De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

Up until last week, a number of people who, deeply honourably in my opinion, wish to defend Pope Francis, were arguing that the Pope's comments regarding the interpretation of Amoris Laetitia forwarded by the bishops of Buenos Aires was a leaked document and thus could not be regarded as authoritative in any way: Last year, when I presented overwhelming evidence that the Pope had written that letter, Card. Napier kept denying it. - Very frustrating. — J. Royale (@Game_of_Jane) August 26, 2017 To me, this position appeared very shaky. It has been clear for some time the direction of travel, as detailed here . The posturing of the German Church since the 70's, lead by Cardinal Kasper, in an attempt to modify the pastoral practice of the Church. Pope Francis' consistent promotion of Cardinal Kasper. Pope Francis' displeasure at the outcome of the synod process. The rushed publication of an overly long & complex document. The startling omission of Veri...

A few days ago the pope’s letter and the Argentine directives to which he was replying appeared on the Vatican’s website ( Spanish , English ), setting off a fresh tizzy of concerns about the level of authority to be accorded them in light of their now being posted at vatican.va . Canonist Dr Ed Peters tries to make some sense of this here . He states: Buenos Aires directives themselves, amid their copious platitudes and euphemisms, manage to avoid, if perhaps more narrowly than does Amoris , directly answering the key question raised by Amoris in this area. Thus, the near-universal conclusion, applauded by some and deplored by others, that the pope in Amoris , or at the very least in his endorsement of the Buenos Aires document, has indeed established that, ‘Yes, divorced-and-remarried Catholics, while living sexually active lives, may licitly approach for and be administered holy Communion’—as, I grant, the Maltese bishops plainly say and as the German episcopal committee effe...

I read an interesting article this morning from Germany in which a retired German priest asks   "are German bishops leading the church into a "priestless desert"?" Indeed he is correct; they are. The number of Catholic priests in the country is rapidly plummeting as older priests die or leave ministry and they aren’t replaced by newly ordained ones. Since 1990, the number of priests in Germany has dropped from 20,000 to 14,000. On 18 March, Cardinal Reinhard Marx — Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Munich-Freising and President of the German Bishops’ Conference — spoke at a diocesan meeting and revealed a stunning fact. In the year of 2016, only one new seminarian entered the diocesan seminary of Munich. According to the Austrian Catholic website Kath.net . Although Fr. Fleiner has correctly identified the vocational crisis in Germany, his solutions seems old, tired, liberal and extremely short sighted: Priests should be allowed to marry. I have a dea...

Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández, rector of the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina, at the Vatican Press Office, Oct. 8, 2014. (Daniel Ibanez/CNA) As Britain's leading theological mind makes public his concerns over Amoris Laetitia , the ghostwriter of the dodgy document is wheeled out in Rome to offer a " defence ". Leaving behind any shred of journalistic objectivity he had left, Austen Ivereigh responds to both stories in predictable manner: Probably the UK's most conservative theologian -- so no, not a big deal. — Austen Ivereigh (@austeni) August 18, 2017 In case you missed Abp Fernández's carefully reasoned riposte to the opponents of magisterial teaching ... #Amoris https://t.co/nTK9H6Vwbq — Austen Ivereigh (@austeni) August 21, 2017 Except this is the response of the man who ghost-wrote the most embarrassing Apostolic Exhortation in history, so no, not "carefully reasoned". In fact, "Carefully reasoned" is pr...

I could post EVERY DAY about Fr James Martin, because EVERY DAY he publicly states error about the faith, every day he pushes his agenda, EVERY DAY he endangers souls. This is today's error: Gospel: Today we see Jesus' human and divine natures: he learns from the woman that his ministry extends to all, and he heals her daughter. pic.twitter.com/Hb6l5SJKWw — James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) August 20, 2017 Standard Antiochene trolling from Fr Martin, who consistently attempts to assert Jesus was less than divine. He is immediately pulled up on it: Interesting — isolated proof texts from Scripture quoted out of context as against the unbroken tradition. Standard Protestantism I guess. — Adrian Vermeule (@avermeule) August 20, 2017 As the Jesuits were founded to combat the Protestant heresy, this is particularly pertinent, but Fr Martin is unabashed: Interesting--ignoring what the Gospels reveal about Jesus's two natures, fully human and fully divine. Standar...

