By Hannah Brockhaus for CNA Rome, Italy, Jan 19, 2022 / 18:10 pm (CNA). As the Italian parliament debates whether to pass a bill to decriminalize assisted suicide, an association of Catholic doctors has emphasized that a dignified death “cannot take shortcuts.” “A dignified death is to be ensured to all: this is an essential principle of care and this action, which has an objective value, cannot take shortcuts compared to practices of support and accompaniment of the sick in the last stages of his life,” Filippo M. Boscia, president of the Association of Italian Catholic Doctors, wrote in a Jan. …
Category: Current Issues
The false binary between progressive accommodators and “rad trad” restorationists
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”. Many formerly conservative Catholics have been red-pilled by the current papacy, which has, sadly, led to extreme and wrong positions about Vatican II and the Church at large. Much ink has been spilled …
Martin Luther: True reformer or defender of erroneous conscience?
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. The key issue in debating Luther’s legacy on conscience in the Catholic Church entails whether the teachings of the Church …
Conscience and leadership in the lives of Saints Thomas More and John Fisher
Bishop Thomas John Paprocki is Bishop of Springfield in Illinois and is Chairman-elect of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Canonical Affairs and Church Governance. Conscience does not act in isolation on some sort of personal or individual intuition disconnected from someone or something else. For a Catholic, a properly formed conscience means to share God’s knowledge and the Church’s teaching about right or wrong. Editor’s note: The following 2023 Chelsea Lecture was delivered by Most Reverend Thomas John Paprocki at Chelsea Academy, in Front Royal, Virginia, on February 7, 2023. It is good to be with you to deliver …
World Down Syndrome Day is an opportunity to teach, cherish, and love
Susan Ciancio is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and has worked as a writer and editor for nearly 19 years; 13 of those years have been in the pro-life sector. Currently, she is the editor of American Life League’s Celebrate Life Magazine—the nation’s premier Catholic pro-life magazine. She is also the executive editor of ALL’s Culture of Life Studies Program—a pre-K-12 Catholic pro-life education organization. In the US, nearly 70% of babies prenatally diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted. In England and Germany, 90% are aborted. And in Iceland, nearly 100% are aborted. Sadly, these countries are not eradicating the …
“God wants us to be holy as he is holy”: A conversation with Scott Hahn
Paul Senz has an undergraduate degree from the University of Portland in music and theology and earned a Master of Arts in Pastoral Ministry from the same university. He has contributed to Catholic World Report, Our Sunday Visitor Newsweekly, The Priest Magazine, National Catholic Register, Catholic Herald, and other outlets. Paul lives in Elk City, OK, with his wife and their four children. “We need to know holiness not only by its effects on human beings. We need to know it for what it is in itself,” says Hahn, author of Holy Is His Name: The Transforming Power of God’s Holiness in Scripture, …
Champions teach vital lessons about people with disabilities
Susan Ciancio is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and has worked as a writer and editor for nearly 19 years; 13 of those years have been in the pro-life sector. Currently, she is the editor of American Life League’s Celebrate Life Magazine—the nation’s premier Catholic pro-life magazine. She is also the executive editor of ALL’s Culture of Life Studies Program—a pre-K-12 Catholic pro-life education organization. While it’s a predictable story, this new film, starring Woody Harrelson, teaches an important lesson: people with developmental or intellectual disabilities are human beings who have the same dignity as those without a disability. We …
Answering Six Objections from the SSPX
Andrew Bartel is a lay Dominican of the Province of the Most Holy Name of Jesus. He lives with his wife and their three children in Montana, where he works as a glazier. He is also pursuing a degree in English and Philosophy. Bishop Athanasius Schneider has recently praised Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre as “a prophet of our time”; here are six common arguments that have been made by Bishop Schneider and other defenders of the SSPX, each followed by a brief rebuttal. Bishop Athanasius Schneider has recently thrown down the glove in an interview with LifeSiteNews, claiming that those of us who …
A somber anniversary
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 …
Bavaria’s ‘Spiritual Heart’ Is Still Pumping in Altötting
Jonathan Liedl is a senior editor for the Register. His background includes state Catholic conference work, three years of seminary formation, and tutoring at a university Christian study center. Liedl holds a B.A. in Political Science and Arabic Studies (Univ. of Notre Dame), an M.A. in Catholic Studies (Univ. of St. Thomas), and is currently completing an M.A. in Theology at the Saint Paul Seminary. He lives in Minnesota’s Twin Cities. Follow him on Twitter at @JLLiedl. Known as the ‘Lourdes of Germany,’ the Marian shrine is not just a symbol of the region’s Catholic past but is also at …