De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

If there is one person who inspired me to start a Catholic blog, it's Fr. Z. His blog is a treasure trove of Catholic devotion, liturgical nuance, pastoral advice, catechesis and carefully crafted commentary on what's going on it the Church. Of course, like all of us, since the appointment of Pope Francis, it's been a little more focused on the strange things the pope does and says, but it still achieves all the other things with enough aplomb to make it a definite internet stop for any interested, faithful Catholic.  As I have already commented, over the US election campaign it is somewhat of a travesty that the US bishops failed to articulate the evil now being visited upon the US in any sort of way. The irony is that they now seem to be astounded by what President Joe Biden in enacting and some have found a voice , others seem to be more clearly complicit in this work of great evil . Father Z and a number of other brave priests took an appropriate stand. I was quite su...

Are you a Bishop scratching your head about how on earth you can increase vocations in your diocese? Does your task sometimes seem impossible? Do you feel your job is simply to manage the decline? You need new, improved ORTHODOXY!!!!!!!! Yes, that's right: globally conducted tests scientifically prove that actually believing in what you stand for has a dramatic and rapid effect on your diocese increasing both attendance and vocations! Case in point: Madison, Wisconsin under the inspiring leadership of Bishop Robert Morlino. Last spring, the Diocese of Madison announced a vocations initiative intended to raise funds to support the tremendous surge in vocations in that Diocese. There are now 33 seminarians , up from just six in 2003 when Bishop Morlino arrived. The diocese needs $30 million to educate current and future seminarians—and they distributed pledge cards—asking parishioners to dig deep—and they more than met the challenge. Bishop Robert Morlino, Diocese of Ma...

This weekend I have been praying for unity in the Church. The Catholic Church bears unique charisms which protect it from error. over the centuries this has been demonstrated sometimes in quite dramatic form. Infallibility is the protection given by the Holy Spirit to the pope so that he will never teach error in matters of faith and morals.  But the open divisions I have witnessed since the Synod on the family have scared me and scandalised me terribly. To be honest, having studied Catholic theology, most of what has been said by the likes of Cardinal Kasper and Cardinal Marx should never have been said. I have personally wrestled with the dialogue and the prospect of a change in stance which would amount to nothing less than an acceptance of relativism and a turning away from the deposit of faith--in contradiction with the very raison d'être of the Papacy, which is to hold fast to the fides quae , the faith which was deposited by Christ. This can not happen. I feel s...

I love Catholic Memes , whoever is behind it is brilliant and, I think, really uses social media to spread the Gospel with witty, intelligent. 'memes', and also, perhaps most importantly, to get us thinking and talking about our faith. OK so you might not agree with everything they post, but you can't argue that it's failing to engage people, with literally thousands of 'likes' and hundreds of 'shares' on each 'meme' they post on Facebook. A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures. In this context (i.e. Catholic Memes), the memes are a picture with some quip or ...