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Articles
The Unexpectedly Non-controversial Placuit Deo
On Thursday, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith released a letter to the Catholic bishops of the world, titled Placuit Deo. The document addresses “Certain Aspects of Christian...
Taking Leave
Learning To Take Leave, Pope Francis’s new apostolic letter in the form of a motu proprio, addresses the procedure by which Curial officials and bishops are invited to resign...
Benedict in Silence
As we approach the fifth anniversary of Benedict XVI’s abdication and Francis’s election, we face a strange situation in reflecting on the Church’s trajectory: We must consider the actions...
Pope Francis Regrets
News outlets around the world have reported that Pope Francis, at the end of his apostolic voyage to Chile last week, described accusations against Bishop Juan Barros Madrid of...
Paul VI in 2018
Paul VI’s landmark encyclical on birth control, Humanae Vitae, turns fifty this year. It was controversial before it was written and has remained controversial ever since. Paul’s refusal to...
The Curial Sidelines
I suspect the employees of the Roman Curia have come to view the pope’s annual Christmas greetings much as Seinfeld’s George Costanza viewed Festivus. Francis’s 2014 address was, if...
The Possibility of a Catholic Social Order
Peter Kwasniewski, a professor at Wyoming Catholic College and a frequent commentator, has recently published A Reader in Catholic Social Teaching. The Reader includes encyclicals from Pius IX’s Quanta...
Pope Francis and the Youth
The recent meeting of the U.S. Catholic bishops in Baltimore attracted significant notice, with Kansas City’s Archbishop Joseph Naumann defeating Chicago’s Blase Cardinal Cupich for the leadership of the bishops’...
Pope Francis’s Reset Button
The past two years have seen endless conflict over Pope Francis’s 2016 post-synodal apostolic exhortation, Amoris laetitia. This conflict, focused primarily on the question of whether and under what...
Pope Francis on the Development of Doctrine
On October 11, Pope Francis addressed a conference sponsored by the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of John Paul II’s Catechism...
The Filial Correction Online
A group of more than sixty Catholic theologians and clergy, including some well-known traditionalist writers and scholars, have signed a document, addressed to Pope Francis and recently released to...
Back to the Liturgy Wars
At long last, we are back to the liturgy wars. In the past month, Pope Francis has reopened the debate over Pope Paul VI’s reform of the Latin Rite...
The Pope and the President
The past summer has seen no shortage of controversy in Washington. Until the catastrophe in Houston, the news was all Donald Trump, all the time. And it’s been a...
Spadaro Contra Franciscum
Fr. Antonio Spadaro and Rev. Marcelo Figueroa have a recent item in the Italian Jesuit review La Civiltà Cattolica, complaining of the “surprising ecumenism” between Catholic integralists and evangelical fundamentalists in America....