Heroic Charity Required – “This is not an easy time to be a bishop, especially as the DDF fosters confusion, but every bishop is called to lead the faithful into a deeper relationship with Christ through the Church.” Fiducia Supplicans and the Authority of Bishops (Public Discourse)
Sustained Economic Growth – “The success of markets in delivering economic growth depends upon property rights, rule of law, and free prices not being suppressed by governments, including democratically elected governments.” Capitalism and Democracy, Reconciled (Law & Liberty)
Leaving Behind Homosexuality – “WMU’s efforts to cancel Mattson ran afoul of both recent and longstanding Supreme Court precedent guaranteeing the right to religious free speech.” When A Christian Professor Spoke About His Struggle With Homosexuality, The LGBT Mob Came For Him (The Federalist)
Spirit of Grace – “Archbishop Alexander Sample of Portland, Oregon . . . has barred priests from celebrating Mass for what was possibly the only Catholic-Lutheran ecumenical community of its kind in the United States.” Portland archbishop bans Mass for rare Lutheran-Catholic ecumenical community (National Catholic Reporter)
Another Harrowing Year – “‘We call upon the whole world, the international community, to condemn this unprecedented crime committed by the Russian aggressor against humanity: “We wish the whole world to hear that despite everything, Ukraine stands, Ukraine fights, Ukraine prays!”’ Russia invested $1.3 billion in death of Ukrainians in one day of attack: Head of the UGCC in the 98th week of the war (Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church)
Something Very Different – “The Jan. 4 press release on the Dec. 18 declaration from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith shows its prefect distancing himself from his own document.” ‘Fiducia Supplicans’ 2.0 (National Catholic Register)
That Accusing Eye – “Caricatures and lies abound in the attempt to subvert the West.” The Delusions of Postcolonial Ideology (The American Mind)
A Thoroughgoing Critique – “Bishop Escudero ordered his priests to not give a blessing to couples of the same sex or in an irregular situation.” Peruvian Bishop Escudero Delivers Comprehensive Critique of Blessing Irregular Couples (National Catholic Register)
Men and Women – “In the eternal present, it is tempting to look for the single moment, or the specific group, that we can blame for everything we don’t like about the current state of sexual politics.” Sexual Politics on the American Right (Fairer Disputations)
Small but Steady – “While the numbers of priests and nuns have declined in recent decades, many millennials and Gen Zers still find a calling to religious life in the Catholic Church, even if the path to discernment has changed.” In a secular age, some young Americans still choose religious life (Religious News)
Standard for Comparison – “Pope Benedict XVI never spoke a word of public criticism of Pope Francis; he never complained about the new policies that undermined his legacy.” Did Benedict’s death lift restraints on Pope Francis? (Catholic Culture)
An Inter-Ethnic Conflict – “It happened so quickly that people thought they had witnessed some kind of terrorist attack. They may have witnessed something worse.” How a Stabbing Changed France (Compact Magazine)
Division in the Church – “Kathryn Sterns grew up Catholic. But in high school, she decided that she wanted to explore other faiths, to figure everything out for herself, because the Church was, well, messy.” ‘He already knows’ – At SEEK, navigating Catholic complexities (The Pillar)
The Song of Salvation – “While the Holy Spirit chooses an assortment of human instruments with which to sing salvation’s song, Jesus is the same, yesterday, today and forever.” Like musical tradition, the Catholic tradition is an interesting conversation echoing through the centuries.” Like musical tradition, the Catholic tradition is an interesting conversation echoing through the centuries (Diocese of Sacramento)
(*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.
The renewal of religious life needn’t be Small but Steady. That was a capitulation. Recognize it already!
Renewal rt requires certain authentic vision, leadership and charisma. It does happen now and then but then it gets muffled out and twisted. I am wondering about the body that elected Bergoglio for Pope; and the one to elect the next Pope, if they aren’t degenerating into and embracing a small-mindedness unable to notice anymore the evangelical fullness and greatness of the faith and its witness.
And about who will tell them.
Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture, And The Teaching Of The Magisterium, grounded in Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, The Deposit Of Faith, Christ Has Entrusted To His Church, in The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, The Word Of Perfect Life-affirming and Life-sustaining Salvational Love Is Forever, and thus we can know, through both Faith and reason that this statement is a rupture from The Truth Of Love, “If there is a union of a private nature, there is neither a third party, nor is society affected, is a lie from the start, which , by denying The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, intentionally serves to make it appear as if sin done in private is not sin in order to accommodate an occasion of sin.
Woe to us, the silence of certain members of the hierarchy demonstrates how great is The Falling Away from The Truth Of Perfect Love Incarnate.
Re #4 Spirit of Grace – If the National “Catholic” Reporter disapproves, you can be confident it’s good.
P.S. I’d be interested to hear from my two favourite (orthodox) Lutherans, Hans Fiene and Mollie Hemingway, on this story.
@ An Inter-Ethnic Conflict
France is committing the slow suicide of intellectual enlightenment. Always generously open to immigration from former Muslim African colonies now inwardly reeling from spontaneous savage attacks on its ethnic French citizens by ethnic Arab/Africans. How to deal with it? How else but continued prideful rationalization that France is superior, too humane to realistically address being slaughtered by their own citizens of a different ethnicity.
