Peter John McGregor is a lecturer in dogmatic theology and spirituality at the Catholic Institute of Sydney, Australia. Why has Pope Francis chosen Irenaeus to be our latest Doctor, and why will he name him Doctor of Unity? To answer these questions, we must look at this life and accomplishments. On 7th October 2021, Pope Francis announced that he planned to name St. Irenaeus of Lyon as the 37th Doctor of the Church, giving him the title “Doctor of Unity”. And this past Friday, he declared St. Irenaeus the 37th Doctor of the Church, with the title “Doctor Unitatis” (“Doctor of Unity”). “May the doctrine …
Category: Church History
Priest’s Book Tells Sad Tale of Jesuits’ Abortion Complicity in the US
Father Raymond J. de Souza is the founding editor of Convivium magazine. COMMENTARY: The late Jesuit Father Paul Mankowski knew how badly some of his brother priests and his superiors had betrayed the Society of Jesus. Need a prominent cleric to give cover to Catholic politicians who vote to preserve and expand abortion access? For more than 50 years, the Jesuits have had a man at the ready. It is a grave scandal in one of the Church’s most venerable orders. Jesuit Father Pat Conroy, who served as chaplain of the House of Representatives from May 2011 to January 2021, gave an interview published …
Did the Church Change the Name of Confession?
Mr. Shaun McAfee, O.P. is the author of Reform Yourself! and other books and is the founder and editor of EpicPew.com and contributes to many online Catholic resources. He holds a Masters in Dogmatic Theology from Holy Apostles College and Seminary. Shaun has made his temporary profession as a Lay Dominican and temporarily lives in Italy. “The forgiveness of sins committed after Baptism is conferred by a particular sacrament called the sacrament of conversion, confession, penance, or reconciliation.” (CCC 1486) When I entered the Catholic Church some years ago, I recall someone in RCIA saying that the focus on Confession had shifted in …
From Garmisch-Partenkirchen 1936 to Beijing 2022
George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies. He is the author of over twenty books, including Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II (1999), The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II—The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy (2010), and The Irony of Modern Catholic History: How the Church Rediscovered Itself and Challenged the Modern World to Reform. His most recent books are The Next Pope: The Office of Peter and a Church in Mission (2020), and Not Forgotten: Elegies for, and Reminiscences of, a Diverse …
The Sixth Death of the Church
Lauren Enk Mann obtained her B.A. in English Language and Literature from Christendom College. An avid fan of G.K. Chesterton, she writes about film, pop culture, literature, and the New Evangelization. The Church’s “summer of shame” has devastated the faithful. The McCarrick revelations, the Pennsylvania grand jury, and the Viganò testimony have sent reverberations of scandal right through the highest clerical ranks. Catholics in the pews feel betrayed and abandoned, in solidarity with the victims who have suffered so much. Each new day has brought to light fresh wounds, and it seems as if the Church is hemorrhaging, bleeding to death …
The often silent and surprising history of devotion to Saint Joseph
About Sandra Miesel 19 ArticlesSandra Miesel is an American medievalist and writer. She is the author of hundreds of articles on history and art, among other subjects, and has written several books, including The Da Vinci Hoax: Exposing the Errors in The Da Vinci Code, which she co-authored with Carl E. Olson, and is co-editor with Paul E. Kerry of Light Beyond All Shadow: Religious Experience in Tolkien’s Work (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2011). As we celebrate this official Year of St. Joseph, announced on December 8, 2020, by Pope Francis, Catholics readily join in paying tribute to a great and well-loved saint. Surely Our Lord’s foster-father has …
Hard lessons from our ancient forebears in the Faith
Christopher R. Altieri is Rome Bureau Chief for The Catholic Herald. He spent more than a dozen years on the news desk at Vatican Radio. He holds the PhD from the Pontifical Gregorian University, and is the author of The Soul of a Nation: America as a Tradition of Inquiry and Nationhood. Writing at the intersection of faith and politics is a dangerous business. Alexandra DeSanctis of the National Review is to be commended for the admirable acquittal she gave of herself in her recent foray into that fraught field, with her June 1 piece, “Ireland’s Pro-Life Movement Can Find Hope in the Story of …
The Papal Consequences of the ‘Miracle of the Vistula’
Many countries have a day to honor their armed forces. Fewer have holidays to mark Marian feast days. Only one combines the two; in Poland, the solemn feast of the Assumption is also Armed Forces Day. The reason lies in events that took place exactly 100 years ago but reverberate even today. Poland had disappeared from the map of Europe in 1795, carved up and occupied by its neighbors — Prussia, Russia and the Empire of Austria-Hungary. After the Great War led to the fall of all three monarchies — German Kaiser, Russian Tsar and Habsburg Emperor — Poland regained …
Fierce Loyalties
Catholic Modern: The Challenge of Totalitarianism and the Remaking of the Church by James Chappel n the last fifty years, most writing about modern Catholicism has treated Vatican II as the great watershed. According to the standard narrative, the Church before the Council was wedded to a stultifying scholasticism and sunk in soul-crushing authoritarianism. After the Council, a new spirit emerged, one of openness and dialogue. At long last, Catholicism shed its defensive, anti-modern mentality and began engaging the contemporary world. In Catholic Modern, James Chappel demolishes this conceit. Chappel describes how, in the course of the twentieth century, Catholicism accommodated …
The Election of Pope Francis is informative and captivating—and raises many questions
Gerard O’Connell is one of the top Vaticanistas working today. An associate editor and Vatican correspondent for America magazine, he has rightly earned a reputation for his fair and in-depth reporting. While his sympathies skew in a more progressive direction, he avoids the ideological blinders and baggage often seen in the work of other Vatican commentators, such as Austen Ivereigh, Robert Mickens, and Massimo Faggioli. In his recent book The Election of Pope Francis: An Inside Account of the Conclave That Changed History, O’Connell turns his considerable talents to the 2013 Conclave that elected Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio as the first …