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In a letter reportedly leaked by a priest in Argentina, Pope Francis writes that there is “no other interpretation” of Amoris Laetitia other than one admitting divorced and remarried Catholics to Holy Communion in some cases. The letter, dated September 5, comes in response to a confidential document by the bishops of the Buenos Aires pastoral region to priests instructing them on the application of the Pope’s controversial apostolic exhortation. LifeSite has acquired copies of both original documents and has provided professional side-by-side translation. The Spanish original of the letter from the Pope is here The Spanish original of the...

So said the well-known liturgist Msgr. Nicola Bux. To help explicate his definition a little more, consider the two items below. First, a priest in Sicily – mirroring more than one in Spain, for centuries perhaps the most Catholic country in the world – has blessed a lesbian couple in church, and called for the Church to “bless gay unions:” What is true in Spain, is also possible in Italy. A priest of the Archdiocese of Palermo, where Pope Francis recently installed a “Bergoglian” as archbishop, “blessed” a lesbian couple. “I hope that the church will one day bless gay...

Lessons Against Fascination with Evil Msgr. Charles Pope • September 9, 2016 • The video below is a trailer for an upcoming movie. I can’t comment on the full context of the movie (since it hasn’t yet been released), but there are several important messages in the trailer. Allow it to bring forth in you a salutary fear; don’t be fascinated by the cheap parlor tricks of Satan or the Hollywood depiction of them.Let’s take away four lessons from the trailer.As the trailer begins, it seems that some scam artists have drawn in gullible people with fake séances and...

Fr. Ray Blake - a good parish priest whose writings often provide encouragement and food for thought for Catholics in these troubled times. Courage! The good Fr. Ray Blake has written a courageous piece regarding the intimidation being experienced by some of the 45 scholars, theologians and pastors, who had signed up to the Letter requesting clarifications on Amoris Laetitia. As we have already noted this week, Fr. John Hunwicke has made public the fact that some of these faithful people are experiencing ''intimidation and cruel pressure'' to rescind their support for the Letter. Having endured and witnessed so much...

The Spanish-language Catholic journal InfoCatólica — which is based in Spain, but covers issues in Latin America as well — has published a document from the Argentine Bishops’ in response to Amoris Laetitia. They have also released a corresponding letter attributed to Pope Francis in which he praises their work, saying (according to the slightly cleaned-up machine translation we’re currently working with) “The writing is very good and fully express the meaning of Chapter VIII of Amoris Laetitia. No other interpretations.” And yet, paragraphs 5 & 6 of the bishops’ document makes an assertion about the permissability of confession and...

In No. 136 of the Fraternity of St. Vincent Ferrer’s quarterly review Sedes Sapientiæ, there is a commentary on Chapter 8 of Amoris Lætitia, written by Father Louis-Marie de Blignières (one of the 45 signatories of the Critique on Amoris Laetitia). This article, before its publication was sent to several bishops and cardinals who expressed their gratitude and agreement to the author. In particular, it received warm support from Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, Archbishop Emeritus of Bologna and the first President of the John Paul II Institute on the Family: “It is an excellent text, which I endorse completely.” “It is...

The number of marriage annulment petitions filed in the Diocese of Scranton so far this year already exceeds the 2015 total and is on track to be the highest in years. The spike coincides with Canon Law revisions Pope Francis made last September aimed at simplifying and speeding up an annulment process many Catholics found complicated and plodding. The new standards, including elimination of administrative processing fees, took effect Dec. 8, the start of the church’s Year of Mercy. Figures released by the diocese show divorced Catholics initiated 171 annulment cases between Jan. 1 and Aug. 19, compared to 164...

Hitherto You Have Asked Nothing in My Name … Msgr. Charles Pope • September 8, 2016 • There is an old spiritual that says, “King Jesus is a-listenin’ all day long, to hear some sinner pray.” I thought of that line recently during my spiritual reading when, due to a page break, a quote from our Lord was interrupted. Here is the full verse:Hitherto you have asked nothing in my name; ask and you shall receive, that your joy may be full (John 16:24).As my dry fingers fumbled to turn the page, I was stuck for a time with...

Where Does Our Sense of the Eternal Come from in a Finite World? Msgr. Charles Pope • September 7, 2016 • A common reading at the funeral Mass is this powerful one from the Book of Ecclesiastes:I have considered the task that God has appointed for the sons of men to be busied about. He has made everything appropriate to its time, and has put the timeless into their hearts, without man’s ever discovering, from beginning to end, the work which God has done (Eccl 3:10-11).Somewhere in our hearts is something that the world cannot, and did not, give...

