Gnosticism and Christianity – “As surely as the swallows return each spring to Capistrano, so the elite media can be counted on to write pieces debunking Christianity precisely at the holiest time in the Christian calendar.” It’s Always Open Season on Christianity (First Things)
Were Abusers Abused? – “In all the years I have followed the analysis of the clergy scandal and the justifiable outrage over the cover-ups, several questions never seem to come up.” Wounded Witness: A Different Perspective on the Clergy Sex Abuse Crisis (What We Need Now – Substack)
How Catholics Worship – “Regaining our sense of the sacred is a most urgent problem the Catholic Church faces today.” It’s Time for a Renaissance of Excellence in Catholic Liturgy (National Catholic Register)
Rupnik’s Legacy – “Not long ago, Church institutions seemed anxious about taking action on the priest’s legacy, but that appears to be changing.” Is the tide turning on the Rupnik case? (The Pillar)
Accepting Tomboys – “Recently, Dr. Brett Salkeld wrote an important and thoughtful piece for Our Sunday Visitor asking if Catholics must accept third genders.” It’s impossible to argue with irrational transgender ideologues (Our Sunday Visitor)
Flourishing American Priests – “They demonstrate high levels of satisfaction in their vocations and enthusiasm for their work as pastors.” Stronger Families, Stronger Priests (The Catholic Thing)
Burqa Burks – “Too many Western feminists are blasé about the oppression that the headscarf represents.” Emily Maitlis should take off that hijab (Spiked)
America First – “As we approach the 100th day of the second Trump administration, the apparent division between MAGA populism and DOGE libertarianism remains one of the major stories of this new era.” Why the MAGA-DOGE coalition will hold Common enemies and overlapping aims (Unherd)
A Shuddering Political Party – “This was apparently the weekend that Democrats decided to try to get back that protestin’ feelin’ before it’s gone, gone, gone.” The Last Gasp of the Democratic Party (Amac)
Emergency Abortion – “A Catholic hospital in Eureka, California, is facing renewed legal scrutiny after a woman filed a lawsuit claiming that staff members denied her an ’emergency abortion’ while she was experiencing a life-threatening miscarriage.” California Catholic hospital sued again over alleged denial of emergency abortion (CatholicVote)
Artful Domestic Provisioning – “The business teaches small, hands-on classes on the domestic art of homestead slaughter, butchery and preservation of all livestock using the pre-modern traditions of our fathers to assert and transmit the well-off frugality of the family table.” Catholic Business Profile: Farmstead Meatsmith (National Catholic Register)
(*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.
@ Gnosticism and Christianity
Okay. I’ll take a stab at it. Psychiatric theological analysis. A new terminology for an inventive approach to provocateuress Gnostic Elaine Pagels’ obsession with mysterious Gnostic mystery. Beyond Belief.
Beyond Belief an original Pagels’ Gnostic sleighride. Beyond Belief: The secret gospel of Thomas 2003. A source, the Cosmic Christ of Fr Matthew Fox OP who was expelled from the Dominicans 1993 then excommunicated. As cosmic the identity of Christ was conceptual, all believers became literal Messiahs.
Pagels great mystery in Beyond was that Christ revealed to Thomas that he was another Christ, that he ontologically shared his identity with the son of God. The theme of known and yet to be known mysteries infuses all her works. Princeton hired her. She sells books. Adam Gopnik, Pagels’ literary protagonist, a Jewish American who writes for the irreligious New Yorker sells books.
Why, Bishop Barron asks, does the anti Catholic diatribe appear at this time near the celebration of Man’s salvation in Christ’s resurrection from the dead? Precisely because the spiritually dead relish their ghastly condition. Only our prayers and sacrifices can help them.
@ Rupnik’s Legacy Is the tide turning on the Rupnik case?
Ed Condon over at the Pillar believes “the tide does appear to be heading out for Rupnik across the Catholic world, even if he remains no closer to facing justice in Rome”. However, does the tide heading out refer more to the case itself being brought to conclusion.
Although DDF prefect Cdl Fernández claims to be working to bring the case to trial, his alleged intent to insure justice by seeking the perfect, unbiased judges outside of the Vatican to try Rupnik appears a stalling measure. The Church, the victimized nuns have waited for some years now. This with the Pope apparently incapacitated and perhaps a nearby conclave.
The Vatican has not shown any real sign of wanting to try and convict Rupnik. Condon seems measured in his interpretation, maybe justly so. Nevertheless that only suggests a more pejorative interpretation, that things will fade away given time. Justice not a shining virtue for this pontificate.
@ Gnosticism and Christianity
Stringing off from the anti-Christian Pagels and Gopnik, Bishop Barron mentions the a pass given to Islam. So, the plot thickens….
Beyond the borders of the Byzantine world, in the 7th Century and thereafter, the gnostic-like mindset shows itself to be not only a residue of Western Enlightenment rationalism. Take, for example, the contemporary Muslim scholar, Mahmoud Ayoub (Temple University, Philadelphia), who points to an early 20th-century translation of the non-canonical and allegedly Gnostic-era “Gospel of Barnabas” as verifying the Islamic proposition that Christ is less than divine. Ayoub maintains that rather than being crucified, Christ was carried to heaven by angels and his place on the cross was taken by Judas who was made to look and sound like Christ (in Irfan Omar [ed.], of Marquette University, “A Muslim View of Christianity,” Orbis, 2007, p. 173).
The interreligious Gnosticism of Muslim scholar Ayoub and of Pagels, surely “walking together” synodally!
Reaching beyond my depth, but critical to the Muslim and Pagels fiction is the actual date of parts of the “Gospel of Thomas.” Philip Jenkins (Baylor and Penn State) finds evidence that this early writing is edited with later Gnostic insertions, possibly 150 years after Christ (“The Hidden Gospels” [Oxford University Press, 2001], pp. 70-72). Paul Mankowski, SJ, showed that Pagel’s documentation is not only “conflated” as she admits, but a non-scholarly invention that suppresses context, omits wording, and shifts phrases “to pervert the meaning of the original” (cwnews.com and “The Pagels Imposture,” Catholic World Report [Ignatius hardcopy, May 2006], pp. 38-9).
Regarding Islamic/Enlightenment-exempt exegesis, this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Rupnik’s Legacy
News. Cdl Diogenes Fernández searches the planet for three honest judges.