Tag: Opinion

Archbishop Arthur Roach, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship, recently sent the world’s bishops instructions regulating local usage of the Traditional Latin Mass.

In my last column I mentioned that Communion was received under both species, that is from the chalice as well as the host, until the 12th Century, when the practice died out. I concluded with the Council of Constance (1414-18), which banned the practice altogether.

You may have noticed a pattern to my last few articles. We have been looking at the Catholicity of the faith: its capacity for taking all sorts of fish into the Net and not being too particular about sorting them out in this world.

The next round of the Plenary Council kicks off in July, so I have read the First Assembly’s Proposals document (December 2021) to bring myself up to speed. Compared to the virtual First Assembly sessions I briefly attended, this document is much better. If you remember, members of the First Assembly were given 16 questions […]

Greg Ellis, a Hollywood veteran best known for his turn in the Pirates of the Carribean series, likens the family court to a cartel: ...

We are living in a time when many Catholics seem to be eager to exclude their fellow Catholics from access to the sacraments due to the imperfection of their grasp of doctrine, their moral life, or even their aesthetics.

To understood priesthood, we need to look at its origins I used to be a great reader of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld fantasy series. His view...

Some highlights of the plenary council working document The Instrumentum Laboris has been released to guide the next stage of the Plenary Council Process. I’ve...

I am in my 70s and have some questions about Covid-19 vaccinations that perhaps you could answer for me. Can I take a vaccine...

A forgotten role of bishops worldwide is now essential As the names Ambrose, Augustine, Athanasius, and John Chrysostom suggest, the middle centuries of the first...

Yes, Pope Francis sometimes says things that make us stop and wonder. But seeing this as some sort of ground for rejecting Vatican II...

In his 2003 encyclical, Ecclesia de Eucharistia (The Church from the Eucharist), Pope St John Paul II invited Catholics to regain a sense of...