The current regime in Rome will damage the Catholic Church. Pope Francis combines laxity and ruthlessness. His style is casual and approachable; his church politics are cold and cunning. There are leading themes in this pontificate—mercy, accompaniment, peripheries, and so forth—but . . . . Continue Reading »
So much for the “new paradigm.” With the Church now mired in its most severe crisis since the Protestant Reformation, the heady talk of last spring now seems as distant as the “Catholic moment” or the “springtime of evangelization.” Rightly or wrongly, the idea of a gauzy mercy without . . . . Continue Reading »
Pope Francis's new apostolic letter offers a window into how he sees the process of retirement from high office in the Church. Continue Reading »
Because Pope Francis may have blundered in handling a sex-abuse scandal, secular reporters are beginning to view him with a critical eye. Continue Reading »
Francis's defense of Bishop Barros poses a serious challenge to the pope’s image. Continue Reading »
When the eminent historian Peter Gay wrote The Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Paganism in the 1960’s, he summed up its view of Christianity this way:Christianity claimed to bring light, hope, and truth, but its central myth was incredible, its dogma a conflation of rustic superstitions, its . . . . Continue Reading »
Our army met Perugia’s on the plainbeside the hospital. All day we foughtwith crossbow, sword, and lancet to obtainour freedom, but by dusk it came to naught.So I became a prisoner of men,as glorious as a rat holed in its nest,and mourned for joys I might not taste again,considering him pierced . . . . Continue Reading »
I don’t often read Michael Sean Winters, who blogs at the National Catholic Reporter site, and his attack the other day on Archbishop Charles Chaput (which I discovered thanks to RealClearReligion) confirmed the wisdom of my habitual negligence. On the basis of a few words reported by another journalist who attended Chaput’s Erasmus Lecture hosted by First Things on Monday evening, Winters leapt to the most unjust and uncharitable conclusions, beginning with the proclamation in his headline that Chaput offered a “Remarkable Challenge to Pope Francis.” Since I was there Monday evening, I was interested in what “challenge” Winters could mean. Continue Reading »
The sturdiest storyline in the coverage of the canonization of two popes last Sunday was a narrative that claimed that Pope Francis yoked the two in a single ceremony because he wanted to unite the conservative and progressing wings of the Catholic Church—as represented by John XXIII (favored by progressives) and John Paul II (ditto by conservatives). That was the narrative in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and among several Catholic pundits who really should have known better. . . . Continue Reading»
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