The Sacraments Don’t Need Fixing

by Dan Hitchens

Communion discipline, Rocco Buttiglione says, should be changed to incorporate the difference between objective and subjective guilt. This is wrong. Continue Reading »

2 Aug 2016 0

Amoris Laetitia from Where I Stand

by Eve Tushnet

Philip Larkin lamented that whether or not anybody refills your drink at a party “seems to turn on where you are. Or who.” In our divided Catholic Church, pastoral care is a lot like Larkin's cocktails. Catholics who sincerely desire to submit themselves to the Church they love come to their . . . . Continue Reading »

20 Apr 2016 0

Why Amoris Laetitia Wouldn't Have Helped Me

by Luma Simms

Like waves breaking on rock, polishing and shaping by force, the Catholic faith sands and sculpts my being. The day my soul became Catholic was the day I found out that as a divorced and remarried woman I could not receive Communion. “Truth enlightens man's intelligence and shapes his freedom,” . . . . Continue Reading »

18 Apr 2016 0

On Sex Without Deliberate Consent

by Mats Wahlberg

In his recent Apostolic Exhortation, the Holy Father puts a question mark in the margin of the following teaching of Pope Saint John Paul II: “The Church reaffirms her practice, which is based upon Sacred Scripture, of not admitting to Eucharistic Communion divorced persons who have remarried. . . . . Continue Reading »

14 Apr 2016 0

A Stubborn Givenness

by R. R. Reno

The Apostolic Exhortation on the Family, Amoris Laetitia, brings into the open a disturbing trend in this pontificate. Ironically, Pope Francis’s pastoral vision seems to entail the same use-oriented individualism that he so forcefully criticizes in social and economic life.Francis doesn’t . . . . Continue Reading »

11 Apr 2016 0

Divorce and Communion

by Russell E. Saltzman

There were only two occasions in my life as a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) that required disciplinary ministry with a church member. One was gossip; the other was sex. The first didn’t get beyond private admonition by the pastor, me. That’s what the pastor does in . . . . Continue Reading »

5 Nov 2015 0

What Comes After the Synod

by Janet E. Smith

Whatever Pope Francis does in the wake of the Synod on the Family, we have a new Humanae Vitae moment on our hands. Decades of relentless infighting over what exactly the Church teaches is on the horizon and will negatively affect the priesthood, religious life, religious institutions, parishes, . . . . Continue Reading »

5 Nov 2015 0

Dear Pope Francis: Remember the Standers

by Beverly Willett

Pope Francis has spoken often about the problem of family breakdown. “The family is the fundamental cell of society,”the Holy Father told bishops, clergy and laypersons during the first year of his tenure. “Marriage and the family are in crisis,” he said shortly after bishops gathered in Rome last fall for the Extraordinary Synod on the Family. No-fault divorce has done more to fuel this crisis than any other factor. Although divorce rates initially skyrocketed after adoption of no-fault in the United States, they remain high. Meanwhile, single motherhood and cohabitation continue to rise, while marriage rates nosedive. And Pope Francis has acknowledged the link between marriage breakdown and society’s ills, including increased poverty, noting that it is children who usually bear the brunt. Continue Reading »

10 Jun 2015 0

Eighteenth Century Roots of the Kasper Proposal

by Ulrich L. Lehner

The proposal of Cardinal Walter Kasper about the possibility of remarried Catholics to receive communion has attracted much attention. His main idea, namely to accept Orthodox teaching on divorce, is not as new as some think. Continue Reading »

30 Dec 2014 0

Time to Challenge No-Fault Divorce

by Thomas F. Farr and Hilary Towers

High in the catalogue of social pathologies afflicting marriage and the family in America stands our system of family law, the central purpose of which is to enforce no-fault divorce. In a letter to the Holy Father and the recent Extraordinary Synod on the Family, almost fifty international scholars and religious leaders joined us in urging the Church to consider the effects of no-fault divorce, along with other barriers to faithful, lifelong marriage. Continue Reading »

8 Dec 2014 0