July 2019

• A concrete proposal : Statement of the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life in relation to the Vincent Lambert affair
Vincent Lambert has died. It is time, more than ever, to pray. He was deprived of any human chance of survival when he could have been supported. - July 11, 2019

• Bishop J. Strickland Tweet: I encourage every faithful Catholic to read this and pray for all who are caught up in the culture of lies. As a bishop I will do my best to “guard the deposit of faith, entire & incorrupt” from the wolves who attack it. Mercy abhors bigotry AND sin. - July 8, 2019

• The Church’s role in modern Europe: an interview with Cardinal Jozef De Kesel
Belgian Cardinal Jozef De Kesel sat down with New Europe to discuss the role of the Catholic Church in today’s Europe, where pluralism and secularism have changed the dynamic between Europe’s citizens and their relationship with one of the continent’s oldest institutions. - July 5, 2019

• Polish church leader condemns ‘worsening attacks’ on clergy, churches
The president of the Polish bishops’ conference condemned attacks on clergy and places of worship in the traditionally Catholic country as the Church countered media accusations of inciting violence against LGBTQ groups. - July 31, 2019

• JPII Institute VP says school's identity is 'seriously threatened'
The vice-president of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute in Rome said that changes to the school’s governing structure and academic program are a serious threat to its identity, and to the important pastoral ministry it supports. - July 31, 2019

• Carlson: Release of abuse allegations ‘painful,’ but ‘right thing to do’
As the Archdiocese of St. Louis released a list of names of archdiocesan clergy with substantiated allegations of sexual abuse of a minor July 26, Archbishop Robert J. Carlson acknowledged that seeing the names “will be painful” and publishing them “will not change the past.” - July 29, 2019

• Students say changes at Rome's JPII Institute undermine its mission
More than 150 students at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute in Rome have signed a letter saying that newly approved statutes will undermine the institute’s mission and identity. - July 26, 2019

• Priests Protest Indian Cardinal Accused of Covering Up Nun’s Alleged Rape
Bishop Mulakkal was formally charged with raping the nun nine times over a two-year period and faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, local authorities announced in April. - July 25, 2019

• Pope Francis names Bp Mark Brennan to follow Bransfield at West Virginia diocese
Pope Francis Tuesday named Bishop Mark Brennan the Bishop of Wheeling-Charleston, West Virginia following financial corruption and alleged sexual assault by the former bishop of the diocese, Michael J. Bransfield. - July 23, 2019

• Cardinal Müller: Amazon Synod is a ‘pretext for changing the Church’
In a forceful new interview, Cardinal Gerhard Müller has said the upcoming synod of bishops on the Amazon is “a pretext for changing the Church.” - July 15, 2019

• Communist Party uses Vatican deal to bludgeon the Catholic Church in China, activist says
The Vatican’s secret deal with the Chinese communist government is being used to crush the Catholic Church in that country, making things worse for faithful Catholics in China, according to a women’s rights activist. - July 15, 2019

• Chile Ends Statute of Limitations for Sex Crimes with Underage Victims
Depending on the crime, previous limitations on prosecution ranged from five to 10 years after the alleged incident. - July 14, 2019

• Pope Francis: Judge Your Own Heart First – Not That of Those in Need
In his Sunday Angelus address, Pope Francis reflected on the parable of the Good Samaritan, which he called “one of the most beautiful parables of the Gospel.” - July 14, 2019

• Conn. bishops call for 'complete overhaul' of immigration policies
The bishops of Connecticut have joined a number of bishops’ voices in calling for “a complete overhaul of existing immigration policies” in the face of escalating tensions at the southern border of the United States. - July 13, 2019

• Former Catholic Herald editor blasts Amazon Synod, ‘corrupt pope’
The Vatican’s working document for its upcoming Amazon Synod is politically correct nonsense, a venerable Catholic journalist, editor, and author has said. - July 12, 2019

• No answers from Washington archdiocese about McCarrick’s money 
More than one year after the announcement of allegations of sexual abuse against former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the Archdiocese of Washington has continued to refuse questions about McCarrick’s use of a personal charitable fund. - July 12, 2019

