Catholic Church

By Msgr. Richard C. Antall, Crisis Magazine - I have many questions about the pope’s latest canonical offensive against Opus Dei. The first of them is what was wrong with the status quo? I would think a man as interested in new ideas and experiment in pastoral work would not feel it necessary to fix what was not broken. Was there some problem with Opus Dei? Something that led him to take so many steps to contradict what its founder thought a key to its continued usefulness to the Church? I really doubt it.

By Robert B. Greving, Crisis Magazine - So, why declare the dogmas? By formally defining graces given to the physical body of Mary, perhaps God was issuing a “preemptive strike” to the ideologies that have wreaked havoc on our bodies. The Immaculate Conception proclaimed that a purely human body—like yours and mine—had been conceived without sin; and the Assumption promulgated that a totally human body—again, like yours and mine—had been assumed into Heaven.

By Fr. Jerry Pokorsky, Catholic Culture - Despite conventional wisdom, man has never been able to control the winds and the sea. The account of Jesus walking on the water confirms His divinity after the miraculous multiplication of the loaves and evokes the response of faith. The stroll of Jesus on the turbulent waters offers a variety of practical religious lessons... “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for thou art with me.” (Ps. 23:4)

By John M. Grondelski, The Catholic Thing - Though it was only in 1950 that the Feast of the Assumption was defined by Pope Pius XII, Catholics have believed that “having completed the course of her earthly life, the Blessed Virgin Mary was taken body and soul to heaven”... High Mariology focused on Mary’s uniqueness. The Assumption was the special privilege of the one who was immaculately conceived (another ecumenical stumbling block). The body of the sinless woman who bore the Body of Christ could not suffer corruption.