Venice in the East

Not Really an Assessment

But a gathering of opinions from different people.

NCReg: ‘Gaudete et Exsultate’: An Assessment by Edward Pentin
Cardinals Daniel DiNardo and Gerhard Müller praise holiness document; others express concern about content regarding sanctity of life, heresies.

The "Conversion" of St. Paul

OAJ Interview with Ioan Popa

A Decree from 1847

During the peak years of papal maximalization?

If there is to be a patron of the Church other than the Bridegroom Himself, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, why would it not be the Theotokos? Of course this is linked to the growing cultus of Holy Joseph in Roman Catholic Christianity. Still, if he is not accepted as the designated patron of the Church Universal by the Church Universal, does the decree really mean anything? It is just an example of the pretense of the patriarch of Rome to be a universal pastor.

And yet, he still went through with it.

Too nice to say no? Or too indecisive to reject a bad reform? A lack of leadership. A worthy candidate for canonization? No.



Rorate Caeli: Don't whitewash history: Paul VI was front and center the creator of the New Mass of Paul VI

Sandro Magister

May God Grant Him Many Years

Fr. Andrew Louth on the Greek Schism

Theological Casuistry

Re: Ott (and similar manuals) weighing or attempting to weigh the certainty or probability of theological opinions -- upon what crtieria is one opinion deemed to be merely probable versus being of common consensus? (It's been a while since I've picked Ott up so I probably have the exact terms wrong.) Does the author look not just across space but across time? Is there any evaluation of the strength of the opinions themselves other than authority or number of adherents?

Byzantion Choir

Fr. Thomas Hopko on Priesthood

What is a Priest? An Orthodox Statement by Thomas Hopko

You Were Created for Pascha

Fr. Spadaro on “Gaudete et Exsultate”

Sandro Magister: Little Joy, and Great Invective. Francis Explained By Fr. Spadaro

"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.