• AUSCP and Bishop Allies Support Homosexual Activism in St. Louis
All last week, the Lepanto Institute was on location at the Airport Marriott in St. Louis to observe and counter goings on at the Association of US Catholic Priest’s (AUSCP) 2019 Assembly.  Early in the week we were there, we exposed the fact that the AUSCP has officially and formally called for the ordination of women as Catholic priests.  Other areas of concern regarding the AUSCP can be explored in the following other reports: - July 10, 2019

• Dutch diocese fires priest who proclaimed his homosexuality to parish
The Dutch priest who publicly proclaimed his homosexuality at the end of his jubilee Mass marking the 25^th anniversary of his ordination earlier this year, has been “fired” from his parish in Amsterdam known as the “Vredeskerk.”​​​​​​​ - July 10, 2019

• California Bill Threatening Seal of Confession Pulled by Sponsor
Tens of thousands of Catholics in the Golden State opposed the bill, amid expression-of-religion concerns.​​​​​​​ - July 9, 2019

• Vatican Reaffirms Its Defense of the Seal of Confession
Through a document approved by Pope Francis, the Vatican strongly expressed its opposition to legislation in California, Australia and elsewhere that would compel priests to break the seal. - July 8, 2019

• Vatican Document Fortifies Catholic Schools in Debate Over ‘Gender Theory’
‘Male and Female He Created Them’ warns that an emphasis on gender identity over biological sex has sparked a ‘cultural revolution’ that must be met in the classroom with a reaffirmation of Christian truths and compassion.​​​​​​​ - July 5, 2019

• Cupich: Ending clericalism central to church really being ‘field hospital’
When the ordained ministry “becomes separated from the baptismal foundation” shared with all Catholics, Chicago Cardinal Blase J. Cupich said, then the holy orders “needed for church life are replaced by some unholy disorders.” - July 3, 2019

• Austrian bishop: Pope said he won’t abolish priestly celibacy because he anticipates Judgement Day
Austrian Bishop Andreas Laun, in a short commentary published on the Austrian news website Kath.net, reminds us that Pope Francis said in January 2019 that he will not abolish obligatory clerical celibacy, adding that he does not “want to appear before God with this decision.” - July 3, 2019

• Chicago Tribune Op-Ed: Public Schools Can Learn From Catholics in Handling Sex Abuse
Illinois House Bill 3687, which made it to Governor J.B. Pritzker’s desk June 28, is a bipartisan effort to ensure that the superintendent of schools, school administrator, or other employer is notified if a school employee is being prosecuted for sexual abuse. - July 3, 2019

• ‘The Situation is Dramatic’: On the Papal Letter to Catholics in Germany
Monsignor Michael Fuchs, Vicar General of the Diocese of Regensburg, has published a reflection on the June 29 letter Pope Francis wrote to Catholics in Germany, in which the pope called for a focus on evangelization in the face of the “erosion” and “decline of the faith” in the country. - July 3, 2019

• Bishops received money and complaints about Bransfield, report says
Allegations of financial impropriety against former Wheeling-Charleston Bishop Michael Bransfield went unheeded for years, according to a new report. Letters from lay men and women, and from Bransfield’s own chancery staff raised serious concerns about the bishop’s spending and that he was using diocesan resources to “purchase influence.” - July 3, 2019

• Pope Francis gives away relics of St. Peter to Orthodox patriarch
In an unexpected and what some in Rome are viewing as an ominous gesture, Pope Francis has given away relics of St. Peter the Apostle to an Orthodox patriarch. - July 3, 2019

• Abp. Viganò to receive award for exposing Church abuse cover-ups
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò will be bestowed with the “Msgr. Alphonse S. Popek Award” by Catholics United for the Faith in recognition of his leadership and fidelity for exposing cover-ups by the highest levels of the Catholic Church of sexual misdeeds by clergy. - July 2, 2019 

• Seal of confession is an 'intrinsic requirement,' Vatican says
The head of the Vatican’s Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Penitentiary released a note Monday reaffirming the inviolability of the seal of confession and the importance of other forms of secrecy in the life of the Church. - July 1, 2019

• VIDEO: Bishop Robert Barron - Letter to a Suffering Church, Chapter 1: The Devil's Masterpiece 

