Throughout the Church, there is intense debate over the new Apostolic Exhortation of Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia (“The Joy of Love”). Some see it as a “rupture” with the Church’s doctrinal tradition, while others say that isn’t true... Robert Moynihan “My great joy as a result of this document resides in the fact that [...]
L'Orto Di Maramao, a "rural" oasis in central Rome During the Middle Ages, Campo de’ Fiori (“Field of Flowers”), today Rome’s oldest open-air fruit-and-vegetable market, was the commercial and touristic center of the city as well as the site of public executions. The most notorious was that of the Dominican poet, philosopher, mathematician and [...]
APRIL FRIDAY 1 Pope Francis Sends Vestments, Financial Aid to Iraqi Christians Bishop Francesco Cavina As a sign of affection and closeness, Pope Francis has decided to send vestments used in the liturgy and a financial donation to Christian refugees in Erbil through the Catholic pastoral charity Aid to the Church in Need. “Mercy [...]
Mother Angelica lies in repose March 29 at the the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville, Alabama (CNS photo/Jeff Bruno, EWTN) The Vatican Remembers the “Unconventionally Angelic” Mother Angelica After the death of Mother Angelica, founder of EWTN, on March 27 (Easter Sunday), many in and around the Vatican praised the bold [...]
The entrance to the Crypt of Original Sin in Matera Matera is a small town in southern Italy famous for two things: its astonishing rock churches (named a Unesco World Heritage Site in 1993) and its poverty. There is hardly an electric light or a wire in sight. The panorama, the hollow cave-rooms gaping [...]
Icon of the Resurrection Why is the Great Pascha on a Different Date than Easter? This year the Orthodox Church celebrated the Great Pascha, their Easter, on May 1, several weeks after the rest of the Christian world celebrated Easter. This feast is preceded by a Holy Week similar to the Catholic one, and [...]
Icon of the head of St. John the Baptist The Third Finding of the Head of John the Baptist Along with the lance of Longinus, the head of John the Baptist has a history worthy of an Indiana Jones saga. The Eastern Churches also celebrate the first and second findings in separate feasts. The [...]
Journalists Gianluigi Nuzzi, left, and Emiliano Fittipaldi, center, walk to their trial April 6 at the Vatican (CNS photo/Remo Casilli, Reuters) “When I come across news, it is my job to publish it,” says one of two journalists accused of “soliciting documents” and “exercising pressure” on Vatican officials to obtain the documents. The trial [...]
Pope Francis at the Synod on the Family The “received wisdom” is that the Pope’s document is about Communion for the divorced and remarried, but is it really so? You could be forgiven for having decided that Amoris Laetitia is a failed document. If you accept, as it seems to be the received wisdom [...]
…but not for those who want to “circumvent Church teaching” As I started to sift through the coverage of Amoris Laetitia, it became apparent that some selective reading and reporting had taken place, even in direct opposition to the Pope’s specific guideline: “[I]f someone flaunts an objective sin as if it were part of the Christian [...]
