Catholic Church

By Francis X. Maier, Crisis Magazine - A dozen or so years ago, a colleague gave me a little wooden plaque for my office. I’ve had it on my bookshelf ever since. On it are carved these words: “It is as bad as you think, and they are out to get you.” The colleague who gave it to me is a Capuchin named Charles Chaput. The archbishop got it from a friend as a joke. He gave it to me as a joke. And, of course, it is a joke. But there are days when it’s not so funny anymore.

By Dr. Maike Hickson, LifeSiteNews - The bishop credited with writing the Amazon Synod’s controversial working document has stated that Pope John Paul II's teaching about the impossibility of female priests is “not a dogma.”… Bishop Erwin Kräutler, the retired bishop of Xingu, Brazil, made this claim in an interview with Blickpunkt Lateinamerika, the journal of the German relief agency Adveniat – a group which heavily funded the preparations for the upcoming Synod happening in Rome October 6-27.

By Diane Montagna, LifeSiteNews - Flanked by banners of the four evangelists, and gathered under the patronage of the Blessed Virgin Mary, an international coalition of 200 Catholic laity on Saturday assembled in silence near St. Peter’s Square, to pray “as a united army against the enemies of God and the Church.”… Standing at the foot of Castel Sant’Angelo on the eve of the liturgical feast of St. Michael the Archangel, the international lay coalition launched an “appeal to the angels against the evil spirits,” ahead of the Amazonian Synod being held at the Vatican Oct. 6-27.

By Cardinal Raymond Burke, First Things - The catholicity of the Catholic Church is exactly what’s at risk. The Catholic Church is a church that has one faith, one sacramental system, and one discipline throughout the whole world, and therefore we’ve never thought that each part of the world would define the Church according to particular cultures. That’s what’s being suggested in this working document of the Amazon and in Germany… They say that the Amazon region is a fount of divine revelation, and therefore when the Church goes there in her missionary capacity, she should learn from the culture. This denies the fact that the Church brings the message of Christ, who alone is our salvation, and addresses that message to the culture—not the other way around!