• VIDEO: What about Married Deacons, Minor Orders, and So-Called Women Deacons? - Dr. Taylor Marshall 

• VIDEO: Is Bishop Barron Wrong on His Hope for an Empty Hell? Plus Balthasar on Tarot Cards and Occult - Dr. Taylor Marshall

• The Catholic Case for Sticking a Fork in the Jesuits
As I write this piece, I am wearing around my neck my St. Francis Xavier medal. I wear it almost always. At home, at work, at Mass, even while working out at the gym or playing hockey, it is always there near my heart, literally. - July 31, 2019

• ‘It Hath Hated Me before You’: Interview with Fr. Vaughn Treco, Excommunicated for Preaching the Faith
There is quite a lot of talk these days about heresy and scandal in the hierarchy of the Church, of bishops having disdain for tradition and aversion to hearing immemorial truth in any form.  - July 30, 2019

• Vigano: “What We Are Now Seeing is the Triumph of a 60-year-old Plan”
In his most recent letter about his visit with Archbishop Vigano, Inside the Vatican‘s Robert Moynihan relates something Vigano told him that caught my attention:​​​​​​​ - July 30, 2019

• Fr. Z's Blog: John Paul Institute 2.0 and the systematic purge of the last remaining “Wojtylians”
When I was in the Theology section at the Pontifical Lateran University, I would see at the end one of the hallways the doors leading into the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and the Family, founded at the sainted Pope’s behest after Familiaris consortio by the eventual Cardinal (and one of the four Dubia brothers) Carlo Caffarra.  It was a great institution which activated John Paul’s teachings. - July 29, 2019

• VIDEO: What about Married Deacons, Minor Orders, and So-Called Women Deacons?
Dr Taylor Marshall and Tim Gordon discuss the traditional Catholic doctrine of Holy Orders, Minor Orders, Subdiaconate, the debate on "transitional" and "permanent" deacons (a distinction that Taylor Marshall rejects) and then also look at how the theology of "women - July 29, 2019

• Heretical Priest’s Association Repeats Rebellion of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram
Three-thousand, four-hundred years ago, three men charged Moses and Aaron with “clericalism,” and led a rebellion against them. The Book of Numbers chapter 16 says that Korah, Dathan and Abiram: took two hundred and fifty Israelites who were leaders in the community, members of the council and men of note, and confronted Moses.  Holding an assembly against Moses and Aaron, they said, “You go too far! The whole community, all of them, are holy; the LORD is in their midst. Why then should you set yourselves over the LORD’s assembly?” - July 29, 2019

• The Amazon Synod That Could Have Been
On Friday, Cardinal Gerhard Mueller – former head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) – published a second commentary on the Synod for the Amazon, to be held in Rome this October. It follows an earlier critique of his, both of them blistering about the radical nature of what is largely a German “paradigm,” not only for the rainforests of South America, but for the whole Church. - July 29, 2019

• Why the Death Penalty Teaching Change Is a Perfect Doctrinal Trojan Horse
I’ve already written at length about the longstanding Catholic teaching about the death penalty and why Pope Francis is wrong in his attempts to change it. I won’t, therefore, rehash those arguments here. - July 29, 2019

• When High Noon Strikes
In the 1952 classic Western High Noon, Will Kane, the marshal of Hadleyville, has a choice to make.  The rule of law has unraveled, and Kane knows what he is up against.  Outlaw Frank Miller and his gang are arriving on the noon train.  So Kane visits the upstanding men of the town, asking them, one by one, to stand with him to defend their town.  But no one will stand with him.  They walk away and leave him, either through fear or the futile hope of keeping the peace or out of allegiance to Frank Miller himself. - July 27, 2019

• Why One Expert Says Communism is ‘Anathema to Religion’
A column recently published in America Magazine, entitled “The Catholic Case for Communism”, by Dean Dettloff, has resurrected questions about whether it is permissible for a Catholic to be a communist. - July 27, 2019

• Our New Civil War
The American Civil War has often been called the “Second American Revolution.”  Well, I have the feeling that we are now living through what may be called the “Second American Civil War.” - July 27, 2019

