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What if the story of Pope Pius XII as a Nazi sympathizer was actually the result of a Cold War-era communist plot to discredit the Vatican? In a clandestine operation worthy of a spy thriller, communist forces during the Cold War sought to tarnish the Vatican’s moral authority with a disinformation campaign called Operation Seat 12. Unearthed in 2007 by Ion Mihai Pacepa, a former Romanian secret service general who defected to the West, the plot involved fabricating a play portraying Pope Pius XII as a Nazi sympathizer. Authorized by Nikita Khrushchev in 1960, the operation aimed to weaken the Vatican’s anti-communist influence. General Ivan Agayants, head of the KGB’s disinformation department, crafted the outline and false research for the play, “The Deputy,” while devoted Communist and ...

A game of chess is like a Chinese newspaper: a set of symbols that can be understood by people who speak different languages. In the Chinese example, Mandarin and Cantonese speakers can read and understand the same text, even though they use different words for the same concepts. Chess, too, is perfectly intelligible by participants who share no other communication skills. But scratch the surface and the standardized game reveals a multitude of linguistic particularities. One player’s pawn is another’s farmer. What you may call a bishop, somebody else knows as an elephant. Or a fool. Chaturanga to Skák Chess took a millennium to conquer the known world. It first emerged in India in the early 7th century as chaturanga, finally reaching Iceland as skák around 1600 A.D. See Big Think’s Strang...

In an unusual act, Pope Francis has included 21 non-Catholic Christians in the Roman Martyrology — an official list of martyrs, saints and blesseds. What’s more, he did so with the consent of a non-Catholic religious leader. The non-Catholic Christians were 21 men who had previously been canonized in the Coptic Church (20 of them had been Egyptian and one Ghanian), and the religious leader was the Coptic pope — His Holiness Tawadros II. While this act was unusual, it was not without precedent. In fact, one can arrive at sainthood — or its close equivalents — through a number of routes. How We Got Canonization In the Bible and the early Church, certain people had a reputation for holiness. As a result, Christians would refer to them as “Holy Peter” or “Holy Paul.”  Only with Latin beco...

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The Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK) has announced that it will not accept the ability of the German bishops to veto resolutions in the upcoming “Synodal Committee” with more than one-third opposition. The position was conveyed by ZdK president Irme Stetter-Karp, who made her remarks during the lay group’s ongoing plenary assembly in Munich, reported by Katolisch.de, the official website of the Catholic Church in Germany. But should the demand be considered a power move by the formidable lay organization, an indication of confidence and an attempt to further undermine the significance of episcopal governance? Or is it the move of a group with its back against the wall, desperately trying to force compliance or at least save face in the case of failure? And what does it say about...

‘Household’ gatherings offer intentional community at South Bend parish Skip to content Services Marketplace – Listings, Bookings & Reviews Entertainment blogs & Forums

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The young man was perplexed upon hearing that God loves him but also allowed him to sin of his own free will. The statement by the guest lecturer was difficult for him to comprehend as a person who believed in God but had chosen not to act on his belief in God. How can a God who supposedly loves everyone allow the very same person to reject him? It simply did not make sense to him. As the presentation progressed, the young man felt compelled to raise his hand during the question-and-answer period and bluntly told the speaker, “I don’t understand how a God who loves us allows us to sin.” Taking a deep breath as if he was about to plunge into the English channel, the speaker responded to the young man’s question as follows: “God’s love is infinite, and it is not bound by time or space; he ha...

In a recent discussion with Jordan Peterson, “conservative” radio host Dennis Prager recently defended both lust and pornography. Prager objected to Jesus’ admonition that a man who lusts after a woman has already committed adultery in his heart. Prager smugly stated: “There is only one way to commit adultery in Judaism, and it’s with a different organ.” Peterson, widely noted for his quick wit, should have challenged Prager on that ridiculous position. After all, in Prager’s view, a man who engages merely in heavy petting with other women has not committed adultery. Alas, Peterson did not challenge him. Instead, he merely asked Prager about his views on pornography. Prager answered, “Men want variety. … If pornography is a substitute for one’s wife, it’s awful. If it’s a substitute for ad...

A reader writes: I have been really hurting due to a question that I can’t seem to find an answer to wherever I look. Wherever I go, I can’t find a Christian that will answer my questions. I am Catholic, but this particular question causes me pain, because morality is the bedrock that my framework is built upon. My question is, how do I know that Morality is real? I heard that morality is just a herd mentality to ensure human survival. Like, for example, I don’t kill him, so he doesn’t kill me, a herd mentality. Homosexuality is wrong because it doesn’t ensure human survival. It’s a sort of empathy-like survival mechanism. This does mean that if you do something wrong, since there would be no Objective Morality, that there is nothing actually wrong about it, and you could technically do wh...

An epic problem and humanitarian balloons Skip to content Hey everybody, Today is Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Easter, and you’re reading The Tuesday Pillar Post. Credit: Unsplash The news The World Health Organization declared on Friday that Covid-19 is no longer a “global health emergency” — a move which has legal and policy effects in jurisdictions around the world. For most people, Covid, has been “over” for a while now. But while even the WHO can say officially that the Covid emergency is over, everyone knows that we’ll feel for decades the economic, cultural, social, and even spiritual effects of our very strange past few years.  Covid, and our cultural and political responses, changed a lot, and laid bare, I think, how profoundly each one of us needs God. Anyway, forgive the di...

Jesuit Father James Martin has started a new online resource for “LGBTQ” Catholics called “Outreach” that is an enterprise associated with America Media, whose magazine America is the flagship publication of American Jesuits. Outreach has recently put forward a new series of articles by various theologians, Scripture scholars, and those involved in “LGBTQ” ministry, on how to interpret the Bible’s verses on homosexuality, which some of the contributors describe as “clobber verses” that are used to marginalize and persecute those in the “LGBTQ” community. The authors are Protestant, Catholic and Jewish, and they present varying arguments with different emphases, all of which are designed to make sure that the biblical verses in question are effectively gutted of their normativity, which ope...