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A Hunger for the Truth Americans Turn Ear to Benedict XVI By Carl Anderson NEW HAVEN, Connecticut, MAY 17, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Packing venue after venue during Benedict XVI’s visit last year, Americans showed an eagerness and enthusiasm to hear his Gospel message that many did not expect. They exhibited a hunger -- for the truth and for moral leadership. And -- despite a trend in the media to be very critical in their coverage of Benedict XVI -- more than a year later, by wide margins, Americans in general -- and American Catholics in particular -- have a positive view...

The Catholic historian, A. Dufourcq, called the papacy of 1447 to 1527, la papauté princière, “the papacy of princes.�[1] This trenchant appellation conveys Fr. Maurice Sheehan’s meaning when he says “these popes were more men of culture or rulers than popes.�[2] Regardless of the scandalous particulars of their military extravagances, personal profligacy, or political intrigues, what is common to these popes is that “they had other interests, other things on their minds besides being pope.�[3] Therein lies the problem. In explaining how the Renaissance Papacy was a cause of the Reformation, we should not fall into a monism, as if...

Saint Malachy  Prophecies about 112 popes until the end of the world. Note: The Church does not lean on private revelation for doctrinal matters, but it does not oppose to the faithful obtaining benefit from them so long as they don't go against our faith.   This analysis focuses on the last five Popes in the context of the prophecies of Saint Malachy. + + +   Saint Malachy was born in Amagh Ireland in 1094, he lived a religious life as a monk, then he was ordained priest and finally Bishop. He was canonized in 1199 by Pope Clement III....

Mel Gibson By Mark Judge So now Mel Gibson is trashing the war effort. As reported on the Today show, New York Times and everywhere, he has called the death of American troops in Iraq “human sacrafice.” I have no idea how many folks politicalmavens.com reaches, so this could be a cry in the wilderness, but: folks, this is not a story. There is a certain segment of the conservative Catholic right that is strongly anti-war. Check out the magazine New Oxford Review (linked at the bottom). Like Mel, the NOR has been accused of anti-Semitism. They are more hysterical...

by Russell Shaw Other Articles by Russell ShawContact this Author Communication in a Powder-Keg World 09/22/06 Father Federico Lombardi, S.J., new director of the Vatican press office, recently remarked that he saw no need to interpret the thinking of Pope Benedict XVI. The pope does an excellent job of speaking for himself and doesn't need interpreters, the priest explained. In This Article...Here’s What I MeantUnintended ConsequencesImagine That Here’s What I Meant Poor Father Lombardi! Scarcely had he uttered those sentiments when all Hades broke loose over Pope Benedict's comments about Islam. All of sudden the director of the sala stamp found...

Pope's apology fails to halt Islamic uproar By Michael Hirst and Nick Pisa in Rome (Filed: 17/09/2006) Muslims leaders around the world demanded a more personal apology from the Pope last night after the Vatican said he "sincerely regrets" the offence caused by remarks which they claimed had insulted Islam. Senior Vatican officials tried to damp down fury over the speech in which the Pope quoted from a medieval text saying that the Prophet Mohammed had brought the world "only evil and inhuman" things. Activists from the Daughters of Faith protest against the Pope Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican's secretary...

THE Muslim world's scathing reaction to Pope Benedict's comments on Islam is the biggest challenge to face the pontiff yet and raises concerns over his security, diplomatic and Church sources said today. "My personal reaction was: 'This is a striking statement. Was it a rare slip-up?'" one of the sources said about the Pope's speech in Germany last Tuesday.

Christians are Jews' best friends Toronto Sun Sat, August 12, 2006 By MICHAEL COREN One of the most difficult things about spending time in Israel is returning home, as I did two weeks ago. As dangerous as life might be in the Jewish state at the moment, daily existence is layered in significance. Then it's back to North America, where the trivial is made to seem profound. I refer to Mel Gibson's drunken stupidity when he made various repugnant comments about Jewish people. As a Roman Catholic with three Jewish grandparents, and someone who worries every day about the...

VATICAN CITY, SEPT. 1, 2006 (Zenit.org).- The digital photo archive of L'Osservatore Romano is now on-line, replete with papal photos from as far back as 1930. The large-scale initiative now gives both professionals and private individuals access to thousands of photographs of the Pope and the Holy See via the Internet. "It has been an important endeavor of historical reconstruction which called for huge research commitment," Giuseppe Colombara, director of the photographic service of the Vatican paper, said in today's Italian edition of L'Osservatore Romano. The project required L'Osservatore staff to digitalize thousands of photographs which up to now were...

It was a move so smooth and bold, accomplished with such backstage bureaucratic finesse, that it was worthy of Dick Cheney himself. The éminence grise who had long whispered in the ear of power and who had helped oversee the selection process ended up selecting himself. In Cheneyesque fashion, he searched far and wide for a pope by looking around the room and swiftly deciding he was the best man for the job. Just like Mr. Cheney, once the quintessentially deferential staff man with the Secret Service code name "Back Seat," the self-effacing Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has clambered over the...

