Catholic Church

By Phil Lawler, Catholic Culture - By all accounts, the Vatican is moving quickly toward a diplomatic agreement with China. But the situation is complicated, and the reports from China often contradictory. What should interested Catholics know about the developing drama? Let me do my best to answer some basic questions.

By Ed Condon, CNA - What is odd about the motu proprio is that, for a document supposedly about retiring with grace, it spends rather more time talking about those who are staying on. Indeed, under Pope Francis, this exception is becoming the norm… Despite the Pope’s stated preference for single five-year terms in the Curia, an ever-growing number of key Vatican officials are carrying on well past their terms.

By Richard A. Spinello, Crisis Magazine - Cardinal Cupich’s reflections on conscience, however, raise far more questions than they answer. Foremost among them is whether or not Gaudium et Spes really represents such a radical reformulation of the Church’s conception of conscience rooted in the works of theologians like St. Thomas Aquinas. Conscience has always been regarded as an opening to the moral truth, including those true and fixed norms which allow for no exceptions.

By Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith, Catholic Herald - If the new paradigm trumps the old paradigm, what is to stop some future paradigm shift trumping the current one? Earlier this week, I pointed to some problems with Cardinal Cupich’s Cambridge lecture. I want to return to the topic because, given the cardinal’s language of a “new paradigm”, we should remember that certain elements in Catholic moral theology cannot change.