The two-day meeting of all the world’s cardinals, which Pope Francis held on August 29-30, was something truly extraordinary for this pontificate — and not just because it was held, contrary to custom, in the sweltering heat of the late Roman summer. This was only the second time that Francis has convened the entire College Read more
The Catholic priest and poet Ernesto Cardenal was a moral figure of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, FLSN, the left-wing political party and guerrilla movement that ended the US-backed Somoza dictatorship in 1979. In 1990 Ernesto Cardenal resigned from the FLSN. Father Cardenal, who died in 2020, charged Daniel Ortega — the current dictatorial president Read more
It’s easy to say that pilgrimage must be a movement forward, but it is not so easy to do. That’s because I can’t see the road ahead, which is getting wider and suggesting new scenery. What will it demand of me? We know we have to leave the oast. St Paul reminds us that we Read more
While last week’s meeting of the College of Cardinals failed to produce the kind of “big news” event some had predicted, the consistory did ask the cardinals to reflect upon Pope Francis’ recent reform of the Roman Curia. But while the wild rumour that Francis was mulling the appointment of a coadjutor vice-pope didn’t pan Read more
August can often be a quiet time in the news and opinion cycle. But the quiet was disturbed this year in Ireland with the publication on Aug. 16 of the synthesis document for Ireland’s contribution to the universal synod on synodality. The Irish Times, Ireland’s premier newspaper, led with the news on Aug. 17, proclaiming Read more
Two years ago, I discovered something I did not know— many Christian families have been forced to leave their churches because their children came out as gay or transgender. Through my work with FreedHearts, an LGBTQ-affirming nonprofit that aims to spread a “message of love, inclusion [and] belonging” between LGBTQ people and Christian churches, I Read more
We can truly feel for women who find themselves in a terrible predicament for which abortion can seem to be the only way out. That situation is not what I am addressing in this short article. We can also sympathise with good and decent people who have become victims of a culture that is not Read more
Synodal feedback calls for reworking the current Roman Missal to provide better, more straightforward and accessible liturgical language. Sadly, this request reads as if this change were not already possible. It has been available to the New Zealand Church since September 3, 2017, when Pope Francis published Magnum Principium (The Great Principle). In Magnum Principium, Read more
In J.R.R. Tolkien’s saga The Lord of the Rings Treebeard the Ent (a tree herder) tells the hobbits Merry and Pippin of the estrangement of the Ents and Entwives. Their differing views of happiness had moved them farther and farther apart until they lost all contact with each other to the loss of both since Read more
The Catholic Church may be at a turning point in its history, believes Danièle Hervieu-Léger, a leading French sociologist on religion. To survive in secularized Western societies, the institution will have to reform itself, she says. In a new book with fellow sociologist Jean-Louis Schlegel that came out this past spring, “Vers l’implosion? Entretiens sur Read more