This is a follow-up to Friday's more general post on Bishop Robert Barron's apologetics. Here I want to specifically evaluate one aspect of Barron's views on Hell. Before beginning, I want to head off one possible misunderstanding. In the following, I talk about the chances or "odds" that an individual person or a group of people may be saved. In doing so, I don't mean to imply that those chances may ever be known in any particular case, nor even that they are chances in the conventional sense - that eternal salvation is metaphysically equivalent to, say, a coin flip....

On Kindness to Animals and Why It Is an Important Virtue to Cultivate Msgr. Charles Pope • September 6, 2016 • We live in times when excess is common. There is an old Latin saying Abusus non tollit usum (abuse does not take away the use).This certainly applies to our treatment of animals. There are some extremists who would equate the dignity of animals with that of humans, failing to understand that human abilities are exceptional and unique due to the capacities of our soul, made in the image of God. Others think it immoral for us to make...

During FY16, the USCCB received federal grants totaling a whopping $91,132,305 According to the USASpending.gov, the top programs carried out by the USCCB, on behalf of the Obama Administration were:

It was as if Our Lady la Madonna “had been put on punishment,” in the words of a Shalom Publishing House representative (Shalom Publishing has always been a major attraction of the CL Rimini meeting for the selling of religious books, rosaries, posters and sacred objects). The representative was further quoted as saying to la Repubblica television reporters, that organizers of the Rimini meeting did not require her to cover the statue, but she decided to do so, "because if anything happened, I would feel responsible". In the comment of il Giornale, this is the result of the climate of...

Fraternal Correction, the Neglected Virtue Msgr. Charles Pope • September 5, 2016 • In the first reading from today’s Mass (Tuesday of the 23rd Week), St. Paul is practically livid that the Corinthians have not sought to correct and discipline an erring brother who is indulging in illicit sexual union. He orders them to act immediately, lest the brother be lost on the day of judgment.Today, when things are arguably as bad or worse than in the first century, St. Paul’s anger might will flair at the silence of the Church—the clergy and the laity—in the face of public...

Affirmation today of the dogma that outside the Church there is no salvation (extra ecclesiam nulla salus) is usually immediately qualified with “but…” The qualification is meant as a sign by whoever affirms the teaching that he does not really fall within the parameters set by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, eighteenth-century godfather of liberalism, in his most important book, The Social Contract: “Whoever dares to say outside the Church is no salvation should be driven from the state.” That declaration flowed naturally from Rousseau’s liberal conception of freedom as being free to do whatever is humanly possible, including what Christians know to...

Teachings on Human Labor from the Catechism Msgr. Charles Pope • September 4, 2016 • Today is Labor Day in the United States. With this in mind, I thought it would be good to reflect on some teachings about human labor that are given in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The text from the catechism is shown in italics, while my commentary is in blue. Human labor precedes original sin and hence is not an imposition due to sin but part of our original dignity. God places [Man] in the garden. There he lives “to till it and...

Canon 212 (paragraph 3) informs us that Christifideles (i.e., vide Canonem 207, both clerics and laics) have the ius immo et aliquando officium conformably with their scientia, competentia, et praestantia, "ut sententiam suam de his quae ad bonum Ecclesiae pertinent sacris Pastoribus manifestent" [Anglice "the right, and, indeed, sometimes the duty, according to their knowledge, competence, and dignity, to manifest to Sacred Shepherds their judgement about those things which pertain to the good of the Church"]. The text goes on to add that they also have this right and (even) duty to make their judgement known to the rest of...

Four Depictions of Discipleship – A Homily for the 23rd Sunday of the Year Msgr. Charles Pope • September 3, 2016 • In today’s Gospel Jesus defines four Demands of discipleship. We can look at them one by one. I. The CONTEXT of the discipleship. The text says that large crowds were following Jesus and so he turned to address them. Just about any time you find a mention of a large crowd fasten your seat belts and prepare for a hard teaching. Jesus didn’t trust the big crowds who were often out for the goodies. They were looking...

It is emblematic of the topsy-turvy world of contemporary Catholicism that Bishop Robert Barron is now considered one of the faith's top apologists. I cannot imagine how any apologist could be less effective at evangelizing or converting anyone, or less effective at persuading potential apostates to reconsider leaving the faith. Here are some of the Bishop's most well-known snippets: 1. While there may be a hell, there's a good chance that it is empty. Whatever you do, you'll probably be saved anyway. 2. The Crusades were wrong. 3. Many of the most famous stories in the Bible are not literally...

"Our living souls" Question: Is it true that the body and soul die at our death but the part of the soul called the spirit never dies, which is why we can have the Communion of Saints with those already in heaven?— Armel Audet, via email Answer: No, not exactly. Some distinctions are necessary to properly answer your question. The “spirit” is not a third entity of the human person. Rather, it is an aspect of the human soul. The spirit is the part of our soul that distinguishes us from the animals and other living things. God has breathed...