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Once upon a time, a group of people had an idea for a country. They were far from a monolithic group of people. Each one had his own reasons for wanting to design and live in a new country of their own making. Some of them were merchants who found that the country to which they belonged was taxing them so highly that they could not make ends meet. Some of them were philosophical idealists who were uncomfortable with the abstract notion of hereditary rule. Some of them were passionate believers whose religion of choice or birth had been declared...

When Vatican I defined the personal infallibility of the Pope, it was understood by the Fathers of that Council that the teaching was incomplete: the council fathers knew that, at some time in the future, the teaching would have to be completed to address the authority of the Ordinary Magisterium as well. That task was left to Vatican II. One of the forgotten teachings of Vatican II was its definition of the infallibility of the Ordinary Magisterium: namely, that the Pope doesn't have to declare something ex cathedra in order for it to be considered infallible; that the Church's ordinary...

2:25 PM 2/7/2012 — For thirty years the Catholic bishops of the United States have trivialized their moral authority by wasting their teaching authority within the Church by embracing every liberal social initiative that came along, from expressing concern for migrants and refugees to lecturing the government on the plight of illegal aliens. All the while, Catholics were ignoring the Church's teaching on a whole host of moral issues like the infallibility of the Church's teaching on contraception without so much as a word from the bishops. Catholics in public office, like Nancy Polosi and Kathleen Sebelius, are not even...

The Catholic Church has never been immune to political correctness, and there are many "sacred cows" in the Church today that one must never criticize: women, victims of sexual abuse, unionized Catholic school teachers, etc. One group we rarely think of, however, is recent popes. It seems that every pope we can remember in our life-times has to be the best pope ever! Even Pope Benedict—who comes closest my own idea of "the best pope ever"—is just a little too found of referring to his immediate predecessor as "The Great," an ancient title with a particular meaning, which usually takes...

Larry, like most people, is totally misinformed about what the Catholic Church teaches about conscience. Sarah tries to straiten him out, but it's like talking to a brick. Click on the YouTube link above. Here's the link as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JgKJ46ozTY

Larry has a problem with the new priest, and gets a lesson in Liturgical history by Sarah. Here's the link to the YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6khnt7DXOlY

Twice a year (Labor Day and Memorial Day) I enjoy a picnic provided by one of my former seminary professors, along with many of his former students, mostly from classes that came years after me. During that last one, I toasted my old teacher in gratitude for the fact that he had always maintained, in my defense, that one can still believe in the Bound Powers theory, in spite of the language used in Vatican II. He smirked, and asked the younger priests there if they had ever heard of the Bound Powers theory; and no one raised his hand....

Some years ago, on my now non-existent blog, I had written about the day I had hosted as concelebrant a Roman Catholic priest for a funeral, and how he had struggled to reconcile himself with the uncomfortable fact that the principles upon which his own ritual Church reformed their liturgy do not govern the liturgical life of the universal Catholic Church. It's an easy enough mistake to make, what with the Latin Church sui iuris being the largest of all the Churches in Catholicism, with many—if not most—Roman Catholics thinking that the Roman way of doing things is the Catholic...

As one who has made a point of actively persuing and personally instructing converts to the Catholic Faith,—rather than simply waiting for them to appear then throwing them into some “program” in which I am minimally involved—I have observed that one of the most attractive aspects of Catholicism drawing Protestant Christians as well as the “unchurched” to the Faith is the certainty and unmitigated intransigence of Catholic dogma. For the most part, the converts—and I am not ashamed of using that word, even for baptized Protestants entering the Church, inasmuch as anyone making such a change in his or her...

Because there is typically no such thing as a pulpit in the Byzantine Churches, the priest or deacon who is to preach usually stands on the soleas in front of the Royal Doors, without notes or text, and preaches extemporaneously. Likewise, the Evangelion of the Byzantine Liturgikon is an annual one, without cycles for alternate years; and the temptation to drift far from the Scriptures of the day into less appropriate subject matter, rather than explore ever new and deepening mysteries in the passages provided, is often difficult to resist. The purpose of this web site is to present my...

