Should the Catholic Church adapt herself and get up to date? Holy deacon Kandra reports here on a survey on why Catholics stop going to Mass. four major reasons why some Roman Catholics stop going to church, among them: Disagreement with church doctrine on birth control, women as priests, homosexuality; A view that there are too [...]
Some Catholics are worrying themselves over whether the pope will allow Catholics who are divorced and remarried to receive communion. I am as concerned as anyone else about this issue and feel that the rule cannot be changed without changing the Catholic understanding of marriage. Indissoluble marriage is part of the revelation from Adam and Eve [...]
It never ceases to amaze me how soft and spineless we are when it comes to our Catholic faith. Everything else takes precedence. "It's the annual retreat for your sons and daughters. Your kids have to be there." "They've got a volleyball game that weekend we're so busy I don't feel comfortable asking my child to [...]
Maybe it's just me, but I seem to hear an increasing amount of grumbling from about the state of the church. Some folks complain about the new generation of priests, "All these guys seem to care about is lace and china tea cups! Are they all pansies? What's going on? Why do they have to return [...]
Jesus Eats With Sinners Some Catholics are up in arms over Cardinal Dolan agreeing to be the Grand Marshall of the St Patrick's Day Parade in New York which has been infiltrated by homosexual activists. Elizabeth Scalia has stirred the pot with this post comparing Dolan to Jesus who ate with sinners, did not condemn [...]
Powerful St Patrick Some time ago I had a dream in which I saw a young boy swimming in a river. As he was swimming happily downstream I saw that around the bend was a large crocodile. I watched in terror as the boy swept past the crocodile and the beast slipped out from [...]
Some time ago I read a blog post identifying the degradation of American Christianity into what was termed Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. It's given me much pause for thought and the analysis seems to me to be spot on. Today's post is a further speculation on this analysis with a long contribution from a regular reader to [...]
The Cowper Madonna by Raphael "To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant" wrote Bl. John Henry Newman. As part of my research for a book on married priests I am reading Christian Cochini's tome Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy. It's a masterful piece of scholarship which examines the early church's views [...]
This report says that while the Vatican has yet to confirm the date, Archbishop Chaput of Philadelphia has indicated that Pope Francis will visit the city for next September's World Meeting of Families. If the pope is planning to visit the City of Brotherly Love next fall what's the big deal? Kathy Schiffer reports here that the pope [...]
Architect Michael Tamara comments here on the closure of historic churches in the Northern cities of the US. His main point is that the churches were built by our ancestors who were much poorer than we are, but who had faith, knew how to work hard, and above all--were willing to make great sacrifices to build [...]