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Much has been made of the May 3rd meeting that took place in Rome between certain members of the German Bishops Conference and representatives of the Holy See to discuss the former’s controversial so-called “pastoral handout” allowing the Protestant spouse of a Catholic to receive Holy Communion under certain Bergoglian conditions.According to the German Bishops’ news service:A precondition is that the Protestant partner “after a deep discernment in a spiritual conversation with the priest or another pastoral worker comes to the decision of conscience to affirm the Faith of the Catholic Church, as well as to end a ‘serious spiritual...

“I may have seen some things in poor taste, but I didn’t detect anybody out to offend the church,” head of New York Catholic diocese says of Monday night event Wonder where Rihanna scored that bejeweled papal-looking hat for Monday night’s Met Ball celebrating the Costume Institute’s exhibit of Vatican fashion?Turns out the miter was a loaner — from Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the head of New York’s Roman Catholic diocese.“The news said she was wearing a tiara,” Dolan said Tuesday in an interview on SiriusXM’s The Catholic Channel, noting that it was in fact a miter of the sort worn...

COMMENTARY: Failure to give German bishops proper directives, based on the clear doctrine and practice of the Church, points to a drift towards apostasy from the truth. Cardinal Willem Jacobus Eijk The German bishops’ conference voted by a large majority in favor of directives which entail that a Protestant married to a Catholic may receive the Eucharist after meeting a number of conditions: he must have carried out an examination of conscience with a priest or with another person with pastoral responsibilities; he must have affirmed the faith of the Catholic Church, as well as having wished to put an...

Cardinal Eijk: “Pope Francis Completely Incomprehensible” Pope Francis' wish that the German bishops should try to achieve unanimity regarding the acceptance of Protestant Communion is “completely incomprehensible”, according to Cardinal Willem Eijk of Utrecht, Netherlands. Writing in ncregister.com (May 7), Eijk states the obvious, that even if all German bishops agree to “allow” Protestant Communion, it is still contrary to the Faith, “The practice of the Catholic Church, based on her faith, is not determined and does not change statistically when a majority of an episcopal conference votes in favor of it, not even if unanimously.” Eijk accuses Francis of...

A few weeks ago we were told—by usually reliable sources—that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had rejected the German bishops’ proposal for administering Communion to the non-Catholic spouses of Catholics. We were further informed that Pope Francis had approved the CDF decision. Evidently that report was inaccurate. Or if was accurate at the time, the decision has been rescinded. Now the Pope has instructed the German bishops to seek consensus—ideally, unanimity—on the hotly disputed question, for the sake of “ecclesial communion.” Three observations here: 1) The role of the Roman Pontiff is to resolve disputes among the...

After several German bishops appealed to the Vatican over an alleged proposal to allow non-Catholic spouses in mixed faith marriages to receive communion, the Church’s top authority on doctrine has sent the ball back, saying Pope Francis wants Germany’s bishops to come to an agreement among themselves. Released after a 4-hour meeting between German bishops and the heads of certain curial offices, a Vatican communique said that Archbishop Luis Ladaria SJ, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, told the bishops that the pope “appreciates the ecumenical commitment of the German bishops” and asked them “to find, in...

The head of ecumenical affairs for the German episcopal conference has urged his fellow bishops not to equivocate in their commitment to allow Protestant spouses in mixed marriages to receive the Eucharist at Catholic Masses.“Enough is enough! The time has come to no longer put off a well-justified decision – even if some people still insist on contradicting it,” said Bishop Gerhard Feige of Magdeburg.“Missing a chance like this would be both shameful and macabre!” he told the German weekly Die Zeit just days before he and several other German bishops were to head to Rome for a May 3...

On April 23, 2018, when attempting to make a new post in a Facebook group, for the first time ever, suddenly while posting, I received the following message: Action Blocked - You're temporarily restricted from joining and posting to groups that you do not manage until Thursday at 12:39am. (which is exactly 3 days later) - If you think you're seeing this by mistake, please let us know. (Note: When pasting this document into Free Republic, it seems that most of the special formatting is lost, such as bold, italics, underlined words and embedded links. To read the document with...

In May, there is to be an historic meeting with the CDF and some German bishops concerning the recent German pastoral guidelines on intercommunion. Many well-informed observers of this situation worry that this meeting might turn into a compromise and into an official Vatican approval of the progressivist German approach with regard to Protestant spouses of Catholics and their access to Holy Communion. It might amount to a similarly grave undermining of the Church’s sacramental order as with Amoris Laetitia and its aftermath. While the world has been watching the Alfie case, there has been much going on in Germany...

German Liberalism is a Cancer in the Church Cancer: a terrible disease, with which we are, as many of you, terribly familiar. Therefore, we do not make use of it as a metaphor unadvisedly. Since the age of the Council, and before it, Liberal Catholicism of the German extraction has been a life-threatening cancer metastasizing throughout Holy Mother Church. A Pole and a good German tried to reverse the disease, but the deep pockets of the German Bishops who funded the "St. Gallen Mafia" got what they paid for in 2013: increasing confusion throughout the Church. Their first Trojan Horse...

