De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed! As we have said before, so now I repeat, if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let that one be accursed! ~ Galatians 1:6 f At the outset of this Papacy many Catholics, including myself, held the Archbishop of Malta, Charles Scicluna in great esteem. When he was appointed I wrote this glowing appraisal , and again a few days later when Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith of the Catholic Herald said that Malta now has a world class bishop to lead it . And so it seemed. Scicluna had the pedigree too. In 1991 he obtained a doctorate in canon law at the Pontifical Gregorian Unive...

So yesterday the inevitable happened when Cardinal Nichols praised the Maltese bishops’ guidelines on Amoris Laetitia. In the Jesuit magazine America , our Archbishop of Westminster is reported as having endorsed the Maltese document , which says some divorced and remarried Catholics should be allowed to receive the Eucharist. This marks a direct split with the directives already issues in Portsmouth and Shrewsbury Diocese in the UK. In the interview, Cardinal Nichols says of the Maltese directive: “It doesn’t start by saying, ‘What about this rule or that rule?’ It starts by saying if this is your position and you feel uneasy, you want to know where you stand, what you ought to be doing, then come and we’ll talk. But let’s be honest, let’s be open and let’s see where we go,” the cardinal said. In the United States, not all dioceses are on the same page when it comes to implementing “Amoris.” The Diocese of San Diego , for example, said that it will adopt guidelines...

The crisis in the Church has drawn William Oddie out of retirement. He has written an excellent appraisal of the crisis in the Church presided over by Pope Francis and makes this very pertinent observation among many: "The issue was secularisation. The Maltese Church was tooth and nail opposed to it. Now, its two bishops have not only surrendered to it, but have declared themselves its willing collaborators. Divorced-and-remarried Catholics who are living as if they were married – who in other words are engaging in what the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls “public and permanent adultery” (CCC 2384) – “cannot”, the Maltese bishops declare, “be precluded from participating in … the Eucharist”. This simply contradicts the unbroken and unanimous teaching barring such Catholics from reception of Holy Communion. The bishops have in effect declared that the Church has all along been wrong and the secular culture right." Read the whole thing here . One of the most obvi...

As a dear priest said to me very recently, it's always the way in the Church- or so it seems- that it is those who espouse a liberal attitude who are the most virulent and need their Storm Troopers to enforce their will on the faithful, while so called "Trads" like Benedict XVI just quietly get on with the work of deepening & explaining the faith by example. I often think how hurtful it must have been to have Bugnini's dreadful modernisms foisted on the post concilliar Church - the stories I have heard are just dreadful. But while those who have never been particularly concerned with following the teachings of Christ praise Pope Francis for his daring attempt to engage with the world, the true casualty of this dreadful papacy will be the credibility of Catholic teaching. For what authority has any organisation which teaches hard truths about human realities like marriage, for a thousand years or so, if it can then dispose of them in a single, verbose and del...

An interview  with a priest in Malta demonstrates just what a mess the directive of Archbishop Charles Scicluna and Bishop of Gozo Mario Grech, has caused among Catholics on the Islands. At the weekend on Facebook I noticed several priests commenting on how they'd been approached by distraught Maltese parishioners who feel betrayed by what the bishops have done. The text of the interview in The Times of Malta is reproduced here: When the bishops released guidelines suggesting that divorced Catholics who enter another relationship may not be denied Communion, many rejoiced. But others were confused. Kurt Sansone meets a parish priest who feels the guidelines are wrong and contradict Church doctrine. “Confused” is the first word uttered by Fr Joe as he tries to describe his feelings on the bishops’ guidelines dealing with divorced and remarried Catholics. Joe is not his real name. He is a relatively young parish priest and – concerned over being labelled anti-Pope –...

Today Veri Catholici , the International Association of Catholics for the Defense of the Faith against the Errors of Cardinal Kasper, (!!! What times we live in where we have such organisations in the Church!) published in the Times of Malta Newspaper, on p. 29, an Open Letter to the Bishops of Malta and Gozo regarding their recent pastoral document, in which they have openly approved of communion for those living in public sin. This is a picture of the advert: A readable copy can be viewed here As I have posted here numerous times before, I love Malta and am a regular visitor. Indeed, my family have been graced by a great miracle after praying at the Shrine of Ta Pinu. My friends in Malta are absolutely devastated by what the bishops have done. Actions which the bishops are spinning as merely following the Argentine letter and doing the will of Pope Francis. The faithful people of Malta feel betrayed by their shepherds, who have thrown them to the wolves and abandone...

Bishop Mario Grech of Gozo has posted a podcast in which he speaks about the highly controversial Maltese directive I posted about here . The speech is in Maltese, but my dear friend Marie-Claire Kaminski, a fellow student of Theology, has taken the time to translate this extraordinary speech into English to afford us the opportunity to gain greater insight into the bishop's motivation and thinking. We have added some of our own thoughts in red . A week ago, together with Archbishop Scicluna, we published the guidelines to show how, in the name of Christ, we can break the jar of ointment on the wounds of those persons who are having great difficulties in their love-life (affective life); and which is affecting their relationship with Jesus.  [In the Gospel, the jar of ointment was used by the sinful woman to anoint the feet of Jesus (Mt 26:7; Mk 14:3; Lk 7:37) as a sign and gesture of total repentance and contrition for her sins. Jesus, of course, welcomed her and forgave h...