• Surviving and thriving in the Demographic Disaster we face as a Church. Wherein Fr. Z rants.
The article I read at Crisis, to which I will soon turn my attention below, has the ring of truth. But first, some scene-setting. In these USA, we as a Church are like band of adventurers on the march towards a long-desired destination.  We have swamps and storms and enemies to face at every turn.  Sometimes we are forced on horribly high and perilous paths only to find tenuous bridges over chasms heading towards tunnels filled with orcs or forests with hypnotic spiders.  The voyage takes its toll on our numbers. - July 26, 2019

• More on the Jesuits’ perennial rejection of women – UPDATED – @JamesMartinSJ is sad
On the feast of St. Mary Magdalene homosexualist Jesuit James Martin said that he is “stupefied” that the Church doesn’t let women preach.
Right away I posted HERE that all major orders have female components except the Jesuits.   Martin would do well to tend to his own house. Others on Twitter picked this up.  Jesuits are doing some gymnastics. - July 26, 2019

• The “Novus Ordo Paradigm” — What It Is and Why It Matters
Earlier today, I was engaged in a discussion on Facebook in which, after saying something about the “Novus Ordo Paradigm,” someone asked me, rather indignantly, what that phrase means. - July 26, 2019

• Jesuitical screenshots
Here is something instructive from One Mad Mom.  Moms pay attention to details. A Tale of Two Screen Shots. Two screen shots from Fr. Martin say what we all know but I’ll just paraphrase: “I have no say in what is published at America Magazine unless I want you to know I do!” Posted a mere half an hour apart. Apparently he doesn’t remember how plausible deniability works. - July 25, 2019

• The faithful are called to preserve the faith
Most of you are already familiar with the statement by Archbishop Athanasius Schneider commenting on the Amazonian Synod. I read it several times and I have found no fault in it. Although my theological toolbox is very small, it seems to me that this is not so much a matter of theology, not even a pastoral matter, but a matter of common sense. - July 25, 2019

• Sick of the Scandals? Here’s what I plan to do (Part II)
Yesterday I announced that I’m finished reporting on the scandals in the Catholic Church. The question naturally arises: then what will I do?

(Before I answer that question, let me pause just a moment to thank the many people who have sent me supportive and complimentary messages. I’m grateful for your kind words and for your prayers. And friends, please don’t think that I’m depressed about my own situation. Quite the contrary. I’ve wrestled with this decision for some weeks, but having made it, I’m feeling immensely relieved.) - July 25, 2019

• Irreal Church: As Bad as You Think, but Also Worse
Imagine you are arriving early for a Friday-night youth event at a nearby Catholic parish. The youth minister is busy strumming the three chords of his newly created worship song, so you strike up a conversation with the longtime parish youth coordinator, Joan, a former nun who has never had a job, nor a life, outside a Catholic Church. - July 25, 2019

• Fr. Z's Blog: A National Review response to stupefied @JamesMartinSJ
The other day Jesuit golden boy and homosexualist activist James Martin tweeted…It is stupefying to me that women cannot preach at Mass. The faithful during Mass, as well as the presiders, are missing out on the wisdom, experience and inspired reflections of half of its members. St. Mary Magdalene, pray for us...... - July 25, 2019

• Fr. Z's Blog: New Survey: 50 percent of US Catholics know what transubstantiation is
It may make a difference at which church these questions are asked. I read at Crux. Only half of US Catholics get Church teaching on Communion, study finds. I know that where I am, people know and believe. - July 25, 2019

• Fr. Z's Blog: The Catholic Church to Jesuits of Amerika: “No one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist.”
Dean Dettloff.  Who? HERE
I note in particular another of his offerings: “Christian Socialism: The Fusion of Faith and Revolution”. Here’s a quote from his piece:

Communist political movements the world over have been full of unexpected characters, strange developments and more complicated motivations than a desire to undo the church; and even through the challenges of the 20th century, Catholics and communists have found natural reasons to offer one another a sign of peace.

