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By Phil Lawler ( bio – articles – email ) | Apr 26, 2024 Another week, another papal interview. In the latest, broadcast by CBS (with a more extensive version to air in May), Pope Francis is asked about the many Catholics who have left the Church. His answer is revealing in several ways. He insists that there is “always a place” for Catholics in the Church. “If in this parish, the priest doesn’t seem welcoming, I understand,” he says; “but go and look elsewhere.” Father Raymond de Souza, writing in the National Catholic Register, remarks that here the Pope seems to be endorsing the practice of “parish-shopping,” which is contrary to the norms of canon law. As Father de Souza puts it, “The norm is that your parish is where you live.” True (and Father de Souza points this out as ...

What you pray for, virtual priesthood, and an Eastern mystery Skip to content Pillar subscribers can listen to this Pillar Post here: The Pillar TL;DR Happy Friday friends, Today is the feast of the blesseds Robert Anderton and William Marsden, two English priests of the penal years under the reign of Bloody Queen Bess. And their somewhat truncated ministries are, to my mind, one of the great lessons in the Lord giving you exactly what you ask for. Anderton was born on the Isle of Wight in or about 1560 and, shortly after leaving Oxford, left England for Europe where he converted to Catholicism. In 1580 he entered the College of Rheims, the seminary for English priests destined to go home and work underground, and was ordained with the Lancastrian Marsden.  The two were sent to Englan...

Close your eyes and imagine standing in the outfield of a big baseball game. You can’t see the ball but after the pitcher winds up, you hear the crack of the bat. Your first step is backwards as you get your first view of the ball, flying further and further away as the ball rapidly approaches the grassy surface. The only thing you can do is reach out your glove as you run at full throttle, then you hear the sudden puff of the ball hitting your glove. Now imagine doing all of that, but blindfolded. Welcome to Beep Baseball. Garnering recent attention through social media, the word of Beep Baseball has spread across the country. Advertising itself as a blind accessible sport, Beep Baseball puts all players on an even playing field, as almost everyone on the field, including the hitter, wear...

Perhaps the most overlooked truth about human life is that we are made for contemplation. All of us. It’s not that our activist and practical age directly rejects this. Almost worse, our customs, practices and expectations take for granted that anything called contemplation is simply peripheral. Josef Pieper expresses a radically different worldview, that of both Greek philosophers and Christian theologians: Not only in the life to come, but also in his material existence in history, man is, to the very roots of his being, a creature designed for and desiring vision; and this is true to such a degree that the extent of a man’s happiness is only as great as his capacity for contemplation. Here is a point with dramatic practical implications, a foundation from which we can reconceptualize an...

As the NFL draft approaches at the end of April, speculation runs rampant among fans about which players their teams will take and which areas of their rosters have the greatest needs. As a lifelong fan of American Football, I have spent countless hours poring over articles, highlight tape and opinion pieces, trying to predict what my team might do with their picks. In full disclosure, I realize that this is a disordered attachment bordering on idolatry, so I offer this piece as an atonement for all of those hours of lost mental and emotional energy and fleeting glory. I present here an analogy that has helped me to understand and articulate the situation the Catholic Church finds herself in in this apostolic age. The life of the Church is a lot like a football game. We have an offense and...

In an interview released on Wednesday, Pope Francis endorsed a practice that used to be frowned upon but now is a robust phenomenon among practicing Catholics: choosing their own parish. Pope Francis granted an interview to Norah O’Donnell of CBS News — his first such television interview with an American network. While the full interview will be aired on 60 Minutes next month, excerpts were released on Wednesday dealing with the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, as well as climate change. The Holy Father’s responses were in line with his recent and frequent comments on those issues. This comment though will not be considered as newsworthy, but remains noteworthy: “I would say that there is always a place, always,” Pope Francis said, addressing those who do not see a place for themselves in the Ca...

In a certain sense, the Sexual Revolution is over; at the very least, the walls have been breached and the consequences are serious and long-lasting. The Reign of “Gay” is proud, loud, and quite unwilling to tolerate dissent or discussion. And until we face that fact and come to grips with the situation as it really is, we will not be able to respond, regroup, and rebuild in any meaningful way. After all, if the kings and queens of this reign—assisted by their grim, willful lackeys—are going to denounce and shout down Andrew Sullivan, who is openly homosexual, what do you think they want to do to the Catholic Church? That paragraph concluded an editorial I wrote ten years ago, in April 2014. Titled “Welcome to the Reign of ‘Gay,’” it drew up Robert R. Reilly’s excellent Making Gay Okay to ...

While Lent offers us a clear path of conversion, turning away from the world, Easter invites us into God’s own life. In Lent, we seek to die with Christ; in Easter, we must live with him. It appears an anticlimactic season after the rigors of prayer and fasting, but Lent is ordered to Easter as a period of training to live a more joyful and integrated life in Christ. The word “chastity” might take us right back to the battle of Lent. Isn’t that one of those negative words focusing on prohibitions? The Church’s teaching, however, leads us to a positive vision focused on integrity: “Chastity means the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2337). This vision focuses more on l...

The last time the Vatican’s doctrinal office issued a general document on apparitions was in 1978, during the final months of the pontificate of Pope Paul VI. The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith is putting the finishing touches to a new document that sets out clear rules on discerning apparitions and other such supernatural events. The dicastery’s prefect, Cardinal Victor Fernández, told the Register April 23 that he and his staff are “in the process of finalizing a new text with clear guidelines and norms for the discernment of apparitions and other phenomena.” The cardinal, who met with Pope Francis in private audience on Monday, did not divulge any further details on the document, nor exactly when it will be published. The last time the Vatican’s doctrinal office issued a genera...

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Readings:Acts 9:26–31Psalm 22:26–28, 30–321 John 3:18–24John 15:1–8 In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us that He is the true vine that God intended Israel to be—the source of divine life and wisdom for the nations (see Sirach 24:17–24). In Baptism, each of us was joined to Him by the Holy Spirit. As a branch grows from a tree, our souls are to draw life from Him, nourished by His word and the Eucharist. Paul in today’s First Reading seeks to be grafted onto the visible expression of Christ the true vine—His Church. Once the chief persecutor of the Church, Paul encounters initial resistance and suspicion. But he is known by his fruits, by his powerful witness to the Lord working in his life (see Matthew 7:16–20). We too are commanded today to bear good fruits as His disciples so that our lives...

The first reading from  Sunday’s Mass features an excerpt from a sermon by  St. Peter. The contents of the sermon are very similar to others recorded in the Acts of the Apostles by Saints Paul and Stephen. What is interesting is that these ancient sermons break almost every rule (written and unwritten) of modern preaching! Consider the clip from yesterday and not the areas highlighted in red: Peter said to the people:“The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus,whom you handed over and denied in Pilate’s presencewhen he had decided to release him.You denied the Holy and Righteous Oneand you asked that a murderer be released to you.The author of life you put to death,but God raised him from the dead; of this we...