De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

 As I recently stated on Catholic Unscripted , I truly believe that Pope Benedict XVI made an immeasurable contribution to the world. It is a legacy that will not end with his death but will stretch far into the future. I believe we will be studying his works in hundreds of years time, just as we study Augustine, Aquinas, Teresa of Avila and Anthony of Padua today. His contribution has formed the Church we have today and his theological reflection was equalled by his encouragement of the ways in which lay Catholics can be present in culture and politics, by prioritising Christian witness and the contribution of ideas to the secular debate without fear or compromise. Pope Benedict XVI knew how to reduce the great mysteries of life and faith to their most comprehensible form which was demonstrative of his thorough understanding of them. He proposed an intelligent, reasonable and comprehensible Christianity and avoided moralism. He understood the importance of the reality that faith t...

Ed Condon is a Catholic who's learned opinion I really value and often quote him on my blog. On September 14th he tweeted this: If someone tells you the only way to be authenticity Catholic is to break with the pope and the bishops, they are - at best - a Protestant. — Ed. Condon (@canonlawyered) September 14, 2019 I didn't get it. He does sometimes write subliminal Tweets, like this one: I love priests. I try to love all priests for the sacrifice they make for the faithful. But I’m really uncomfortable with the kind of priest who seems to spend most of his time online talking about sex and sexuality. It’s not healthy. — Ed. Condon (@canonlawyered) September 15, 2019 Which was clearly a response to Twitter going mad about Fr James Martin's latest trollage: Many #LGBT Catholics still feel unwelcome in their own church. But good news: More parishes are now trying to make LGBT Catholics feel at home. Here, one parishioner talks about the welcome that he, h...

Canon Lawyer Dr. Ed Condon offers some complicated but vital detail regarding the Vatican trial of disgraced Cardinal Theodore McCarrick: While recent media reports suggest that a trial of Archbishop Theodore McCarrick is underway, Vatican sources have told CNA that his case is not being handled by a full judicial process. Sources at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith have confirmed that allegations against McCarrick are being considered through an abbreviated approach called an “administrative penal process.” Ed explains that this is a much-abbreviated mechanism that leaves out many of the procedural stages of a full judicial process or trial, including the back-and-forth argumentation between prosecution and defense. An administrative process is only used when the evidence collected during the preliminary investigation is so clear as to make a full trial unnecessary. The fact that this is the direction being taken in the McCarrick case strongly suggests that the...

In the latest Spectator Podcast, Dr. Ed Condon and Dr. Damian Thompson discuss recent calamitous developments in the Pontificate of Pope Francis: Chile and China . I am especially glad they talk about Cardinal Danneels inclusion in the synod on the family as Pope Francis' special guest, despite serious questions about his cardinalate, see here and here  as I can't believe more questions haven't been asked about this, especially given his claims about Pope Francis' election in his autobiography ( see here for the details ). There's also analysis of the Chinese betrayal: Thompson concludes "the bad guys have won", Condon says there are faithful priests and bishops within the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, however he points out that many are opposed to any deal and the CPCA bishops incur automatic excommunication under canon 1382 . Huang was also publicly excommunicated by Benedict XVI in 2011. Another example of Pope Francis' flagrant d...

The Catholic Herald has, in my estimation, been very cautious in its approach to a number of issues which have a vaguely political whiff about them this year. One is the CES Scandal, which it has barely addressed, even given a very benign spin, despite the obvious contradictions, problems and ambiguities, as documented here , for example. Another is with regard to the new book on Pope Francis The Dictator Pope . The Catholic Herald 's Editorial Director is the journalist Damian Thompson. Thompson is rarely backward in coming forward and has written some incisive and condemning pieces on Pope Francis himself over the last year or four. However he has released this interesting and intelligent  Spectator pod-cast wherein he discusses the new book The Dictator Pope with Ed Condon, Canon Lawyer, and Dan Hitchens, Deputy Editor of the Catholic Herald . The podcast relates how the book, though clearly a hatchet job, is credible as it is intelligently written and repeats a lot of ...

In the latest Holy Smoke Podcast, canon lawyer Dr Ed Condon suggests that Pope Francis style of governance is more akin to that of a Latin American dictator than the Supreme Bridge Builder (Pontifex Maximus). However, despite the scandals rolling out of the Vatican on an almost unprecedented basis, he reflects on the fact that the liberal media aren’t paying any attention. As Damian Thompson points out : Coverage in secular newspapers is patchy, biased and unreliable – The Times is perhaps the worst offender – while certain Catholic journalists who write about the Vatican appear to be taking dictation from a liberal faction in the Church that is trying to hijack this pontificate.   I say ‘hijack’, because the progressive churchmen who present themselves as Francis’s allies are pretending to be better connected than they are. The Pope frequently wrong-foots them by saying the opposite of what they expect. [case in point here is the terrible Charlie Gard affair] Dr Condo...