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German Prosecutors Drop Case of Alleged ‘Cover Up’ Against Benedict XVI…
The Munich abuse report was released in January 2022 and faulted Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and his successors, Cardinals Friedrich Wetter and Reinhard Marx. The study criticized the late German pope’s handling of four cases during his time in charge of the southern German archdiocese. Benedict XVI, who strongly denied cover-up allegations, sent 82 pages of observations to investigators compiling the report. On Tuesday, the public prosecutor’s office in the Bavarian capital of Munich said: “Insofar as suspicions arose from these events with regard to possible criminally relevant conduct by Church officials, separate preliminary investigation processes were initially entered.” The office examined “in particular whether an ecclesiastical responsible person could have aided and abetted,...
William Shakespeare Was a Defiant Catholic to the Last…
The 2018 film, All is True, starring Kenneth Branagh as William Shakespeare and Ian McKellen as Shakespeare’s patron, the Earl of Southampton, purports to be a depiction of the Bard’s final years in Stratford following his retirement from the London stage. Making no effort to remain true to the known facts of Shakespeare’s life, preferring instead to follow the path of pride and anti-Catholic prejudice, All is True reinvents him in the image of our own deplorable epoch. This being so, and as a means of exposing the lie with the clear light of known truth, let’s examine what is actually known of Shakespeare’s last years. Shakespeare’s last major legal transaction in London, prior to his retirement and return to Stratford, was his purchase in March 1613 of the Blackfriars Gatehouse. Clearly ...
Does God change His mind when we pray?
God himself does not change, but God wills change in his creation — and he wills to bring it about through our prayers. Q. Since God is in the eternal present, and is all-knowing, he knows the destination of everyone and he knows the result of every situation. How, then, do our petitionary prayers have any effect on what God already knows is in the future? — Anonymous Truth Seeker A. I will take you through St. Thomas Aquinas’ answer to this puzzling question. Aquinas says that prayer is not about changing God’s mind, but about changing us to conform with God’s plan. We pray that we may obtain by intercession that which God has disposed from the beginning to be fulfilled by our prayers. Since God is outside of time, he knows from all eternity that for which we will pray. From all ete...
Pope Accepts ‘Resignation’ of Bishop Franz-Josef Bode, VP of German Bishops’ Conference and Key Figure in German Synodal Way…
Reacting to the news, Bishop Georg Bätzing — the conference president — said on Mar. 25: “Today I lose my closest companion on the Synodal Way, which still has many stages ahead of us.” Only two weeks ago, Bode made headlines when he announced he would implement resolutions passed by the controversial process, including the introduction of liturgical blessings of same-sex unions. He previously publicly supported women deacons. In a statement published Saturday, Bode said: “In the almost 32 years of my episcopal ministry, almost 28 of them as bishop of Osnabrück, I have borne responsibility in a church that has not only brought blessings but also guilt.” “Especially in dealing with cases of sexualized violence by clergy, for a long time I myself tended to foc...
The good news about Substack, Germany, and firing squads…
The good news about Substack, Germany, and firing squads Skip to content Happy Friday friends, It’s been a bit of a week over here. As some of you might have noticed — quite a few of you in fact, judging by the emails — we moved The Pillar back onto Substack as a hosting platform this week. It’s been a project months in the making and not without… wrinkles. Some of us, me included, got an email this morning telling us our “gift subscription” to The Pillar is about to expire. Sorry about that, please ignore it, it’s just a wrinkle in the system. Perhaps some of you might be wondering why we would decide to bring our site back to Substack if things were going fine. It’s a fair question. The reason we were open to the idea is simple enough: many of the things we decided we n...
German Bishop Heiner Wilmer, who may still be named prefect of the DDF, says “we need significant changes in sexual morality in the Catholic Church,” …
Fr. Heiner Wilmer, SCJ, preaching in May 2016. Pope Francis appointed Wilmer as Bishop of Hildesheim on April 6, 2018. (Image: YouTube screenshot) Shortly before Christmas 2022, it seemed likely that Dr. Heiner Wilmer, SCJ, bishop of Hildesheim and a prominent proponent of the German “Synodal Way,” would be named prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in succession to Cardinal Luis Ladaria Ferrer, SJ. Bishop Wilmer’s statements on a number of doctrinal and moral matters drew the concerned attention of senior churchmen in Rome and elsewhere; these men, including the late Cardinal George Pell, made their concerns known to Pope Francis; and the announcement of Bishop Wilmer’s appointment, which was reportedly planned for December 19, did not take place. The Wilmer appointment,...
The Catholic Church is truly “intersectional.” Abortion doulas and their supporters are not…..
