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Pro-Francis journalist Mollie Wilson O'Reilly asks the pope to “stop making every pope a saint” saying that it is “a pretty big coincidence for all of the popes since Pius XII — ahem, Venerable Pius XII — to have been men of uncommon heroic virtue”. Writing in the liberal Catholic magazine Commonweal (February 8) she adds, "If the modern Church really has managed to elect an unbroken string of papal saints in the past century, well, that’s impressive, but considering that the pope is the one who gets to make that call, it’s also a bit...suspect.” In 2014, Pope Francis...

Editors’ note: This is a preview of our August 17 issue, which will contain four responses to Pope Benedict’s Summorum pontificum, which will make the so-called Tridentine Mass more widely available than it has been since Vatican II. The other respondents will be Peter Jeffery, Joseph Komonchak, and Bernard P. Prusak. Pope Benedict XVI’s Summorum pontificum gives broad permission for the celebration of the Tridentine Mass. The motu proprio also permits use of preconciliar liturgical rites for all the sacraments, with the exception of ordination. It lays the groundwork for the creation of two liturgical establishments within the Latin-rite Catholic...

As the flap over alleged anti-Catholic writings by two John Edwards campaign bloggers devolves into a shouting match between conservative religious voices and liberal bloggers, some members of the "religious left" say they feel – again – shoved to the margins of the Democratic Party. "We're completely invisible to this debate," said Eduardo Penalver, a Cornell University law professor who writes for the liberal Catholic journal Commonweal. He said he was dissatisfied with the Edwards campaign's response. "As a constituency, the Christian left isn't taken all that seriously," Penalver said. Democrats -- and Edwards in particular -- have embraced the...

In the Chicago offices of US Catholic, a monthly magazine, the editor held an emergency meeting yesterday with her staff to discuss coverage of controversy. In New York, the editor of the biweekly Commonweal magazine arrived at his office to find a blunt e-mail message from a critic declaring, ''You're next." And at Boston College, the school's president was asked at a faculty lunch to explain whether the ability of professors to question teachings of the Roman Catholic Church is now under threat at the Jesuit university. The announcement Friday that the Rev. Thomas J. Reese, an oft-quoted commentator on...

SCHIAVO CASE REVEALS MORAL PRIORITIES Catholic League president William Donohue issued the following news release today on the Terri Schiavo case: “Mention Terri Schiavo to left-wing Christians and feminists and immediately they panic. That’s because they find it impossible to think about euthanasia without first thinking about abortion. And anything that might jeopardize their precious right to abort a child must be resisted at all cost. Tragically, as this case has revealed, even when the specter of domestic violence is raised, it is not enough to get the ‘pro-women’ advocates to take Terri’s side. Consider the following. “The most left-wing...