OP-ED COLUMNIST Do not be fooled by the talking heads in Rome. The journalists handicapping the papal election may sound as confident as ever, authoritatively quoting anonymous cardinals and exclusive sources deep in Opus Dei. But our profession is in trouble. A specter is haunting the punditocracy - the specter of Intrade. That's an online futures market, based in Dublin and used by more than 50,000 speculators worldwide who put their money where our mouths are. They're expected to spend at least $1 million on futures contracts tied to the election of the pope. And if recent history is any...

LOS ANGELES, April 8 - Lily Velazquez, who turned 18 on Thursday, is the sixth of 12 children of Mexican immigrants in a poor suburb of Los Angeles. She considers herself both a devoted Catholic and a hopeless sinner. She attends Mass every Sunday but has had two children out of wedlock. She thinks abortion is murder but chafes at the Vatican's ban on birth control. She mourns the death of Pope John Paul II but hopes his successor will be "new and different." "My mom gets mad if I don't go to church," Ms. Velazquez said, as her 2-year-old...

OP-ED COLUMNIST Here's my prophecy about the next pope: He will allow married men to become priests. This is simply a matter of survival: all over the world, the Catholic Church is running out of priests. In the United States, there was one priest for every 800 Catholics in 1965, while now there is one for every 1,400 Catholics - and the average age is nearly 60. In all the United States, with 65 million Catholics, only 479 priests were ordained in 2002. The upshot is that the Catholic Church is losing ground around the world to evangelical and especially...

What papal name do you think the next pope will take? As I search the list there have never been 3 popes taking the same name in a row. Bookies are giving 7-4 that the next pope will take John Paul III. There was never a double name before John Paul I. Not interested in this thread who will become Pope, just what name do you think he will take? Is there some Pope that the next Pope will want to pattern after besides John Paul II that any new Pope would see the Church in need of? If it...

Jeff Robbins/Associated Press John Paul II's teachings on social issues resonated with the conservative shift in American opinion in the 1980's and 1990's. He celebrated a World Youth Day Mass in Aurora, Colo., in 1993. IT is hard to remember now that when Pope John Paul II was elected 27 years ago, the church he inherited was destabilized and dispirited. His immediate predecessor, John Paul I, had been found dead in bed one morning after only 34 days in office. The pope before that, Paul VI, spent his last years melancholy and withdrawn, his accomplishments overshadowed by the uproar...

ST PETER'S CHAIR AT ROME Feast: January 22 [See Phaebeus, de Cathedra in qua St. Petrus Rome sedit, & de antiquitate et praestantia solemnitatis Cathedrae Romanae. Romae 1666, 8vo., also Chatelain, Notes on the Martyrology, p. 326] St Peter having triumphed over the devil in the East, pursued him to Rome in the person of Simon Magus. He who had formerly trembled at the voice of a poor maid now feared not the very throne of idolatry and superstition. The capital of the empire of the world, and the centre of impiety, called for the zeal of the prince...

I received this question: How should a person who seeks the truth act in a period when bad Popes are reigning, as, for example, during such a time in the Renaissance? Infallibility in the Extraordinary Papal Teaching This question is not very difficult to answer in terms of Catholic doctrine. The source of truth is Revelation, that is Scriptures and Tradition. The Catholic Magisterium gives us the correct interpretation of Revelation. The Popes are infallible only when they teach a doctrine ex cathedra, when they officially invoke their prerogative of infallibility over that doctrine. In such a case, one cannot...

Prophecy of St Malachy When I read The Year of Three Popes by Peter Hebblethwaite (about the events of 1978 which saw the death of Paul VI, the election and death of John Paul I, and then the election of John Paul II) he mentions the spate of editorials in the Osservatore Romano and the spate of letters to the editor in the Times of London at the time of the conclaves about what the mottos attributed to the dead pope or the next pope by St Malachy in his prophecies. Enthralled, I went to the library and looked through...

Vatican papers offering the first direct evidence that Pope Pius XII tried to help Jews during the Second World War have been discovered by an Italian expert. The documents undermine critics' claims that Pius - condemned by critics as "Hitler's Pope" - put the interests of Rome first and did not protest about the fate of Jews during the Holocaust. A letter, signed by the Pope in October 1940 and sent to Giuseppe Palatucci, Bishop of Campagna in southern Italy, instructed him to give money "in aid to interned Jews", to whom Pius also referred in an earlier letter as...

Everyone assumes that John Paul II's successor will be a conservative. Don't bet on it. The Vatican, the 109-acre inter-national headquarters of Roman Catholicism, works at the leisurely pace of an institution that has seen it all over 2,000 years of history. This is a place that closes shop every day at 1 p.m., where decisions that might take weeks in other organizations can be "studied" for years, awaiting an "opportune" moment to be announced. It is not accustomed to working under pressure of tight deadlines, as it showed in late April, when all 13 American cardinals were summoned for...