The current synod, whose title may seem abstruse — a “Synod on Synodality” —, is perhaps best expressed by the three words that follow its title: “Communion, Participation and Mission”. I want to emphasize the call to mission. This is indeed what the Lord asks for in the final lines of the Gospels, including that Read more
With a few months to the first session of the long-awaited Australian Plenary Council (PC2020), we are finally headed down the home stretch. The initial phase of listening drew nearly 220,000 people across Australia and 17,500 individual and group submissions. These submissions were distilled into the six national theme papers and then further distilled again Read more
Catholics, especially in the German-speaking world, were surprised to hear that Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, once strongly favoured the ordination of married men. Not only in remote areas but also in large city parishes. More recently, on 11 October, Müller told the Tagespost that “not even the Read more
The rhetoric of anti-Catholicism, whether its sources are Protestant or secular, has always insisted that the church of Rome is the enemy of what you might call healthy sexuality. This rhetorical trope has persisted despite radical redefinitions of what healthy sexuality means; one sexual culture overthrows another, but Catholicism remains eternally condemned. Thus in a Read more
I have noted with interest the recent correspondence from some of our retired bishops about how to respond to the dramatic decline in vocations to the priesthood. I celebrated my 48th anniversary of ordination at the end of July and am happily caring for two large parishes in south Liverpool. For most of the 1970s Read more
The Australian Royal Commission’s report into child abuse has made 409 recommendations, 15 of them directed at the Catholic church. In an initial response to the report, a Vatican Press Office released a statement saying the report is a thorough effort that “deserves to be studied seriously.” It reiterated the commitment of the Holy See Read more
Matushka Alexandra, an Orthodox priest’s wife, said knew that being a priest’s wife was no guarantee against marital troubles. Her father had been a priest and she had seen her mother struggle with neglect and isolation. But when she met Serge as a seminarian and they decided to marry, she was convinced their marriage would Read more
Comparing clerical celibacy to torture, a British peer has voiced a public defence of disgraced Cardinal Keith O’Brien and criticised the Catholic Church for not allowing him to have a sex life. Cardinal O’Brien resigned as Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh after the public release of accusations that he had made homosexual advances on Read more