By Robert Moynihan, drawing on a CNA report by Almudena Martínez-Bordiú The “Synod on Synodality” ended on October 26 without calling for any radical changes in Church doctrine or practice. But the process of the Synod itself is turning out to be the “radical change” in how the Church governs herself. This change finds its roots [...]
Thursday, April 23, 2020 Friends, Christ is Risen! I recently received this letter from a reader: Robert, Thank you so much for taking since the death of your father an increasingly bold and courageous stand on the distressing developments in the Church. It seems that the visible Church is being hollowed out to a large degree [...]
Wednesday, September 18, 2019 “The Church doesn’t belong to Bergoglio but to Christ." —Italian Catholic journalist Vittorio Messori, author in 1984 of The Ratzinger Report, an interview book with then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) and then of an interview with John Paul II, at the time when interviewing a Pope was quite unusual [...]
September 20, 2017, Wednesday "The humans of Genesis 1, made in God’s image, were told to 'fill the world and subdue it.' That is what he called 'majestic man,' what we would call secular humanity, the dominating nature. "In Genesis 2 the humans are created from the dust of the earth into which God breaths life. [...]
August 3, 2017, Thursday ...August 20-25 The Pope's Right-Hand Man Will Visit Moscow in About Two Weeks Several Russian news outlets have just reported that the announced August trip of the Vatican's Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin (photo left) -- the Number 2 man in the Vatican after Pope Francis himself -- will take place [...]
May 17, 2017, Wednesday "I never make a judgment of a person without listening to them.”—Pope Francis with regard to his upcoming May 24 meeting with US President Donald Trump. Francis spoke during an in-flight press conference as he flew back from Portugal to Rome on the evening of May 13, four days ago "I prefer [...]
May 17, 2017, Wednesday Is Pope Francis planning to re-examine the Church's teaching on contraception? Rumors have been circulating in Rome for several days, since a May 11 blog post by veteran Italian Vaticanist Marco Tosatti, that Francis is seriously considering setting up a commission to study Humanae Vitae, the 1968 papal document of Pope Paul [...]
May 15, 2017, Monday "What united Orthodox and Catholics in those years was far more important than that which divided them, for they were united by love of Christ.”— Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, "Foreign Minister" of the Russian Orthodox Church, in his address on May 11 to the "World Summit of Christian Leaders in Defense [...]
May 15, 2017, Monday "I saw that American leaders wanted to cooperate with Russia.”—The influential Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, the Oxford-educated "Foreign Minister" of the increasingly powerful Russian Orthodox Church, in an interview published today on the website of the Russian Orthodox Moscow Patriarchate. The interview follows Hilarion's four-day trip to Washington D.C. to participate [...]
May 10, 2017, Wednesday "I will go to Fatima on a pilgrimage, to entrust to the Virgin the temporal and eternal destinies of humanity.”—Pope Francis today at his May 10 Wednesday General Audience, referring to his upcoming trip on Friday to Fatima, Portugal, to canonize two of the shepherd children who were witnesses to the apparitions [...]