[This post is labeled "a followup" because it follows an article of the same name I published last year elsewhere. The initial subject was the overwelming number of abortions to eliminate Down Syndrome children, exposing how the majority of abortions performed in the United States are performed on married women who were trying to have children; but, at one point in that article, your M. Div. wrote: "In the rest of the world, the demographic is a bit different: the majority of abortions outside the United States are performed because the child in question is female." That article generated...

[Your M. Div. shares this news item, released by AsiaNews just after Pascha, 2010, as a compliment to the previous commentary and photo essay accompanying Cardnal Zen's interview. As typical for AsiaNews, the story has no byline. Keep in mind, as well, that while AsiaNews does yeoman's work covering news related to the Church in China, it still lacks competent translators; so, I've taken the liberty of cleaning it up a bit, particularly with regard to punctuation. The second picture provided here does not show Chai Ling with her huband, but with a journalist who interviewed her in a...

“It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong” (Voltaire). Some twenty-five years ago, a discussion arose in the seminary about when a priest should or should not be dressed as such. All manner of examples were thrown out for consideration: restaurants, movie theaters, baseball games (with and without altar boys), etc. One of our professors, Msgr. William B. Smith, STD, whose obituary your M. Div. wrote last year and will post here eventually, had the most lucid comment: “Whenever a priest is in a situation where being known as a priest would...

1:53 PM 5/25/2010 — There will come a day when the mad people will look at the normal people and say, "Look at these mad people because they are not like us" (St. Anthony the Great). We (I mean, me) regret to announce that the Priestly Pugilist© has been closed. There is no cabalistic reason for the site's termination at this time; and any you may come up with on your own will be the products of your own paranoia. Suffice it to say, the reasons are personal, which means they're none of your business. For the benefit of some...

The Saturday afternoon post in my rectory usually remains unopened until Tuesday morning;—there's certainly nothing I'm going to do with it on a Saturday or Sunday, and I'm off on Monday—but, for some reason I came in from Saturday evening Vespers and decided to open it today anyway. Among the bills was one of the strangest advertisements I've ever received. It's from the Trappist Monks at New Melleray Abbey in Peosta, Indiana. After a brief instruction on how the Rule of St. Benedict requires the monks to earn a living by the work of their hands, comes the deadpan pitch:...

In the few thoughts that your PP has offered about media attacks against Pope Benedict XVI during the last couple of weeks, something has been creeping around in the back of your PP’s mind. Albeit, the back of your PP’s mind is a rather dark and deleterious place—I myself try to avoid it as much as possible—filled with all manner of unfriendly spirits. The one I’ve been having to beat back more than others, however, seems to have been conjured forth by the example of so many bishops rushing to the Holy Father’s defense—in some cases, bishops who, by the...

Thank God for the Associated Press! Without them, how would the Pope ever do his job? It is interesting, is it not, that an organization that regards the Catholic Church as irrelevant force for evil is spending so much time on how the Church could improve itself? Now, with Pope Benedict XVI in good health and pushing ahead with his reforms of the Church’s liturgical Life, the AP is on the cutting edge, instructing the Church how to choose the next Pope: The sex abuse crisis engulfing the Catholic Church will mean more vigorous background checks when it comes to...

The event we remember this evening was not something that surprised our Lord, nor was it a disappointment to him. Many of his own disciples, we know, did not understand how what was happening was actually intended by our Lord. Peter, himself, the head of the Apostles, tried to prevent it in the Garden on the Mount of Olives as we read last night, until our Lord corrected him. Those of you who may have taken Latin in high school might remember this phrase... Lustra sex qui iam peracta, tempus implens corporis, se volente, natus ad hoc. It was a...

No doubt you’ve heard the story about how the Pope refused to “defrock” (a term not found in the Canon Law of the Catholic Church) a priest who abused 200 deaf children. It’s been on television news because it was in the New York Times (remember that network news decides what to cover based on what’s in the Times); and, of course, whenever the Times in involved, the truth is hard to find. The story is actually an old one. The priest in question, Father Lawrence Murphy, abused his victims between 1950 and 1974, while assigned to a school for...