Fr. Gerald E. Murray The Rev. Gerald E. Murray, J.C.D. is a canon lawyer and the pastor of Holy Family Church in New York City. His new book (with Diane Montagna), Calming the Storm: Navigating the Crises Facing the Catholic Church and Society, is now available. The Instrumentum Laboris [IL] (Working Document) for the October Synod on Synodality, released June 20, embodies the now familiar pattern seen in the various stages of the synodal process. Certain questions are asked, others are ignored, predictable answers are given, and expectations are raised that a new Church, the Holy Spirit-inspired Synodal Church, will emerge in which …
Category: Apologetics
The 30th Anniversary of ‘Veritatis Splendor’
Msgr. Robert J. Batule Msgr. Robert J. Batule is a priest of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, New York, and pastor of Saint Margaret of Scotland Church in Selden. He served for five years as the Editor-in-Chief of the Catholic Social Science Review. He is a contributor of articles, essays, and book reviews over decades to a number of Catholic publications. Today, August 6, we celebrate the Feast of the Lord’s Transfiguration according to the liturgical calendar. It also happens to be the 30th anniversary of the release of Veritatis Splendor, Pope Saint John Paul II’s encyclical on Catholic moral theology, which has …
The Worsening Crisis
Fr. Gerald E. Murray The Rev. Gerald E. Murray, J.C.D. is a canon lawyer and the pastor of Holy Family Church in New York City. His new book (with Diane Montagna), Calming the Storm: Navigating the Crises Facing the Catholic Church and Society, is now available. The worsening crisis in the Catholic Church is the product of bold, unapologetic doctrinal infidelity spearheaded by influential churchmen and women who calmly operate without the least sign of papal disapproval. In fact, many of them are favored and promoted by Pope Francis. They argue that various Catholic teachings stand in need of improvement, remediation, …
Myths and Facts About the Council of Trent
The Council of Trent is depicted by Pasquale Cati in 1588. Wikimedia Commons via Anthony M. “The latest ecumenical councils — Trent, Vatican I, Vatican II — applied themselves to clarifying the mystery of the faith and undertook the necessary reforms for the good of the Church, solicitous for the continuity with the apostolic tradition.” — Pope Blessed John Paul II, Discourse, Oct. 22, 1998 In the middle of the 16th century, the Catholic Church was in need of reform and renewal, and while the Church acknowledged these problems and had begun reforms, the corrective actions were not quick enough …
Tradition and the Signs of the Times
James Kalb is a lawyer, independent scholar, and Catholic convert who lives in Brooklyn, New York. He is the author of The Tyranny of Liberalism(ISI Books, 2008) and, most recently, Against Inclusiveness: How the Diversity Regime is Flattening America and the West and What to Do About It (Angelico Press, 2013). God doesn’t get reported in the news, and the experts in the media question or deny him and everything about him. So how do we get people—how do we get ourselves—to feel that He is more real than anything else? How can Catholics most help the world? The obvious answer is that they would …
The endless white flags of progressive Catholicism
Dr. Larry Chapp is a retired professor of theology. He taught for twenty years at DeSales University near Allentown, Pennsylvania. He now owns and manages, with his wife, the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker Farm in Harveys Lake, Pennsylvania. Dr. Chapp received his doctorate from Fordham University in 1994 with a specialization in the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar. He can be visited online at “Gaudium et Spes 22”. Now is certainly not the time to give heed to those who have apparently lost their prophetic edge and their ecclesial nerve. Mary Eberstadt, in her wonderful new book from Ignatius Press titled Adam and Eve …
The progressive revolution’s continued control of the ecclesial narrative
Dr. Larry Chapp is a retired professor of theology. He taught for twenty years at DeSales University near Allentown, Pennsylvania. He now owns and manages, with his wife, the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker Farm in Harveys Lake, Pennsylvania. Dr. Chapp received his doctorate from Fordham University in 1994 with a specialization in the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar. He can be visited online at “Gaudium et Spes 22”. What we are witnessing today is nothing short of a wholesale recrudescence of old guard, post-Vatican II progressivism, now linked to ever more transgressive attempts at revision, with a special focus on moral …
Will France be the battleground for the future of Christian society?
Andrew Petiprin is a former Episcopal priest and is the author of the book Truth Matters: Knowing God and Yourself. He came into full communion with the Catholic Church with his wife and children on January 1, 2019. Andrew is a lifelong Christian, was a Marshall Scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford from 2001-2003, and was a Fellow at the Word on Fire Institute for several years. Andrew and his family live in Plano, Texas. Freedom Fries and America’s widespread anti-French sentiment have not aged well. A little over twenty years ago, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin issued a defiant “non” to …
The “World Meeting on Human Fraternity” was a sad exercise in soda pop solidarity
Dr. Larry Chapp is a retired professor of theology. He taught for twenty years at DeSales University near Allentown, Pennsylvania. He now owns and manages, with his wife, the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker Farm in Harveys Lake, Pennsylvania. Dr. Chapp received his doctorate from Fordham University in 1994 with a specialization in the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar. He can be visited online at “Gaudium et Spes 22”. Sitting and watching the June 10th event in St. Peter’s Square, surrounded by nearly no one at all, I noticed how completely absent was any mention or image of Jesus Christ. If there …
‘Inclusion’ and Catholicism
by George Weigel Back in the day, kiddie Catholics learned that the Church had four “marks:” the Church is one, holy, catholic (as in “universal”), and apostolic. These marks are derived from the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, which we recite at Mass on Sundays and liturgical solemnities. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that the Church “does not possess” these “inseparably linked” characteristics “of herself;” rather, “it is Christ who, through the Holy Spirit, makes his Church one, holy, catholic, and apostolic, and it is he who calls her to realize each of these qualities” (CCC 811). You will note that …