Pope Francis said the Second Vatican Council so shaped his theological and pastoral vision that perhaps he has not been as explicit as he should have been in highlighting those ties, especially when it comes to his contributions to Catholic social teaching. He made the comments in the preface to a new book, Siblings All, Read more
A Synodal Church is not just another idea, it is ‘the’ idea, Thomas O’Loughlin, Professor Emeritus at the University of Nottingham told CathNews. “If we fail to embrace this challenge we shall have little to offer and shall become an irrelevant religious sect with massive museums and a complex back story.” Pope Francis has said Read more
The Archbishop of Paris has announced Saint-Merry Pastoral Center, the city’s most progressive Catholic parish is to close on March 1. The announcement has been greeted with disbelief, sadness and anger by the parish community. They launched an online “appeal” to keep the centre open. In the first 48 hours, more than 2,000 people had Read more
Catholics who demand Communion on the tongue despite Covid-19 restrictions are selfish, Fr Liam Power from Waterford, Ireland says. They don’t seem to “respect the danger this represented to others.” They are also a cause of “very serious embarrassment for priests, many of whom are elderly,” he says. Although the number of people wanting to Read more
2017 Lay Spirituality: From Traditional to Postmodern may well be regarded as a sequel to Pierre Hegy’s two previous volumes: Wake Up, Lazarus!: On Catholic Renewal (2011) and Wake Up, Lazarus!: Paths to Catholic Renewal (2013). What binds these volumes together and makes them unique is the use of sociological methods to understand church practices Read more
Vatican II and its effect on the Catholic Church is the subject of a new movie. “Novitiate” takes place just before the Second Vatican Council. Read more
Pope Francis has changed Catholic Canon law – and met with some intense reactions. At stake here is the language used for the Mass and the question of who has the responsibility for translating the Catholic liturgy into regional languages. So why should this issue be so very controversial in the 21st century? Early history As a Read more
Fifty years after Vatican II and the Church’s slow moves to solidify, clarify and reaffirm her teaching, Pope Francis wants all the “Pentecostal energy” the Vatican has unleashed to be used, Washington’s Cardinal Donald Wuerl says. Wuerl’s comments were made at the beginning of the ‘Convocation of Catholic Leaders: The Joy of the Gospel’ in Read more
The Reformation’s 500th jubilee is important to Catholics as well as Protestants, says Sr Joyce Ann Zimmerman. Zimmerman is a Sister of the Precious Blood, and a professor of liturgy from Dayton, Ohio. Although the Catholic Church has been involved in a number of divisions over the millennia – including the Protestant Reformation – it Read more
Modern liturgy causes “disaster, devastation and schism”, says Cardinal Robert Sarah. Sarah told the 18th Cologne International Liturgical Conference that rather than bring the liturgy up to date, Vatican II destroyed the Church’s “mystical essence”. In his opinion the church has “abandoned her Christian roots” since the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II), where reforms brought the church Read more