A sub-category of News.
The Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF)—in what has been described as a “crackdown”—recently released new norms for discerning apparitions. Revising a 1978 document on the topic, the updated norms, as a general rule, suspend judgment on the miraculous nature of alleged apparitions—arguably reflecting a neo-Modernist discomfort with the supernatural. Under the…
Writing this column in early May, I am aware of three very ancient feasts that are not being celebrated this year even in most Latin Mass communities: the Finding or Invention of the Holy Cross on May 3, St. John Before the Latin Gate on May 6, and the Apparition of St. Michael (at Italy’s…
Why does the pope think so poorly of us? Conservative Catholics, that is, whom he maligns on a regular basis, accusing us, as he did most recently in an interview on 60 Minutes, of being “closed up inside a dogmatic box.” We’ve got this “suicidal attitude,” he tells us, the result of forever clinging to…
In her October 1936 diary entry, Saint Faustina described the chilling behaviors she witnessed in her glimpse of the Netherworld. She was aghast, as were the shepherd children at Fatima when they were granted a vision of Hell in July 1917. The scenes were horrible, monstrous, terrifying. Fatima’s Sister Lucia later described the “shrieks and…
Don’t laugh. Over the past sixty years, such questions were taken quite seriously. In the 1970s, Christ was depicted as a clown in a runaway-hit Broadway musical, Godspell, and as a hippy guru in Jesus Christ Superstar. These strange renderings became de rigueur in not a few Catholic parishes. All these enormities were not to…
For this mighty Feast of Pentecost we first scrabble after some context to enrich our participation. The sacred liturgical celebration of the mysteries of our salvation make us present to them and them to us. Sacramental reality is not inferior to sensible reality. Indeed, it embraces and elevates it and us, it transforms us. In…
In modern society, where the word ‘love’ is spewed so frequently and with broad meaning, it is appropriate to question its sincerity and fruitfulness. There is no doubt that the definition of love is far deeper than our secular world projects and it encompasses a higher purpose than feelings and emotions. This is evident in…
The patriotic song “Flower of Scotland” has become so popular that it is considered by many to be Scotland’s unofficial national anthem. Although it was written as recently as the 1960s, the song was inspired by the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, at which a Scottish army under Robert the Bruce defeated an English army…
Harrison Butker’s commencement speech at Benedictine College has certainly caught the attention of many. And while it’s not surprising that the secular media is proclaiming his speech as “ugly,” many Catholics are also up in arms, stating that he represents a dangerous “new face” of Catholicism, or is wildly out of touch, calling us to…
Well, the latest shoot-from-the-hip blast from Tucho “Heal Me with Your Mouth” Fernández dropped today, and I had the sad impression that the anti-Catholic caricature of Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor had finally come to life. In the story, Our Lord Jesus Himself appears in Spain in the days of High Christendom and works a miracle. He’s…
