Catholic Church

Bishop Athanasius Schneider, LifeSiteNews - On October 4, 2019, the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, in the presence of Pope Francis and other high ecclesiastical dignitaries, there was held a ceremony in the Vatican Gardens that was clearly religious in character, as stated in the Vatican press release of October 4, 2019: “During the prayer ceremony, concluding the ‘Season of Creation’ initiative promoted recently by Pope Francis, a tree from Assisi was planted as a symbol of integral ecology, to consecrate the Synod on Amazonia to Saint Francis, shortly before the fortieth anniversary of the papal proclamation of the Poverello of Assisi at the patron of ecologists.

By Msgr. Charles Pope - Part of what makes Jesus’ teaching on Hell difficult is the severe imagery He uses. In pointing to Hell, he seems to point to its deepest pits. He warns of eternal fire, undying worms, and wailing and grinding of teeth. Rather than lingering on philosophical descriptions or on the more subtle aspects of suffering, Jesus goes to the deepest aspects of the sufferings of Hell… The undying fire in Hell is not a mere physical one; it is a fire of rage and disgust that consumes as it causes pain. In contrast, the refining fire of God’s love purifies. The souls of the dammed in Hell are seething inside and enduring the heat of the indignation of others.

By Phil Lawler, Catholic Culture - In January I wrote that the prosecution of Bishop Gustavo Oscar Zanchetta was potentially “a fatal blow to the Pope’s reputation as a reformer,” since it was Pope Francis—clearly, unequivocally, personally—who promoted and protected the Argentine prelate. Now a prosecutor in Argentina has issued an international appeal for Zanchetta’s arrest, fearing that the troubled bishop may drop out of sight to avoid prosecution—if he hasn’t done so already. So the question is whether the Pope is, even now, sheltering an accused bishop from prosecution.

By Helen Freeh, The Catholic Thing - How can we sheep ask so much of our shepherds when we are not willing to be living examples of Christ to the world ourselves? How can our shepherds ask anything of the sheep that they are not willing to model first for us?... A mutual acceptance of the burden of rebuilding the Church needs to be made by each and every member of the Body of Christ, whatever their vocation. It is not a duty only for laypersons, nor for religious alone… Perhaps we are moving into a time of great destruction in which the institutional Church as we have known it for over a millennium will crumble, as happened after the fall of Rome and the conquest by Germanic tribes.