George Weigel is the distinguished senior fellow and William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington. COMMENTARY: As the Scriptural Syrian found out, and the German bishops haven’t yet, pride is a supreme obstacle to faith in God. To vary Oscar Wilde, the Church’s liturgical life often imitates art by being strikingly appropriate to a particular moment. That was certainly true on Monday of the Third Week of Lent, 2023 — a day when the Scriptures of the Eucharistic liturgy invite us to ponder the greatest of the capital sins, pride, through …
Category: Apologetics
The Ruinous Rhetoric of ‘Synodal Interpretation’
Robert Royal is editor-in-chief of The Catholic Thing and president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. His most recent books are Columbus and the Crisis of the West and A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century. Long, long ago, on a planet far, far away, I organized a conference on religion and the public square in a city on the Potomac that I increasingly find hard to recognize. There were sessions on Catholicism, Protestantism, and Judaism. During the last, a rabbi who was also a lawyer working at the White House was challenged by a trio of Jewish …
Can the Eucharist save civilization?
R. Jared Staudt PhD, serves as Director of Content for Exodus 90 and as an instructor for the lay division of St. John Vianney Seminary. He is the author of How the Eucharist Can Save Civilization (TAN), Restoring Humanity: Essays on the Evangelization of Culture (Divine Providence Press), and The Beer Option (Angelico Press), as well as editor of Renewing Catholic Schools: How to Regain a Catholic Vision in a Secular Age (Catholic Education Press). He and his wife Anne have six children and he is a Benedictine oblate. Our revival will be successful if Jesus’s sacramental presence in the Church truly does become the source and summit of …
Seal of Confession under attack? Delaware, Vermont bills draw Catholic criticism
By Kevin J. Jones for CNA Denver, Colo., Mar 9, 2023 / 09:30 am (CNA). Two state legislatures are considering ending any legal protections for a priest who learns about sexual abuse in the confessional. In response, Catholic leaders warned that the laws are unconstitutional, put priests in legal jeopardy, and endanger confidentiality with penitents. Delaware’s House Bill 74 is among the proposals to end clergy protections in mandatory sexual abuse reporting laws. “This act abrogates the privilege between priest and penitent in a sacramental confession relating to child abuse and neglect,” says the bill summary on the Delaware General …
The New Ultramontanism and the Dissing of Vatican II
George Weigel is a Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies. He is the author of over twenty books, including Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II (1999), The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II—The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy (2010), and The Irony of Modern Catholic History: How the Church Rediscovered Itself and Challenged the Modern World to Reform. His most recent books are The Next Pope: The Office of Peter and a Church in Mission (2020), Not Forgotten: Elegies for, and Reminiscences of, a Diverse …
On Cardinal McElroy’s misguided “clarifications” on sin, sex, and conscience
Dr. Larry Chapp is a retired professor of theology. He taught for twenty years at DeSales University near Allentown, Pennsylvania. He now owns and manages, with his wife, the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker Farm in Harveys Lake, Pennsylvania. Dr. Chapp received his doctorate from Fordham University in 1994 with a specialization in the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar. He can be visited online at “Gaudium et Spes 22”. When I was a young seminarian I studied moral theology under the tutelage of the late, great Germain Grisez (1929-2018). I did not agree with all aspects of his “new natural law” theory, …
The Cardinal’s Lament: A Reply to His Reply
Dr. E. Christian Brugger is a moral theologian living in Front Royal, Virginia Cardinal Robert W. McElroy, in defending the morality of some instances of sex between LGBT and divorced and remarried Catholics, misrepresents conscience and proposes a non-Christian understanding of conversion, accompaniment, and discipleship. In his recent response to “critics on sexual sin, the Eucharist, and LGBT and divorced/remarried Catholics” Cardinal Robert W. McElroy defends the morality of some instances of sex between LGBT and divorced and remarried Catholics. I reply here to four problems with his defense: it proposes 1) a misleading conception of conscience; 2) a misrepresentation of the …
Preaching in a Time of Misdirecting Shepherds
Fr. Robert McTeigue, SJ, is a member of the US Eastern Province of the Society of Jesus. A professor of philosophy and theology, he has taught worldwide and is known for his classes in both rhetoric and medical ethics. He is a member of the National Ethics Committee of the Catholic Medical Association. His book on preaching, I Have Someone to Tell You: A Jesuit Heralds the Gospel is now available at Amazon in both paperback and electronic form. His latest books from Ignatius Press are Real Philosophy for Real People: Tools for Truthful Living (2020) and Christendom Lost and Found: Meditations for a Post-Post-Christian Era (2022). He is the …
The Fallibility of Popes, According to St. Paul and St. Gregory
Monsignor Antall is the pastor of Holy Name Parish in the Diocese of Cleveland. He is the author of The X-Mass Files (Atmosphere Press, 2021), and The Wedding (Lambing Press, 2019). The pope is infallible when declaring the truth of dogma under conditions that have been applied very strictly. The definition given at the First Vatican Council clearly implies those conditions: When the Roman Pontiff speaks ex cathedra, that is, when in exercising his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians he defines with his supreme apostolic authority that a doctrine on faith and morals is to be held by the whole Church, through the …
You Need to Fast More
Suzan Sammons homeschools her children and is studying for a masters degree in nutrition. She is a writer and editor in southwest Ohio. Prayer, Fasting, and Almsgiving: the three calls of Lent. If I exhort you to spend more time in prayer during Lent, you probably won’t argue with me. If I encourage you to increase your charitable giving, most readers will admit they could be more generous. But if I ask you to fast more? I’ll hear that fasting makes you tired and grouchy, gives you a headache, and renders it impossible to complete your day’s work. St. …