Catholic Church

By Msgr. Charles Pope - After the Lord had shown what wicked shepherds esteem, he also spoke about what they neglect. The defects of the sheep are widespread. There are very few healthy and sound sheep, few that are solidly sustained by the food of truth, and few that enjoy the good pasture God gives them… St. Augustine speaks here of the fact that far too many are not “sustained by the food of truth.” The weak and unsound condition of the flock is evidence of neglect by the bishops, priests, and deacons of the Church. It is largely a failure to teach truth clearly and to rebuke error.

By Bishop of Amsterdam, Bishop Jozef Maria Punt - First of all, Bishop, can you make clear who Mary is within a Catholic understanding?... As Catholics and Protestants together, we honor Mary as the Mother of Christ. All her dignity, all her greatness, comes from him, and from him alone. We agree on that. To fully understand who she is, therefore, we must first take a closer look at him…. He is the Son of the Father, “the Son of the Most High”, as the Archangel called him during the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary. She was called to become his mother, an election of dizzying proportions.

By Anthony Esolen, The Catholic Thing - Consider the strange Hebrew verb in Genesis: “And Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord.” That is in the eminent King James Version… The key word is knew. It is not easy to interpret. It’s not supposed to be easy. Recall that the forbidden tree was that of the knowledge of good and evil. Were Adam and Eve to remain ignorant? No indeed, since they had been made in the image of God, who granted them a blessing beyond what he granted to the beasts: they were to have dominion over creation.