Category: Current Issues in the Church

There is so much Catholic information and commentary available now that the hard part is choosing what issues are most important enough to follow. Our website limits its coverage to those current events that touch on our doctrinal and missionary purposes. Issues involving our apostolate get top priority, but other issues affecting all of our lives are also highlighted in our news reports and columns.

A knowledge of Church history will give us the tools necessary to deal with many of the alarming current issues that threaten the Faith and the Church, theologically, morally, and socially.

Brother Francis has a tremendous appreciation for the history of the Church. He liked to call Church history “the laboratory of wisdom.” Why? Because the history of the Church is the history of human salvation, and choosing the best means to save one’s soul is the highest prudence. And prudence, says St. Thomas Aquinas, is wisdom in action.

A knowledge of Church history is essential if we are to apply the wisdom of the past, and the tragic errors of the past, to current issues and events in the Church. History is the laboratory of wisdom, but the application today of the lessons learned from history is prudence.

How, for example, are we to understand what St. Pius X meant when he said that “modernism is the synthesis of all heresies,” if we are ignorant of the history of the Church’s battles against heresy? How are we to evaluate the causes of what Pope Benedict referred to a “crisis of Faith,” if we unfamiliar with any of the twenty ecumenical councils that preceded Vatican II?

Christendom is gone as a reflection of the social reign of Christ the King, but Catholicism lives on, and the spiritual warfare is ever-present. We must keep informed, rejoicing in the good, and fighting against what is evil.

In Defense of Father Oprah

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There is not much one can say in defense of a charismatic, celebrity-priest who violates his promise of clerical celibacy, resists correction, uses his superstar status to bash Church discipline, and then responds favorably to a crass church-hopping invitation from … Continue reading →

My Own Notre Dame

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I went to a school run by the Congregation of the Holy Cross, Holy Cross School. The brothers there are part of that same Congregation still affiliated with Notre Dame. We even had the same fight song, the euphonium part … Continue reading →

How Do Liberal Catholics Talk

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Since the Reformation, back in the dawn of modern times, the heresies which it ushered into the world have always been fought by the Church. In spite of that, some Catholics have been intoxicated by the political consequences that naturally … Continue reading →

Catholic Education

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(A Question or Two on Education) This fall, once again, all over the United States, Catholic boys and girls have enrolled in non-Catholic colleges. For the most of them their motives are simple and not too ambitious — a good … Continue reading →

On Christian Wisdom

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Wisdom does not consist in the possession of a great store of knowledge, but rather in the reduction of one’s knowledge to a few underlying principles. Growth in knowledge, through the accumulation of facts, is not necessarily growth in wisdom, … Continue reading →

Abortion Opposed From Heaven

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When Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi appeared on Meet the Press a few weeks ago, she was asked about her consistent approval of abortion. Repeating her frequently stated stand, she insisted that she is “an ardent, practicing Catholic” and … Continue reading →