The Dispatch: More from CWR...

Extra, extra! News and views for Wednesday, November 1, 2023

Here are some articles, essays, and editorials that caught our attention this past week or so.*

"Communion of the Saints" in a Baptistry in Padua (José Luiz | Wikipedia)

Certainty and Saints – “True saints never put their faith in the surety of other saints in an ultimate sense. They put it in the Lord Jesus himself. And that is an infallible truth that is truly ecumenical.” The Surety of the Saints (The Imaginative Conservative)

Interfaith Dialogue – “[M]aybe the most stunning media images involved the millions of people in the Arab world and many Western capitals celebrating the Hamas violence.” Islam and Christian Realism (The Catholic Thing)

Medical Malpractice – “A 21-year-old female detransitioner who underwent hormone therapy as a teenager is suing the American Academy of Pediatrics for allegedly pushing youth gender transition and lying about the dangers of such medical interventions.”
Female Detransitioner Sues American Academy of Pediatrics for Pushing Youth Gender Transition (National Review)

Disguised Socialists – “They may say they don’t hate Jews—it’s Israeli policies they find detestable. Don’t believe them: They hate Jews. Here’s the latest proof.” Illiterate Sociologists Hate Jews (Catholic League)

A Treasured Pub’s Future – “The Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT), founded by US tech billionaire Larry Ellison, said it had bought the Eagle and Child, which shut in 2020.” Eagle and Child: Tolkien and Lewis pub bought by tech institute (BBC News)

Violence in Jerusalem – “Teacher at biblical school in Jerusalem says Hamas brought Palestinian issue back to the fore in a city where it had been kept at arms length.” What’s it like to be an American Christian living in Israel right now? (Aleteia)

An Exercise in Manipulation – “The Letter of the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops to the People of God is a treacly Hallmark card that would give Karine Jean-Pierre and the White House Press Office a run for their money in the spin-control sweepstakes.”  Letters from the Synod: The Synod’s “Letter to the People of God” and Related Matters (CatholicVote)

Religious Charter Schools – The state’s attorney general challenges a Catholic charter school and warns of Muslim equivalents. Oklahoma’s Pluralism Problem (City Journal)

Once Again, What Is Synodality? – “What is the synod underway in Rome actually about? Over and again, official Vatican sources are telling us many things.” “What does the Pope really want?” – Bishop Rob Mutsaerts (Rorate Caeli – Blogspot)

Post-Session Synodal Debate – “After a month of meetings in Rome, it’s finally now halftime in the synod of bishops’ synod on synodality, with delegates departing Rome to bring the good news about synodality back to their home countries.” The synodal expectations game (The Pillar)

Nihilistic Self-Flagellation – “From Sydney to London to untold numbers of American college campuses, we hear incendiary cries for destroying the Jewish state, for a new Jihad or Holy War, all in the name of an ostensibly noble and just “anti-colonialist” struggle.” The Crisis of the West Revisited: Self-Flagellation and the Great Liberal Death Wish (The American Mind)

Anti-Catholic Confusion – “Most priests will recognize this composite exchange between a benevolent non-Catholic and a priest.” A Potpourri of Confusion About Catholic Teaching (Catholic Culture)

(*The posting of any particular news item or essay is not an endorsement of the content and perspective of said news item or essay.)


If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!

Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.


4 Comments

  1. “What does the Pope really want?”

    The article is clear and powerfully harmonic, as if the bells of Utrecht’s Dom Tower were pealing.

  2. @ Once Again, What Is Synodality?
    Once again, it’s apparent the question answers itself. Dissolution of moral permanence. Peter Kwasniewski posts Dutch Bishop Mutsaerts’ post in Rorate Caeli, Mutsaerts posing a series of questions all designed to imply that His Holiness is disassembling traditional Catholicism. Actually I should say Catholicism itself.
    Everyone honestly [without an agenda] following events can see right through the papal machinations of avoiding clarity, which in effect is clearly jettisoning doctrine overboard. Figuratively into the Tiber. The only preservation of a doctrine was the heroic rescue of the drowning idol Pachamama [it’s been awhile so I can repeat this]. Bishop Mutsaerts chides Pope Francis’ enthusiasm in welcoming Whoopi Goldberg to the Vatican. Meanwhile, perhaps our greatest witness to the faith Cardinal Zen is given the cold shoulder. If there are good reasons for all this that certainly is not clear.

    • Coming out of Holland is something surprisingly wonderful. An apparent Church gone extremely liberal now producing men who are thought, Bishop Rob Mutsaerts even charged with being extremely conservative by Dutch media reviews [Mutsaert has said Francis is guilty of sacrilege]. The Nederlands, or Holland with a long history of military engagement with major world powers [the 80 year war of independence from Spain, the four wars successive with England during which a Dutch fleet sailed up the Thames and bombarded fortresses, burned and captured English warships ships] seems a daunting challenge for His Holiness to investigate and threaten with removal one of its own.
      Cardinal Willem Eijk more circumspect nonetheless an outspoken critic of liberalism within the Church. Eijk with a professional medical background knowledge of medical ethics, the LGBT dilemma would make a fine Roman pontiff.

  3. @ Exercise in Manipulation
    George Weigel writes about “experts” and “…the Jubilee Year of 2025 [which] will include a celebration of the 1700th anniversary of the first ecumenical council, Nicaea I, which wrote the Creed the Church affirms at Mass on Sundays and liturgical solemnities.”

    Under a fancifully revised Church structure, governance and function, are we to discover in 2025 that even Nicaea was only a period piece, in that it rigidly excluded Arius’ welcoming wedge to polytheism? And, that a new-fangled “synod” can mutate from what, from the 4th century, seems to some less than “dynamic”? That is, where Nicaea affirmed the permanent and indissoluble nature of the Triune One by excluding (!) Arianism, will experts in the 21st century now try to inclusively dissolve the permanent nature of Man? And, even the permanent nature of the (yes, “listening”) Church—as still a “hierarchical communion” (Lumen Gentium)?

    https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2022/10/18/opinion-yesterdays-council-of-nicaea-and-todays-synodism/

1 Trackback / Pingback

  1. Extra, extra! News and views for Wednesday, November 1, 2023 – Via Nova

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

All comments posted at Catholic World Report are moderated. While vigorous debate is welcome and encouraged, please note that in the interest of maintaining a civilized and helpful level of discussion, comments containing obscene language or personal attacks—or those that are deemed by the editors to be needlessly combative or inflammatory—will not be published. Thank you.


*