[March 5, 2010 - Rome Reports (with hat tip to Rorate Caeli)]

Benedict XVI has formed a commission to investigate if Our Lady truly appeared in Medjugorje, a small town in Bosnia.

The commission is part of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and Cardinal Camillo Ruini will preside over the commission. Ruini is the pope’s former vicar of Rome’s diocese. Ruini goal will be to explain to the pope what’s happening at the sanctuary which has become the third most visited in Europe.

Allegedly, at least 6 people have witnessed the Virgins apparitions there since 1981. Read More »

When the enemies of the Church, the enemies of Christianity in general, and those who want to “hold” the Catholic hierarchy’s “feet to the fire” constantly jabber about Pius XII’s supposed complicity in the Nazi murder of Jews, it becomes necessary to defend the truth as well as the honor of the Holy Father. He was, after all, not only innocent of the crime of which he stands accused by an angry mob, but was also proactive in the protection of innocent Jews. That’s history. Catholics have a particular duty to defend the Church’s honor, but even secular historians of the era ought to vindicate Pius XII, if only to protect the integrity of their science. Read More »

Catholic Online reports: The Church of Scientology was founded in 1953 by science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard as an extension of his self-help book Dianetics. That book claimed that all of a person’s psychological problems can be traced back to unconscious traumatic memories. Scientology teaches that those traumas were actually experienced by (or implanted into) the thousands of alien spirits that have possessed each person’s body. The eventual goal of a Scientologist is to purge those alien spirits in order to achieve what is known as the “State of Clear.” Read more here.

A recent little talk I gave on the sin of schism — part of my comments on the Chair of Unity Octave — prompted a question from one of my auditors: “Is sedevacantism schism?” I had to reply in the affirmative.

In the last analysis, sedevacantists reject the jurisdiction of the Pope over the universal Church. While their schism is different than that of most schismatics — who reject his authority in principle — they have withdrawn themselves from communion with the Vicar of Christ. Since that is precisely what schism is, sedevacantists are in schism. Read More »

With a hat tip to Tancred at the The Eponymous Flower, I bring your attention to Umberto Eco’s op-ed piece in the New York Times, The Lost Wisdom of the Three Wise Men. Eco is a secularized Italian who was reared and educated as a Catholic, taught, in fact, by the Salesians of Don Bosco. He is a skeptic of a sort, but places great value on Western culture (any culture, apparently, judging from his editorial), and thinks it lamentable that children are ignorant of the Bible, the saints, and their contribution to art. Read More »

“That’s so gay!” Not nice. It offends. It shouldn’t be used. So say the folks who coopted the innocent word “gay” and transmogrified it to mean “homosexual.” Now these same folks don’t want others to coopt their coopted word and turn it into a pejorative. But guess what? Humanity looks at homosexuality in pejorative terms, so words like “bugger” and “bad” have their origins in sexual deviancy and, by a natural linguistic evolution, came to connote other morally, physically, or ontologically undesirable things. Read More »

Saint Felix, Oh nonexistent founder of the Trinitarians! Pray for the Christian captives whose cause thou so admirably took up, despite the fact that thou art a mere pious legend. Pray for France, the cradle of thy Order, and whose eponymous Royal House showed her gratitude by perpetuating the holy charade so zealously. Be pleased to pray for us, too, we skeptical revisionist hagiographers. We, too, beg thy loving prayers; for, despite our reticence to believe in thee, we know that Holy Mother Church has lavished the cultus duliae upon thee for centuries. Read More »

After losing a lawsuit in France filed by former members, and barely escaping being outlawed there for its extortionist tactics, the strange “religion” of L. Ron Hubbard is now being charged with pressuring inner circle members of its elite “order” of the Sea Org to have abortions. If you want to “clear” the world of all its negative “engrams,” devoted Sea Org crusaders were told, you can’t be bogged down with children. Read More »

InsideCatholic.com  Catholic Journalist David Warren writes:

In Jerusalem, on the Dome of the Rock — situated on top of what is almost certainly the Holy of Holies, within the ancient Temple precincts — is an inscription, in their earliest angular Kufic script, on what was also the earliest monument the Arabs caused to be erected in a conquered land. It reads, in its most significant part: “Praise to Allah who begets no son and has no associate in power and who has no surrogate for humiliations.” The point is sustained by repetition, together with the contrary assertion that Mohammed alone can provide intercession on the day when the Muslim community is resurrected.   Read more of this very good article here.

The traditional Transalpine Redemptorists have built a case that could rewrite the history of Pope Liberius as it has come to us  (they allege) only since the sixteenth century.  I haven’t the time to examine into their cause, but it certainly is intriguing — let’s hope they are correct.  You can read the full account here.