- July 24, 2019

• Fr. Z's Blog: Another assault on Holy Orders
At Lifesite I read that in the caput malorum omnium, Card. Marx, Archbishop of Freising-Munich has proposed that lay men and (of course) women should preach at Mass. - July 24, 2019

• What America Magazine Gets Wrong about the Mass
It cannot be easily tampered with, and it is not subject to the whims of social-justice advocates. - July 24, 2019

• Why Women Don’t Need to Preach at Mass
COMMENTARY: You don’t need a collar to evangelize the Good News. - July 24, 2019

• Sick of hearing about scandals in the Church? You should be. (Part I)
I quit. For more than 25 years now, I have been reporting and writing about scandal within the Catholic Church. Yesterday, as I wearily wrote one more article about episcopal corruption, I realized how much the topic has come to nauseate me. I can’t do it anymore. - July 24, 2019

• Concelebration, the rights of priests, and changing times
At NLM Peter Kwasniewski has a piece about how concelebration has been and still is being forced on priests.   For some, this is almost a mania and you incur their wrath if you don’t con-comply. - July 23, 2019

• The Latest Confusion in Rome
The draft of the new Apostolic Constitution on the Roman Curia, Praedicate Evangelium (PE), contains doctrinal imprecisions that have grave implications for the correct understanding of the relationship between the pope and the College of Bishops. - July 23, 2019

• In West Virginia, another bewildering Vatican appointment
Every day, it seems, I resolve not to write another column about corruption in the Catholic hierarchy. And then another story crosses my desk that makes my shake my head… and tackle the same tired old topic again. - July 23, 2019

• @JamesMartinSJ – “It is stupefying that women can’t preach”, says the Jesuit. Oh, yeah? Here’s what’s truly stupefying.
Get a load of this… - July 23, 2019

• Reordering The Public Square
In the ongoing intra-conservative debates, some have argued that it is the role of government to enforce and protect moral truths in the public square to promote the common good. Others have objected, skeptical of the idea of using government to “reorder” the public square. But this objection is inconsistent with the founding; moreover, it ignores how the left is already radically and arbitrarily exercising authority to reorder the public square. - July 22, 2019

• What Can Unite Us Catholics?
Amidst our unfortunate and time-bound divisions as regards partisan politics, I wonder whether it is possible to come up with a set of fundamentals that all Catholics can agree upon.  Here is my attempt: - July 21, 2019

• A bishop disciplined: why keep it quiet?
In our CWN news coverage of the Vatican’s disciplinary action against Bishop Bransfield, we called attention to the fact that the announcement was made late on a Friday afternoon in July. If you’ve ever devoted any time at all to the study of public relations, you recognize the significance of that timing. - July 19, 2019

• When a theologian accuses his archbishop of schism,...

• Massimo Faggioli teaches in the theology department at Villanova (when he is not trolling conservative Catholics on social media).
• Villanova is—or claims to be—a Catholic university.
• Those who teach in theology departments at Catholic universities are obliged to obtain the mandatum from the diocesan bishop.
• “The mandatum is fundamentally an acknowledgment by church authority that a Catholic professor of a theological discipline is teaching within the full communion of the Catholic Church.”
• Villanova is in the Philadelphia archdiocese, which is led by Archbishop Charles Chaput.
• In an article that appeared in La Croix this week, Faggioli suggested that Archbishop Chaput is schismatic.

Now isn’t this an interesting situation? - July 19, 2019

• All sides oppose Pope Francis’s upcoming reform of Vatican bureaucracy
Last July 8 Pope Francis previewed another fragment of what will be the future Vatican curia, once its new configuration definitively goes into effect. - July 15, 2019

• Of Unity and Diversity in the Church
The Catholic Church is either too monolithic or too diverse, depending on the person you’re talking with. Many people who attack the Church because of the latest round of sex-abuse scandals argue that the hierarchy is too male, too old, too powerful, and must accept a diverse, younger, more decentralized leadership to survive this crisis. - July 14, 2019

• Adding P to LGBT
I don’t want to write about pedophilia. You don’t want to read about it.  But the threat of pedophilia becoming acceptable isn’t going away. The sudden embrace of transgenderism didn’t come from nowhere. And it isn’t going to stop there, as I argued in this space not long ago. - July 13, 2019

• Fr. Z's Blog: How credible is “credible” in allegations against priests?
The accusations – based on a repressed memory of something 40 years ago – about Fr. Eduard Perrone in the Archdiocese of Detroit continue to raise questions.  Dark questions. - July 12, 2019