An abortion doula and a historian of transgenderism ardently advocated abortion rights Monday on a zoom panel here at the University of Notre Dame titled “Reproductive Justice: Scholarship for Solidarity and Social Change.” The freedom to have abortions intersects with women’s autonomy, racial justice, and transgenderism, they argued. Intersectionality – different forms of oppression occur together and reinforce one another – is a popular concept now in academia. While the event’s sponsors, the Gender Studies Program and the Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values, possess the academic freedom to stage this event, its message contradicts the mission of the University, as passages from Notre Dame’s mission statement illustrate. As a Catholic university, one of its distinctive goal...
Naaman, the Nazarenes, and the Germans…
To vary Oscar Wilde, the Church’s liturgical life often imitates art by being strikingly appropriate to a particular moment. That was certainly true on Monday of the Third Week of Lent, 2023 — a day when the Scriptures of the Eucharistic liturgy invite us to ponder the greatest of the capital sins, pride, through the story of Naaman, the Syrian general, and Jesus’s confrontation with his fellow-Nazarenes. This year, Monday of Lent III immediately followed the concluding meeting of the German “Synodal Way.” And while there are many reasons why institutional German Catholicism is hurtling into apostasy, and may go off the cliff into schism, pride is one of them. Naaman seeks a cure for his leprosy from the “man of God,” Elisha, successor to Elijah as “prophet in Israel” (2 Kings 5:8). The Sy...
“100 percent the worst pain ever”: Australian authorities warn hikers of venomous stinging tree that’s sending people to the hospital…
Naomi Lewis has given birth to four children, but nothing prepared her for the excruciating and long-lasting pain of an encounter with a venomous stinging tree in Queensland’s far north. She was mountain biking at Smithfield, near her Cairns home, when she came off her bike, left the trail and hurtled down an embankment, sliding into a stinging tree, known colloquially as a Gympie-Gympie plant. The 42-year-old said the pain on both her legs — from where her shorts finished — was “100 per cent the worst pain ever”, describing the sensation as feeling like she had been set on fire. Naomi Lewis was exercising when she fell into the stinging tree.(Supplied) “It was horrible, absolutely horrible,” she said. “The pain was just beyond unbearable. The body gets ...
“Dad jokes? That’s the way eye roll”: Why this much-maligned art form is actually good for kids…..
A duck walks into a pharmacy and says, ‘Give me some lip balm – and put it on my bill’. Whether you laughed or not – and I have my doubts – this is, at least technically, a joke. Specifically, it’s what has come to be known as a Dad Joke. In 2019, the term dad joke made it into Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary as ‘a wholesome joke of the type said to be told by fathers with a punchline that is often an obvious or predictable pun or play on words and usually judged to be endearingly corny or unfunny’. This definition raises questions. How, for one thing, are we to make sense of the apparent popularity of dad jokes given that they are explicitly said to be ‘unfunny’? Even those definitions of the genre that do not specifically use the word ‘unfunny’ include similar slights, calling them ‘la...
As Tensions in Holy Land Increase, Two Jewish Terrorists Attack Jerusalem’s Tomb of Mary, Possible Site of Her Assumption…
Elizabeth Owen (ZENIT News – Asia News / Jerusalem, 03.21.2023).- The Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem and Primate Theophilus III, together with the Synod, all the clergy and faithful, “condemn the atrocious terrorist attack,” which took place on Thursday morning, March 19, during Sunday’s Liturgy, at the hands of two Israeli extremists.” Thus read the note of the leaders of the Christian community of the Holy Land, commenting on the attack on Mary’s Tomb, one of the most important churches for the Orthodox, located in front of the church of Gethsemane. The authors of this “atrocious crime tried to physically harm Archbishop Joachim, who was trying to celebrate the office,” and “one of the priests,” stated the press release, all of which took place, among other things, during “the time of L...
You think your bacon is crispy, but I’m here to tell you: It could be even crispier. Here’s the trick…..
From breakfast tacos to waffle platters to overstuffed BLTs, a crispy slice of bacon is a peak eating experience. But I’m here to tell you: It could be even crispier. While I was hunting for the simplest possible recipes for my new cookbook, Simply Genius, I stumbled on a trick used by the third-generation stewards of Joe’s Bakery, established in 1962 in Austin. It’s so effective that their customers assume their bacon has been fried, state fair style. “People, it’s not deep-fried,” co-owner Regina Estrada said, as she described her family’s technique for writer Paula Forbes’s The Austin Cookbook, where I first saw it. So what is it that makes Joe’s bacon so incomparably crisp? Food52 Simply Genius A time-tested trick: This trick dates back to Regina’s grandfather, Joe Avila: With a ...
