion activist Elisabeth Ploumen seem like the Pharisees in the Gospel. But St. Paul commands that the worst sinners are driven out of the community  “But now I have written to you, not to keep company, if any man that is named a brother, be a fornicator, or covetous, or a server of idols, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner: with such a one, not so much as to eat” ~1 Cor 5:11 It is true that Christ ate with sinners, but He called them to repentance, something Pope Francis never does. Instead, he ignores their grave public sins and pretends all is well, saving his rebukes for those faithful to the Church. John Allen Jr at Crux ...

Yesterday's Vatican  Bollitino announced the “Appointment of special envoy to the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the erection of the diocese of Scranton, United States of America. The Pope has appointed Cardinal Roger Michael Mahony, archbishop emeritus of Los Angeles, as his special envoy at the celebration of the 150 th anniversary of the erection of the diocese of Scranton, United States of America, to take place on 4 March 2018.” The fact that Mahony’s successor has forbidden him from public ministry in the LA archdiocese due to his woeful handling of abuse cases appears not to matter. According to Wikipedia , Mahoney has been an instrumental figure in working to cover up sexual abuse in the sexual abuse scandal, relocating dozens of priests in order to avoid prosecution and aspersions being cast on the Catholic Church. So how has Pope Francis come to the decision that Mahony should be given this honour? Well it is interesting to note that Mahony was one o...

When I look back at the person I was before entering five years of formal study in Catholic theology at Maryvale I recognise just how different I am now. I see those five years very much as a period of preparation orchestrated by God to help me through the challenges I would soon endure . Before beginning, I was pretty  laissez faire , not really my fault, I just did not know why I was Catholic, other than it was what my family had always been and it seemed to make some sense. I did not know what the Church taught, or how that might effect my life, death or possibility of salvation. I could not articulate the Good News. I could not pass on the faith to anyone else. The first thing I realised about studying the Catholic faith was how coherent it was and how it addressed all my concerns and all the shortcomings in my knowledge quite confidently. I came to be confident that, no matter how convoluted or complicated my question, someone, somewhere in the Catholic world had thought...

Giving Amoris Laetitia a rest for a minute, let's go back to 2013 and Pope Francis' first Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium . I've posted before about this troubling passage in the text: "..for authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.” E.G . n. 253 Is it? Samuel Gregg notes in the National Review that Pope Francis’s fellow Jesuit Samir Khalil Samir (who is no knee-jerk anti-Muslim), writes in his 111 Questions on Islam (2002), Westerners who assert that groups like the Taliban are acting in a manner contrary to the spirit of Islam “usually know little about Islam.” In the Egyptian-born Jesuit’s view, “On the sociohistorical level, from the Qur’an onward, the ordinary meaning of jihad is unequivocal. [It] indicates the Muslim war in the name of God to defend Islam.” Later in the same book, Father Samir underscores that, alongside one tradition in Islam of somewhat limited tolerance towards Jews and C...

Former Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron MP who quit as Liberal Democrat leader in July  after journalists attacked him for being Christian and questioned him about his opinions regarding homosexual acts, has admitted that he should have stood by his principles and that he lied when he said gay sex isn't a sin. I was really pleased when Tim was appointed leader. I feel we desperately need more Christian voices to engage the culture. I was then hugely disappointed that he decided to betray his Christian beliefs on any number of issues in the course of his pursuit of acceptance and power. I think Peter D. Williams of Right to Life   said it perfectly on social media yesterday: Since resigning as party leader, Tim has started doing what he should have done in the first place, providing an intelligent, articulate apologia for the hope that he bears (1 Peter 3:15). As I reported in November , he gave the Theos annual lecture for 2017  which was roundly welcome...