• VIDEO: #TnT LIVE: Married Priests and Amazon Synod of 2019 - July 11, 2019

• Self-serving apologies: Not the Catholic way
If you want to seize the contemporary moral high ground, I suggest you apologize for something your ancestors or your organization or your country did hundreds of years ago, checking first to ensure that the behavior in question is universally excoriated in our own more enlightened times. - July 11, 2019

• VIDEO: ExCardinal McCarrick and Clericalist Cabal in Washington DC with George Neumayr - July 10, 2019

• What the Debate on Celibacy Gets Wrong — and What Church Teaching Gets Right
COMMENTARY: Proposals for married clergy often reveal a functional view of the priesthood that loses sight of its spiritual fatherhood. - July 10, 2019

• VIDEO: Aleister Crowley, SexMagick Infiltration and Sankt Gallen - July 9, 2019

• The Spirit of Paganism Looms over the Amazon Synod
Something ancient — paganism — is “struggling to be born” again. It’s slouching toward birth, like Yeats’s “rough beast,” laboring to arrive for its hour. - July 9, 2019

• Mess of Pottage
Esau was hungry. Jacob was clever. So famished was the older brother that he promised to surrender his birthright to Jacob in exchange for some of the stew his younger-by-a-few-minutes brother was cooking. - July 8, 2019

• The diplomat and theologian: On the Truth and the limits of inclusivity
Two headlines in last Friday’s news caught my attention precisely because of the potential for contradiction in the treatment of the principles they represent. The first, “Vatican diplomat: Foster tolerance, inclusivity to counter attacks on religious believers”, favors the promotion of mutual respect as a matter of simple prudence, that is, to keep Catholics and other religious believers from being negatively targeted. - July 8, 2019

• The ‘new evangelization’—discarded?
Yesterday’s CWN headlines included a remarkable interview with Cardinal Jozef De Kesel of Brussels, in which the cardinal welcomed the arrival of secularism in Europe. Read the whole interview (if you have the stomach for it), and see if you can detect therein any statement, any argument, any suggestion that could not have been endorsed by an atheist or a pagan. I can’t. - July 8, 2019

• Conspiracy and Catholic Doctrine: A Defense of Taylor Marshall
After the revelations of Theodore McCarrick and the corroboration of the Viganò testimony, all reasonable men can agree that an infiltration exists within the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. - July 8, 2019

• Vatican II’s Confusing Counsel on Conscience and Human Dignity
The Dubious Consciousness of Contemporary Man
The modern doctrine on the dignitatis humanae, or dignity of man, has encouraged and even ensured the laïcité, or secularization of the political sphere. The Second Vatican Council’s Dignatis Humanae at first approaches this doctrine in a descriptive manner, noting that “[a] sense of the dignity of the human person has been impressing itself more and more deeply on the consciousness of contemporary man, and the demand is increasingly made that men should act on their own judgment, enjoying and making use of a responsible freedom, not driven by coercion but motivated by a sense of duty.” - July 8, 2019

• The Order Of Malta On The Defensive – A Rebuttal That Rebuts Nothing
My 27 June article, “Stalinist Purges and More in the Knights of Malta,” has elicited a response in the form of a Declaration of the Grand Magistry of the Order (PDF). I am publishing this brief reply solely to avoid giving the impression that might otherwise arise that the Statement is unanswerable and has vanquished falsehood with truth. - July 8, 2019

• “Man-made Religion”
The above phrase turned up in Pope-Emeritus Benedict XVI’s comments on the recent scandals. Of course, its origins are much older. One can find it operating in the secular religions developed during and after the French Revolution, for example. - July 7, 2019

• On the Slow Decay of Things
In the late sixteenth century, the French nobleman Michel de Montaigne retired to his estate to write his Essays. He began an accidental revolution and helped foster what we know as the modern world. What was the subject of his “attempts”? It “is my own self that I am painting,” he wrote, “wholly naked . . . I myself am the subject of my book.” - July 6, 2019

