Catholic Church

November 26, 2019

Do You Think That a Man Can Change? by Jennifer Hartline

By Jennifer Hartline, The Stream - Do you think that a man can change?... That little question came back to me as I read David’s cry of remorse to God. Marvel for a moment at David’s abiding trust in God in that Psalm. Knowing all the evil he has done, knowing how gravely he has sinned against God, knowing he has no right to ask pardon, he still believes that God will hear him and show him mercy… He dares to ask for what he does not deserve. He has the audacity to go to God with blood on his hands and ask to be washed clean. He has the nerve to ask God to restore in him what has been broken. And He believes God will do it.

November 26, 2019

Cardinal Implicated in Vatican Financial Scandals Blasts Respected Journalist for ‘False Article’, by Paul Smeaton

By Paul Smeaton, LifeSiteNews - Cardinal Angelo Becciu, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, has publicly criticized an American Catholic journalist for a recent article linking the cardinal with major financial corruption and scandal at the Vatican… Cardinal Becciu took to Twitter yesterday to lambast Dr Ed Condon, a journalist for Catholic News Agency (CNA), for his article last week which reports that the Cardinal “attempted to disguise $200 million loans on Vatican balance sheets” including funds from a disreputable Swiss bank….

November 26, 2019

Is China a Model of the Common Good? by Matthew Schmitz

By Matthew Schmitz, First Things - “All the unofficial churches have been closed and at least 6 million Catholics have no meeting places,” Cervellera said. “The threat of the regime that ‘best implements the Churches’ social doctrine’ is arrest, stratospheric fines and expropriation of the buildings where the faithful gather.”… How could a high-ranking Catholic, the leader of a pontifical academy (Archbishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences), praise such a regime? It is not mere naivete. Sanchez Sorondo’s statement exemplifies the way in which defenses of the “common good” sometimes slip into apologias for authoritarianism. It is important to challenge these statements, for they misunderstand the common good utterly.

November 26, 2019

Cardinal Müller Warns ‘Hundreds of Thousands’ Will Leave Church Over Pachamama Idolatry, by Dorothy Cummings McLean

By Dorothy Cummings McLean, LifeSiteNews - The Vatican’s former head of doctrine has warned that “hundreds of thousands” of Catholics from the Amazon region will leave the Church as a result of being scandalized by seeing videos of the pagan idol “Pachamama” being worshiped in ceremonies during the recently-concluded Amazon Synod in Rome… Cardinal Gerhard Müller, 71, told Die Tagespost, a German Catholic newspaper, that photographs of the “Pachamama” carvings used during celebrations at the recent Synod on the Pan-Amazonian have exacerbated anti-Catholic feelings in the region and will spark a mass exodus.