Islam cannot be reconciled with reason since it reasons only to affirm its unreasonable credo of a willful god who is by nature irrational. Each French Muslim a walking time bomb apt to explode into mayhem at a given inspiration to please Allah. Marine Le Pen denied the presidency for favorite enlightened liberal Macron would have addressed the matter perhaps radically changed it for the better. Islam in France as it exists is the death knell for a great people and culture, that is, not all rather those Muslims who refuse to acculturate into French culture, many now born in France still inspired to decapitate an aged Catholic priest at the altar during Mass. Two Islamic youths born and raised in France. And the European Union wonders how Hungary and Poland could be so fascist as to refuse Muslim migrant entry. The recent outrage was carloads of Muslims invading a rural SE France ethnic French dance hall filled with happy locals, brandishing knives and stabbing them. It seems only by a return to the Catholic faith of its tradition that Europe will be able to save itself, since true faith is reasonable and virtuous, inclusive of the virtues fortitude and justice.
You write: “Islam cannot be reconciled with reason since it reasons only to affirm its unreasonable credo of a willful god who is by nature irrational.”
Unscrambling the interreligious affirmations (and broader omelet) from The Second Vatican Council, we find—on the one hand—that Islam does tap into part of the Decalogue (but not explicitly the prohibitive commandments). And, so, overlaps in proposed “fraternity” with what Western and Catholic tradition fleshes-out and articulates as the universal Natural Law.
But, within insular Islam—and on the other hand—any effort remotely similar to Trinitarian and incarnational Christianity–to render coherent Faith (read Islamic fideism) with gifted human Reason–was decisively blocked in the 9th Century with suppression of the Mu’tazilites. Among the rejected propositions of Mu’tazila was the objective reality of good and evil, and that God could act toward man only out of goodness.
Not so, said Caliph Wathiq in order to suppress a riot in Baghdad (pre-legislative “cloture”?), with the elevation of the divinely-“dictated” Qur’an itself and its totally inscrutable and, yes, monotheistic Allah. The untouchable touchstone for all disputing sects Islamic…
Rather than originating in time, the dictated book (in Arabic) comes altogether from outside of any history, and is nothing less than “an integral part of the divine essence” (e.g., W.H. McNeill, “The Rise of the West.” 1963, p. 477, fn. 20; citing Gardet and Anawati, Introduction a la Theologie Musulmane, 47-60). And this essence is beyond reason, totally inscrutable and even arbitrary, rather than in an even analogous sense reasonable (Aquinas)–as in the incarnate LOGOS. Heading west, St. Paul crossed a narrow isthmus into Macedonia and the Classical world of reason; but blown east, heresies rejected by Church Councils (Monophysitism, Nestorianism) spread across the expansive mixing zone of tribal Arabia with its literally tens of thousands of former and forgotten prophets. Islam? More accurately a subject for historians and anthropologists than for western theologians looking too much for scriptural equivalencies?
Yes to the innate, shared (more than the ummah), and universal Natural Law, but not to interreligious comparisons of the two scriptures (as is possible in the divided but ecumenical West). The accurate symmetry lies elsewhere: “the Word made flesh” is replaced by (!) the “word made book.” Ubiquitous Islam, one way or another, and whenever…
Yes, Islam wouldn’t be able to form a workable culture unless it possessed a code of ethics. Although when it comes to dealing with the infidel they’re too often irrational in following the tunnel visioned god of the Koran. Furthermore, they accomplished much in regards to the sciences algebra, philosophy, medicine, architecture. Their closest moment to a more reasonable relationship with Christianity was in Spain and the political philosophy of Ibn Rushd [Averroes]. They’re recognized for recovering the works of Aristotle and produced several eminent philosophers referenced by Aquinas. Holy Roman emperor Frederick II invited Arab Aristotelian scholars to Sicily where they taught, including the U of Naples where Aquinas was introduced to the Philosopher. Ibn Rushd promoted a mutual respect rapprochement with Christianity based partly on his interpretation of the Koran but was overruled by the Mullahs and exiled to Morocco. Since Islam has deteriorated, now making a comeback with the Cairo Al-Azhar University and the Persian Gulf States.
Thank you Father Peter so saying it as it is. There is no meeting ground between Islam and Christianity, only false accommodation usually on one side. Horrific spectacle here in Ireland of a Catholic priest handing his church over to an imran.
@ Spirit of Grace
Archbishop Sample provides clarity regarding a Catholic-Lutheran experimental liturgy…
But, we read from the costumed female/pseudo-bishop Caesar: “‘I am shocked and I am grieving with the community,’ said Larson Caesar, who said she has reached out to the archbishop requesting a conversation. ‘We’ve tried hard to live into our commitments to both denominations’.”
An assumed/imposed equivalency of “denominations”?
Luther went so far as to quarantine his sect from the Apostolic Succession, even denying the sacramentality of Holy Orders. And now, after five centuries of secular devolution, we have a doubly removed and oxymoronic female bishop “reaching out” to Archbishop Sample to explain what’s what!
May Archbishop Sample take this opportunity to further evangelize his flock on elementary points of the Eucharistic Church (CCC 1374), and Christ’s commission to the apostles and their actual successors (Mt 28:19-20). Soft-pedaled for decades, and now further muddled by the synodal demotion of validly ordained bishops “primarily as facilitators.”
P.S. to my comment re #4 – Spirit of Grace – Have now read the National “Catholic” Reporter article. Well into the article, we get the small detail that we’re talking the Evangelical Lutheran Church. That takes care of the need to consult Hans Fiene.