"Voice of the Faithful"

Sandro Magister: In a Church With No Leader, Two New Protests From Bishops and Faithful

Sandro Magister: Francis, Spin Doctor To Himself. His Latest Exploits

Finally, the third modality of communication dear to Francis had as its “partner,” in recent days, a Benedictine monk and psychologist among the most widely read in the world, the German Anselm Grün.

Last February 15, in conversing behind closed doors with the priests of Rome, as he does every year at the beginning of Lent, Pope Francis recommended that they read a book by Grün - whose affectionate reader he is too - describing it as “modern” and “close to us.”

So then, Grün is the one who in an interview with the “Augsburger Allgemeine” on March 30, Good Friday, said that "there are no theological reasons that speak against an abolishment of priestly celibacy or against female priests, female bishops, or a female pope." It is an “historical process” that “needs time” – he added – and ‘the first step has to be now the ordination of women as deaconesses.”

An ordination, this last, that turns out to be among the short-term objectives of Francis, on a par with the ordination of married men to the priesthood.

While on the subsequent steps of the “historical process” delineated by Grün, that of women priests, bishops, and pope, Francis has not yet gone off the rails, either in public or in private (*).

But meanwhile he has recommended listening to someone who enunciates them as goals to be reached, no matter if these are in stark contrast with the “non possumus” of all the previous popes.

Fr. Hunwicke: Women Bishops. Here we go again. (1) and Women Bishops: boredom part (2)

The Sense of the Sacred

Dom Karl Wallner

Panel Discussion on Freedom

Patrick Deneen, "The Conquest of Community"

Carl Olson on Gaudete et Exsultate

Pope Francis “takes aim” in “Gaudete et Exsultate”—and misses? by Carl E. Olson
The many good qualities and substantive passages in Gaudete et Exsultate are often overshadowed, or even undermined, by straw men, dubious arguments, and cheap shots.

CWR Dispatch: The temptation and the challenge of reading “Gaudete et exsultate” by Christopher R. Altieri

Whatever else there is to say about the document and regardless of one’s personal, spiritual, or intellectual disposition toward Pope Francis, it is fair to say the Holy Father has touched a nerve.

Patrick Deneen on Liberalism

The End of Liberalism: Why the World is Falling Apart

Byzantine Music for Holy Saturday

The Ethics of Authenticity

Inescapable Horizons by Mark C. Henrie

Cradinal Burke Interview

Cardinal Burke: Pope Francis is 'increasing the confusion'

Related: Cardinals Burke and Zen to address confusion in the Church this week

Rome and Constantinople

Amazon’s New Co-Headquarters: A Cautionary Tale by Kevin T. DiCamillo

Some Latin triumphalism in this article.


Two Romes: Rome And Constantinople in Late Antiquity

Oriente Cattolico

Crux/CNS: All in the family: Vatican book focuses on Eastern Catholic churches by Cindy Wooden

It Will Probably Be a Mixed Bag

CNA: Pope Francis to issue apostolic exhortation on holiness, “Gaudete et exsultate”

Sacrifice

CWR: Martin Luther’s flawed understanding of natural law: A response to Dr. Korey D. Maas by Timothy J. Gordon

Voluntarism denies the Catholic teaching that logos constitutes—rather than delimits—God’s nature, and Luther was a voluntarist.

Legalism

Sola Scriptura and Sola Fide

Eastern Christian Books: Pope Pius IX and the Emergence of Modernity

Eastern Christian Books: Pope Pius IX and the Emergence of Modernity