Catholic Church

By Brad Miner, The Catholic Thing - This iteration of the story of the Marian apparitions scans almost as a remake of 1952’s The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima, except for a flash-forward device involving a purported interview of the now elderly Sister Lúcia dos Santos by a noted journalist. The two are played by Brazilian actress Sônia Braga and the American Harvey Keitel: the saint and the skeptic.

By Auguste Meyrat, Crisis Magazine - In 1969, long before he became Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger made a prediction about the post–Vatican II Catholic Church. Instead of a growing and dynamic Church reaching all cultures, he envisioned a smaller and less influential Church: “She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes, so it will lose many of her social privileges.”

By Nicole Winfield, AP - After weeks during which Italy brought the virus under control, the country’s caseload is rebounding — now adding more than 1,000 new infections a day — so there’s no telling when or how more ambitious public gatherings and travel might return... What does all this mean for a 83-year-old globe-trotting pope and his ministry to the 1.2-billion-member Catholic Church?... Alberto Melloni, a church historian usually sympathetic to Francis, declared that the pandemic marked the beginning of the end of Francis’ pontificate.

By R.C. VanLandingham, Church Militant - Evil is pervasive in the current age. One can hardly turn on the television or drive down the street without being bombarded by examples. Temptations to greed, envy, anger, and lust are around every corner and beyond every page scroll. The West today is a pagan wasteland of moral decadence and idolatry. What happened to the part of the world that used to be considered Christendom?