In the March 22 letter, published in full below, the seven bishops say they “do not consider” the German bishops’ decision on Feb. 20 to allow Protestant spouses to receive Holy Communion in some cases to be “right” because they do not believe the issue to be a pastoral one but rather a “question of the faith and unity of the Church which is not subject to a vote.”  The letter is signed by Cardinal Rainer Woelki of Cologne, Archbishop Ludwig Schick of Bamberg, Bishop Gregor Hanke of Eichstätt, Bishop Konrad Zdarsa of Augsburg, Bishop Wolfgang Ipolt of Görlitz, Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer...

German Bishops: Pope Francis Is Fine With Protestant Communion The press speaker of the German bishops writing on dbk.de (April 19) has denied that the Vatican rejected the decision of the German bishops to give communion to Protestants. According to him reports which say the opposite, are “false”. The denial confirms that Munich Cardinal Reinhard Marx will be meeting Pope Francis to discuss the matter. The outcome of the meeting is predictable: Francis will create confusion allowing all parties to claim that he is on their side while accepting Protestant Communion. Protestant Communion has been imposed in the "Catholic" Church...

Sources confirm that, with the Holy Father’s approval, the Vatican’s head of doctrine has thrown out the bishops’ pastoral guide allowing Holy Communion for some Protestant spouses, but the Pope wishes the rejection letter to remain secret. Edward Pentin The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, with the approval of Pope Francis, has written a letter to German bishops rejecting their proposal to allow some Protestant spouses to receive Holy Communion, but the Pope does not wish the letter to be made public, the Register has learned. Sources in the Vatican and Germany say that Archbishop Luis Ladaria, the...

In the wake of the 4 April revelation that seven German bishops have turned to the Vatican in protest against the recent decision of the German Bishops’ Conference in favor of intercommunion for Protestant spouses of Catholic, Ulrich Ruh, a German Catholic theologian, now claims that this move is also a vote of mistrust, not only against Cardinal Reinhard Marx, but also against Pope Francis himself. As the German magazine FOCUS reports, there is, after five years of Pope Francis’ reign, a growing resistance among some German bishops who do not “wish to go along quietly any longer with the...

Guest Op-Ed: Remaining faithful to Christ By Veronica A. Arntz Highlights from Cardinal Sarah and Fr. Thomas Weinandy This past week, there were two announcements about pieces of literature that left the liberals quaking (and complaining loudly). The first is a preface, written by Cardinal Robert Sarah, for a new book on Communion, who called for a return to receiving Communion on the tongue while kneeling, rather than in the hands while standing. While many readers of this blog already follow this request, we should rejoice at this call for greater reverence. The second is an address, which was given by...

The Francis Effect meeting the German Heresiarchy leads to an explosive decision of cataclysmic consequences. Naturally, this Rome will not reject this aberration. This Vatican will welcome it. This pontificate will rejoice in it. Report and translations from CNA/EWTN:

We did not wake up one fine day in 2017 to find ourselves suddenly confronted with Eucharistic sacrilege being promoted from on high. There was a long, slow process that led to this moment. It consisted in the gradual dilution of the sacredness of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and of the Blessed Sacrament at its heart, with institutionally tolerated sacrilege along the way. Fifty years of desacralization has ended in the temerity of contradicting the entire Catholic tradition about the most holy of all the Church’s mysteries.The first major step was the allowance of communion in the hand...

A “crucified cow” has been erected as “art” at the center of a consecrated Catholic church in the Belgian town of Borgloon. Local Catholics are urging the local bishop to have it removed and offer public prayers of reparation, but so far it has remained in place.The “art” exhibit by Tom Herck is to be displayed until early December in the small parish church of Saint John the Baptist.The “artist” went through the grueling process of actually nailing the 500 kg corpse of a cow to a cross before covering it with silicone paint. The cow on the cross,...

I saw this video on Hilary White's Twitter and it left me with a sour stomach. When that passed I felt the deep urge to throw down my gauntlet, like a medieval knight. This is a priest and he's acting like a third rate performer in a run down comedy club. Novus Ordo: Another Liturgical Abuse Priest on altar strips off vestments down to a referee's uniform and then mocks Beniction by using a baby.

The archbishop tasked with leading the Vatican’s pro-life academy says the Pope’s controversial teaching document on marriage opens Holy Communion to those in public grave sin. Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia says Amoris Laetitia calls for “integration” of those in “irregular situations,” including “sacramental integration.” The archbishop, who serves as Grand Chancellor of the St. John Paul II Pontifical Institute for the Study of Marriage and Family, famously commissioned a homoerotic painting containing his likeness for his former cathedral. Asked in a recent email interview with the Diocese of Charleston newspaper The Catholic Miscellany to describe what Pope Francis’s frequently used concept...