As the vote regarding Same Sex "Marriage" approaches Down Under, the Catholic Bishops of Australia have issued a Pastoral Letter to all Catholics regarding the debate. A Pastoral Letter from the Catholic Bishops of Australia to all Australians on the ‘Same-sex Marriage’ Debate Respect for all At this time in history there is much discussion about the meaning of marriage. Some suggest that it is unjustly discriminatory not to allow people with same-sex attraction to marry someone of the same sex. Others believe that marriage is an institution uniting a man and a woman. We wish by this pastoral letter to engage with this debate, present the Church’s teaching to the faithful, and explain the position of the Catholic faithful to the wider community. The Catholic tradition teaches that every human being is a unique and irreplaceable person, created in the image of God and loved by Him. Because of this, every man, woman and child has great dignity and worth which can ne...

I think this post on the Muniment Room has some really important and necessary insights. It really joins together the dots so that you can see how things fit together. It begins by examining the position of Catholic Voices , how much authority does the organisation  have to speak on catholic issues? Who guarantees their Catholicity? These are questions which were voiced at the organisation's inception. Officialy, the authoritative source about Catholicism in the UK is the Catholic Communications Network (CCN) of the CBCEW. Catholic Voices then, is a conduit; a simple way for a media outlet to find an "every day Catholic" to comment when it needs somebody who isn't an official spokesman for the Church (mind you, when was the last time you saw any "official spokesperson for the Church"?). However, Ttony reports "that any call to the CCN asking for a Catholic comment on an issue of the moment gets forwarded routinely to CV and that, furthermore,...

The Catholic Herald reports  Fr Aidan Nichols, a prolific author who has lectured at Oxford and Cambridge as well as the Angelicum in Rome, says that Pope Francis’s exhortation Amoris Laetitia has led to an “extremely grave” situation. Grave enough for the top theologian in the country to call for the re-writing of canon law to include a juridical process to correct papal errors!! Such a process would “dissuade popes from any tendency to doctrinal waywardness or simple negligence” , and would answer some “ecumenical anxieties” of Anglicans, Orthodox and others who fear that the pope has carte blanche to impose any teaching. “Indeed, it may be that the present crisis of the Roman magisterium is providentially intended to call attention to the limits of primacy in this regard.” In other words – because of Pope Francis' approach, it appears to the orthodox and Anglicans and others that the pope can change anything, even if it contradicts previous teachin...

The Madonna of Loreto or Pilgrim's Madonna (1604–1606) by the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio, located in the Cavalletti Chapel of the church of Sant'Agostino, near the Piazza Navona in Rome. The scene is a moment where everyday common man (or woman) encounters the divine, whose appearance is also not unlike that of a common man (or woman). One of the hardest things about writing a blog is knowing when to speak and when to shut up. Believe it or not, there is quite a lot of information that comes my way that I do not post. I do try and post uplifting and encouraging stuff here, but it is necessarily interspersed with my worries and concerns about departures from the faith I have lived and studied. My desire is to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. My family are brought up in this conviction and this makes it central to my life. I post concerns not to raise scandal, but to reject error and to educate the laity to the problems which, I feel strongly, will persist until we st...

I honestly find it difficult to understand how someone so clearly at odds with Church teaching as Fr James Martin, SJ , is able to retain credibility. But he is, even lauded and given influential posts at the Vatican ! The clear contradiction in his outward persona and agenda and his priesthood I find incredibly jarring, but also a dimension of the kind of religious hypocrisy that people see through very easily. It was very interesting to see this bit of detective work from Dan Hitchens on Twitter this morning: Fr Martin praises an editorial which called for “the entirety of the Church’s sexual ethics” to be rewritten. https://t.co/jZVW1SUDvE — Dan Hitchens (@ddhitchens) August 17, 2017 For those trying to make sense of Fr Martin’s much-discussed recent writings and interviews, this seems a noteworthy statement. — Dan Hitchens (@ddhitchens) August 17, 2017 Particularly interesting to see the link with Charles Curran, whose license to teach as a Catholic Theo...