The Moynihan Letters

    I send this Letter on Good Friday, when we recall the passion and death of Jesus on the cross.     I just received a letter from a reader and old friend: "Keep writing! Keep challenging us! You are a voice crying out in the wilderness, 'Make straight the way of the Lord!' Thank you to you and [...]

    Top, a famous painting by the Russian painter Konstantin Flavitsky, who lived from 1830-1866, dying at the age of just 35; he painted the work in 1855, when he was 25. It is called Joseph Sold into Slavery by His Brothers (link).     Joseph is seen by Christian exegetes as a type of Christ. [...]

    Sunday, March 28, 2021     Palm Sunday     Jesus' Triumphal Entry in Jerusalem on a Donkey (Source of the above image here)     Now when they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Bethphage, to the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, "Go into the village in front of you, and immediately [...]

    Thursday, March 25, 2021     Feast of the Annunciation         Today we celebrate the Feast of the Annunciation.     On this day 2,021 years ago, or thereabouts, the angel Gabriel came to Mary and announced to her that she would bear a son.     Mary, confused and troubled about what the message might mean, asked the angel [...]

    "Charity is to will the good for the other." —St. Thomas Aquinas (link) Blessings and Censorship     As I wrote yesterday, I have been trying to study two complex controversies to try to understand better where the leaders of our Church — the Pope, the bishops, the clergy, influential lay people — intend to lead us, [...]

TO THE QUESTION (DUBIUM) PROPOSED:    Does the Church have the power to give the blessing to unions of persons of the same sex? RESPONSE:     Negative.      —The March 15, 2021 response (one week ago) of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to a dubium (question) regarding the blessing of the unions [...]

Ruins of the ancient church on the Hill of Tara, where in the year 433 A.D. St. Patrick initiated his apostolic ministry in Ireland, lighting the Paschal (Easter) fire in defiance of the Druids of the time (Credit: Gary Miotla)     Wednesday, March 17, 2021     Feast of St. Patrick of Ireland (A.D. [...]

“Man’s greatest difficulty is not what the Church teaches on morality; the hardest thing for the post-modern world is to believe in God.” —Cardinal Robert Sarah, 75, in his book God or Nothing. (link)         Another Move in the Chess Game     Another strange, and as yet unexplained, move inside the Vatican has been reported in recent [...]

Here below, the text of a March 12 Vatican directive, issued in Italian, which has become a bit of a controversy over the past three days.     The text regulates the number of Masses allowed to be celebrated in St. Peter's Basilica each day. Up until now, dozens and dozens of Masses have been celebrated each [...]

New Interview by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò     March 2021, Vatican II and the Crisis in the Church     Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, 80, has just granted a new interview to a radio station in Italy called Radio Spada ("Sword Radio").     I send the text below in my own English translation.     I spoke to the archbishop briefly [...]