• The Peña Parra case: An excellent test of Archbishop Vigano’s credibility
The latest disclosure of claims by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano should provide a welcome test of his credibility. The New York Times reports that Vigano has named the assistant Vatican Secretary of State, Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, as credibly accused of sexual abuse of seminarians since at least 2002. He has also indicated where the evidence of these charges can be found. - July 5, 2019

• Bishop Bransfield’s ‘Gifts’ to Vatican Officials: Were They Ethical?
The donations don’t appear to involve an effort to purchase favors from the recipients, so they likely were permissible under Holy See standards. - July 5, 2019

• Four Take-Aways From Baltimore
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) passed four measures related to the abuse crisis at their general assembly in Baltimore last month. Given the degree to which episcopal malfeasance is the hallmark of the abuse crisis in its current iteration, and given how much expectation there has been for our bishops to “do something” about the crisis, it’s worth looking more closely at the steps that they have taken.​​​​​​​ - July 4, 2019

• Faithful Catholics: don’t accept confusion about sexual morality
“Pride Month” has come to an end. And for the first two days of July, the first readings atMass told the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. I’d call that a coincidence—if I believed in coincidences. - July 3, 2019

• How about a Synod for the ‘Indigenous Peoples’ of Britain?
Editor’s note: What you are about to read is — or should be — an obvious fiction, imagining what the next Vatican synod on regional indigenous peoples might propose. And yet, with a passage in the Amazonian synod working document that speaks of living “in harmony” with “nature, in dialogue with the spirits” (IL #75), is it really so far-fetched? - July 3, 2019

• Fr. Z's Blog: What is he really saying?
Ideologues are totalitarians. There is a group of hard-core ideologues grouped around Francis. - July 3, 2019

• Analysis: New Vatican Constitution to Centralize Power in State Secretariat
The most dramatic reform proposed in the current draft of Praedicate Evangelium is the effective ending of any curial department’s ability to exercise papal governing authority on a stably delegated basis. - July 3, 2019

• Fr. Z's Blog: UPDATE- A confluence of promptings leads Fr. Z to rant and to make a plea to bishops.
Concerning the video about the late Card. Bernardin (linked below) and my association with the novel Windswept House (which has identifiable real people as fictionalized characters), I bring an update.  This is one of the things that was ringing off the hook in the back of my mind. - July 1, 2019

• Even McCarrick’s investigators are covering things up
It has now been one year since the Archdiocese of New York announced that it had received a credible accusation that the retired Archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, had, as a priest, sexually abused a high school seminarian in the basement of St. Patrick's Cathedral. - July 1, 2019

• 100 Years Ago, G.K. Chesterton Predicted Our Dark Times 
Over one century ago, G.K. Chesterton wrote a masterpiece poem titled The Ballad of the White Horse. Today, more than ever, it strikes chords in the hearts of all who love the Catholic Church and her traditions. - July 1, 2019

• Dynamic Ukelele: An Examination of ‘Living Tradition’
In a recent interview with America magazine, Archbishop Rino Fisichella praised the “dynamic nature” of sacred Tradition. Such Tradition, he maintained, is “first and foremost living.” We must not view Tradition as hidebound, the archbishop implied, because denying the “dynamic nature of tradition is tantamount to denying the contemporaneity of the Christian faith.” - July 1, 2019 

• Tinkering with the Faith
Jesus teaches us, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:62) Our life decisions in response to His call are irrevocable. - July 1, 2019

• Healing an angry culture
Sexuality affects all aspects of the human person: body, mind, and emotions. It is the foundation of the capacity of men and women to bear children within the context of marriage. Human sexuality is also a significant factor in forming bonds of healthy relationships with others. In the crucially important arena of human sexuality, our first obligation is to identify the normal. Christian chastity defines normal and removes the frustrations that come with living abnormal lifestyles. - July 30, 2019

• The Mind’s Ascent
It’s easy to be agitated over what’s happening these days in the Church and the world. Much harder to see what might be promising, especially when secular leaders and bishops not only appear incapable of addressing looming challenges, but actually contribute to our sense of an age spinning out of control. - July 15, 2019

• Petition asks Pope Francis to abandon changes to English ‘Our Father’
In conjunction with LifeSiteNews, the Ruth Institute is promoting an online petition asking Pope Francis not to change the English words of the Our Father. - July 2, 2019