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Backlash to Italian Bishops Two bishops in northern Italy trumpet Holy Communion for adulterers BELLUNO, Italy (ChurchMilitant.com) - Two Italian bishops are under fire after pushing for Holy Communion for the divorced and civilly remarried — unions considered adulterous according to Catholic teaching. In a Nov. 22 pastoral letter, Bp. Renato Marangoni of the Belluno-Feltre diocese in northern Italy wrote apologetically to those who have left their sacramental marriage and found a new civil spouse or partner, describing such situations as "experiences of union." He said to divorcees who have entered new relationships, "There is a first word I wish to confide to you:...

Bishop sides with priest who denied ‘married’ lesbian judge communion PETITION: Stand with priest who refused communion to lesbian 'married' judge. Click here. GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan, November 27, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — Bishop David Walkowiak of Grand Rapids, Michigan has expressed his support for Fr. Scott Nolan, the priest at St. Stephen's Catholic Church in his diocese who has come under fire after a lesbian judge complained to a local media outlet that he had refused her Holy Communion because she is "married" to a woman. In his statement, Bishop Walkowiak thanked the judge, Sara Smolenski, chief judge of the Kent County District Court, for her...

ROME — When Stephen K. Bannon was still heading Breitbart News, he went to the Vatican to cover the canonization of John Paul II and make some friends. High on his list of people to meet was an archconservative American cardinal, Raymond Burke, who had openly clashed with Pope Francis.In one of the cardinal’s antechambers, amid religious statues and book-lined walls, Cardinal Burke and Mr. Bannon — who is now President Trump’s anti-establishment eminence — bonded over their shared worldview. They saw Islam as threatening to overrun a prostrate West weakened by the erosion of traditional Christian values, and viewed...

December 5, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – A Catholic German ethics professor calls Cardinal Müller's recent remarks on homosexuality “unbearable” and claims that, just as the Church's teaching on the death penalty has changed, the teaching on homosexuality is also open to change. Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), has been under constant sharp criticism since his 21 November interview with LifeSiteNews, in which he had drawn a link between homosexuality and clerical sex abuse. Several prominent Catholics – among them Father Klaus Mertes, Father Ansgar Wucherpfennig, General Vicar Klaus Pfeffer –...

Enough with all the globe-trotting… Francis cracks down on “Bp.” Athanasius Schneider, orders him to reduce his traveling abroad We all know that “Pope” Francis is a big friend of migration, but even he has his limits when it comes to tolerating persistent moving about. The expert Vatican journalist Marco Tosatti reports on his blog today that “Bishop” Athanasius Schneider, auxiliary of the diocese of Maria Santissima in Astana, Kazakhstan, has “received a verbal [i.e. oral] injunction from the Vatican asking him to reduce the frequency of his trips abroad” (“Il Papa Impone ‘i Domiciliari’ al Vescovo Athanasius Schneider”, Stilum...

Editor's note: This analysis has been written by a priest who asked that it be published anonymously over concern of being disciplined for raising concerns about a papal document.May 14, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – I said it right from the beginning, when Amoris Laetitia was first published, with its infamous Chapter 8 that allows individual conscience to trump objective moral law and thus effectively eliminate the notion of intrinsic moral evil: The real issue is not Holy Communion for the divorced and civilly remarried. After all, Pope Francis had already streamlined the annulment process, to allow declarations of nullity which were...

Cardinal Wuerl says apostolic exhortation ‘is a call to compassionate accompaniment’ Cardinal Donald Wuerl has issued a broad and detailed pastoral plan for parishes to implement Pope Francis’s post-synodal apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia (“The Joy of Love”). “Amoris Laetitia is a call to compassionate accompaniment in helping all to experience Christ’s love and mercy,” the Archbishop of Washington said in the 58-page pastoral plan. The plan, “Sharing in the Joy of Love in Marriage and Family,” was posted on the archdiocesan website late on March 3. Cardinal Wuerl planned to officially introduce the document to the archdiocese with a Mass...

The Vatican's former doctrine chief has penned an essay responding to senior Cardinals who have recently described Amoris Laetitia as a "paradigm shift" for the Church. A “paradigm shift...by which the Church takes on the criteria of modern society to be assimilated by it” isn’t a “development” of doctrine, but “a corruption” of it, Cardinal Gerhard Müller wrote in a lengthy First Things essay. Müller is the former Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. His essay answered the question, “Can there be ‘paradigm shifts’ in the interpretation of the deposit of faith?” Vatican Secretary of State...

In a stunning move of the utmost importance, the Vatican today announced that Pope Francis has decided to send Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta to Chile to listen to the victims that accuse Bishop Juan Barros of being present when they were abused by the country’s most notorious predator, the Rev. Fernando Karadima, and of covering this up.The Vatican statement, issued in Italian and Spanish, said: As a result of some information received recently regarding the case of Monsignor Juan de La Cruz Barros Madrid, Bishop of Osorno (Chile), the Holy Father has decided that Msgr. Charles Scicluna, the archbishop...

In November, two external researchers received a warning from the Catholic University of Milan because of their adherence to the Filial Correctio. Marco Tosatti has published a letter of one of them on his blog. In December, they discovered that they had been eliminated from the list of collaborators of the university. Contrary to what they were promised, they did not receive a contract for January. The two were never contacted personally. In the meantime, the university cancelled their previous activities from its webpage. One of the victims is Dr Giuseppe Reguzzoni. He was for more than twenty years an...

