Category: catholic news

Traditionis custodes is the name of the motu proprio issued by Pope Francis in which he ordered Bishops to reduce the use of the pre-Vatican II liturgy. I was not going to write about this because I didn’t want to take on the Pope about something else that I thought was a mistake. But then…
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What is going on at Commonweal? I am so shocked by Adam Fleming Petty’s introduction to a book review that I am inspired to violate the gender norms of “the nineties,” though of which century I am not sure. Was it really true that “A man undergoing a midlife crisis buys a sports car” in…
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I often say that. The church is real: no mystery about it. It exists, for a lot of good and for some, not so good. Whatever other beliefs exist around it, the church is real. And the Pope is human. After his shocking hospitalization and surgery, we pray for his recovery. Michael Sean Winters concludes…
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Last week I wrote about the possibility of the collapse of the Catholic Church. Now we have two spectacular examples of collapse, tragic collapse. As more details become known about the condominium in Florida, we learn about warnings that were never addressed. I’ve never seen such a tragic example of the mote and the beam…
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“And, historically, that’s actually a precondition for women ascending to power. Can they seize the moment?”  This headline on Alexis Grenell’s column in the print edition of The Nation attracted my attention immediately. She quotes New York State Senator Allesandra Biaggi: “We’ve got to move on past talking about the bad behavior of below-average men.”…
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[Editor’s Note: This post was scheduled at 12 PM Eastern on Friday, June 18th; see a postscript from Regina after the results at the end.] I am in the odd position of finishing this on Friday morning for publication Saturday. I want to write about the bishops’ decision on a proposal to draft a document…
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When I woke up Thursday morning, I was going to write how sad I was that Cardinal Reinhold Marx of Germany was resigning. When I was making breakfast, I heard on the BBC that Pope Francis had refused his resignation. What! Is that possible only in the church?  Our good leaders must not resign, which…
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It is official. It is now ‘codified’ into church law: “A person who attempts to confer a sacred order on a woman, and the woman who attempts to receive the sacred order,” will receive automatic excommunication.  Most of the news services used variations on these words: “While the church has for centuries banned women from…
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On April 30, 2021, my colleague Ellie Harty, co-editor of Equal wRites (the publication of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Women’s Ordination Conference), asked me to write an article on the 2022 Vatican Synod. I agreed. On May 21, 2021, the Vatican announced that Pope Francis has changed the date of the Synod to October 2023 and…
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This week I knew I was going to write about catechists because last week Pope Francis created such an “installed” ministry. I was not sure how I felt about it, frankly. Another crumb to the laity, mostly the women, who do this? Then I saw the photograph of Joseph Ilboudo and his wife, Lucienne Kabré…
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