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Roger Vangheluwe, the former Bishop of Brugge, in a 2007 photo. (Image: Carolus/Wikipedia) Thursday’s news about the defrocking of Roger Vangheluwe has given us an answer to a question raised with some palpable urgency by another high-profile scandal touching the very echelons of power in the Vatican. The other case is that of Fr. Marko Rupnik, the inveterate creep and serial abuser of mostly religious women, accused but never tried for his alleged crimes, which he committed over three decades, much of which he spent right under the noses of Roman authorities in the Society of Jesus—to which he then belonged—and the Vatican for which he did a lot of work. Perhaps the past tense of the verb “to do” is not accurate. Rupnik is still listed as a consultant to the Dicastery for Divine Worship a...

By Fr. Victor Feltes Judas Iscariot came to the Garden of Gethsemane with soldiers and guards who carried swords and clubs, lanterns and torches. Jesus’ disciples realized what was about to happen and asked, “Lord, shall we strike with a sword?” When one struck the high priest’s slave, cutting off his right ear, Jesus shouted, “Stop, no more of this!” Jesus then touched the man’s ear and healed him. All four gospels record the event but only St. John reveals it was St. Peter who had wielded the sword. Perhaps there was no longer a need to conceal his role in this violent episode once Peter had been martyred. St. John also tells us the wounded man was named Malchus. Why did Peter strike at Malchus? It’s hard to imagine Peter attacking him if Malchus were unarmed and posed no immediate threa...

Denis Villeneuve’s masterpiece is a cinematic sci-fi triumph — and a stark cautionary tale. Stillsuits. Sandworms. Telepathic preborn babies. The weird world of Dune is a wonder to behold. With Dune: Part Two, director Denis Villeneuve has done what was previously thought to be impossible: He successfully adapted Dune to the big screen in a way that does justice to the complexity and emotional weight of the original story. Frank Herbert’s seminal novel, originally published in 1965, is considered one of the greatest science fiction novels of all time, and even his son Brian, who served as executive producer for both Dune films and consulted on the script, has said that this version is the definitive film adaptation of his father’s great work. For those who haven’t seen the first Dune, it i...

Msgr. Charles Pope Msgr. Charles Pope is currently a dean and pastor in the Archdiocese of Washington, DC, where he has served on the Priest Council, the College of Consultors, and the Priest Personnel Board. Along with publishing a daily blog at the Archdiocese of Washington website, he has written in pastoral journals, conducted numerous retreats for priests and lay faithful, and has also conducted weekly Bible studies in the U.S. Congress and the White House. He was named a Monsignor in 2005. ALL POSTS Services Marketplace – Listings, Bookings & Reviews Entertainment blogs & Forums

The novel The Damnation of Theron Ware, published in 1896, unspools the tale of a young Methodist minister who, thanks to Catholics, science, bohemianism, and good old American pragmatism, loses his faith. Yes, Reverend Theron Ware was vulnerable, no doubt. His pride, limited intellectual, spiritual and social background as well as the bitter, humiliating realities of church life rendered him susceptible to the possibility of damnation— or “illumination” as the novel’s original title slyly suggests; but what a journey it is, a complex trajectory put in motion and shaped by entanglements with a Catholic priest, a Darwinian biologist, an aesthete “new woman,” and the remarkable Sister Soulsby—a blowsy, confident traveling church fundraiser. I learned of the book while perusing the late criti...

‘Homesteading,’ whatever exactly it is, runs deep in the American psyche and history. Vast stretches of our nation were settled through it. A great number of our forebears—and here I do not mean only settlers or pioneers but people living for generations in one place—lived, worked, and passed on a holding that is rightly called a homestead. Today homesteading is much talked of, and indeed we might even call it a movement. This, I think, is a very good and telling reality. Clearly, as a society we are realizing we have lost something we need to recover. The tricky thing is to discern just what it is we’ve lost and then how, and also why, to get it back. Here it’s easy to miss the forest for the trees; or perhaps rather, to miss a certain way of life for the field on which it was once lived,...

In vitro fertilization (IVF) is back in the headlines. In February 2024, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen human embryos constitute children under state statute. The nine-judge court said in an 8-1 ruling that the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act is “sweeping and unqualified,” and extends its provisions to children “regardless of location.” This decision, along with the debate it has prompted about the legal status of frozen human embryos, invites us to revisit events from 1989. It was then in a Tennessee courtroom that the nature of such embryos was investigated with expert witness testimony given by the eminent French pediatrician and geneticist, Dr. Jérôme Lejeune (1926-1994), the scientist who discovered the extra chromosome that causes Down syndrome. The case in questio...

2 days ago 2 days ago “It’s a beautiful life that we could be living in each moment, but what many of us decide to do is to drown ourselves in false electronic contentment,” said Michael Toscano, executive director of the Institute for Family Studies. In his new First Things article “Recovering our Memory” Michael writes, “It became quickly apparent to me that smartphones and social media were beginning to subject the people around me—smart, disciplined, hard-working people—to a profound change. They were more hunched over, prone to glancing at the device during conversations, and scrolling. Always scrolling.”  Michael is a leader in efforts nationwide to adopt laws to make technology safer for kids. He has written on family pol...

[embedded content] The 3-Minute Reset is a simple, daily discipline focused on spending a moment in thought and prayer, and rediscovering the peace that is always available to us. Hosted by Pat Lencioni and Chris Stefanick. Services Marketplace – Listings, Bookings & Reviews Entertainment blogs & Forums

CNN  —  Tyler Anbinder didn’t know what he’d find when he started digging into a vast trove of records that had been locked inside a bank — and inaccessible to the public — for nearly 150 years. One detail immediately caught the historian’s attention: The accounts described in the bank’s ledgers had much more money in them than he expected. As he first combed through files from the Emigrant Savings Bank at the New York Public Library that day about 25 years ago, Anbinder was working on a book about the city’s famed Five Points neighborhood. That 19th-century enclave, portrayed as a battleground for warring criminals in the 2002 Martin Scorsese film “Gangs of New York,” was “notoriously overcrowded, run-down (and) impoverished,” Anbinder notes. It was also “home to ...

Cardinal Robert W. McElroy of San Diego greets Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, retired archbishop of Los Angeles, during a consistory led by Pope Francis for the creation of 20 new cardinals in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican Aug. 27, 2022. (CNS photo/Paul Haring) Cardinal Robert McElroy, in his recent remarks to the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress, stated the following: It is essential to safeguard the deposit of faith.  But how do the doctrinal tradition and history of the church restrict the church’s ability to refine its teaching when confronted with a world where life itself is evolving in critical ways, and it is becoming clear that on some issues the understanding of human nature and moral reality upon which previous declarations of doctrine were made were in fact ...