In the wake of an indisputably liberalizing Pastoral Letter on Marriage and the Family as published by the German Bishops two days ago, there comes now to us a more encouraging event from the neighboring country of Switzerland. One Swiss Bishop now publicly defends the traditional Catholic teaching on marriage. Bishop Vitus Huonder of Chur, Grisons, issued yesterday, 2 February, a fairly short set of pastoral-doctrinal guidelines for the priests of his own diocese as his specific commentary on the post-synodal exhortation, Amoris Laetitia. After some introductory remarks concerning the papal document, Bishop Huonder himself stresses the importance of the...

Over the weekend – and especially after the troubling new public (and promiscuous) guidelines from the Bishops of Malta concerning Communion for the “remarried” divorcees – more questions have now been raised with regard to Cardinal Gerhard Müller’s own recent and explicit endorsement of the papal document Amoris Laetitia. For, the cardinal called that Apostolic Exhortation both “doctrinally sound” and “not a danger to the Faith.” But at least two demurring voices have thus come to us now, one from Germany, and one from the United States. First, let us consider – and here I translate the entire post –...

It turns out that the most important footnote in 'Amoris Laetitia' may be one that's not there, because a key passage of the document is lifted almost verbatim from a 1995 essay in theology by Archbishop Victor Fernandez -- raising troubling questions about Fernandez's role as ghostwriter, and the magisterial force of his ideas. [EditorÂ’s note: In this essay, Professor Michael Pakaluk of the Catholic University of America examines the role of Argentine Archbishop Victor Fernandez, a theological adviser to Pope Francis, in Amoris Laetitia, the pontiffÂ’s document on the family. Crux invited Fernandez to respond, and his comments appear...

As the ecclesiastical crisis continues to deepen in 2017, I have found myself facing a certain exhaustion; a feeling that, while knowing the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church, that Christ will have the final victory, there is no respite from the near-constant series of assaults from the enemies of God’s truth. I know that many of you feel the same way. While we here at OnePeterFive believe we have an obligation to continue to cover the news of what is happening within our beloved Church, however unpleasant, there is also need for reassurance, a rediscovery...

One of the top bishops in the Catholic Church, American Cardinal Raymond Burke, said there is "a very serious division in the Church which has to be mended" or it "could develop into a formal schism." Cardinal Burke, the former head of the highest court at the Vatican, made his remarks in reference to the ongoing public debate over Pope Francis' letter on the family, Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love). In the letter, it is unclear whether the Pope is saying it is okay for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics -- who are objectively living in adultery, a serious...

ROME, December 23, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – In a new interview with the German newspaper Der Spiegel, one of the four Cardinals of the dubia has said, “Whoever thinks that persistent adultery and the reception of Holy Communion are compatible is a heretic and promotes schism.” Cardinal Walter Brandmuller made the remark while speaking with Spiegel reporter Walter Mayr about the dubia – the as yet unanswered questions asked openly and officially by four Cardinals seeking to have the Pope clarify potentially heretical interpretations of his Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia. In a separate interview released today by Vatican Radio, close papal...

Catholic Bishop Athanasius Schneider, echoing concerns that some bishops apparently are misrepresenting Church teaching on marriage, divorce, and Communion, said a "certain type of schism already exists in the Church" over these issues, and it is a "bizarre form of schism" because the clergy who reportedly are promoting error are using their authority to smear other bishops who are teaching the truth. The truth-tellers are being labeled schismatics, said the bishop. He added that this "schism" and the scandal and confusion it generates is giving rise to an "anti-gospel," a worldly gospel that looks divine on the outside but is...

In an interview originally published in French weekly Homme Noveau, Cardinal Robert Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments weighed in, if somewhat obliquely, on the question of the dubia. A quick (and slightly cleaned up) machine translation of the Spanish reprint in InfoCatólica gives us a somewhat rough, but understandable rendering: The Cardinal feels called to intervene as Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, because the current disorientation involves three sacraments: marriage, penance and the Eucharist. According to the Cardinal, the confusion we draws its lifeblood from the...

Cardinals Brandmüller, Burke, Caffarra and Meiser have performed a signal service to the Church by sending five dubia on the apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia to the Holy See, requesting an authoritative clarification of the meaning of that document, and then making public the text of the dubia when no response to them was given. Cardinal Burke has performed a further service to the Church by explaining this initiative in an interview with Edward Pentin of the National Catholic Register on Nov. 15th 2016, and stating that if no response was given to the dubia the cardinals would have to make...

After the wonderful news yesterday that Bishop Athanasius Schneider has come publicly to the aid of the courageous Four Cardinals who are challenging Pope Francis over the much-contested post-synodal exhortation Amoris Laetitia, a second Polish Bishop – after Auxiliary Bishop Józef Wróbel of Lublin, Poland – has now raised his voice in a similar way. Bishop Jan Watroba, President of the Council for the Family of the Polish Bishops’ Conferences, has now made a statement where he declares that he believes that the publication of the Four Cardinals Letter is “not reprehensible.” According to the Catholic newspaper Die Tagespost, Watroba...