Over at First Things George Weigel comments on the opinion of Dr Lavinia Byrne. Byrne is an ex Catholic nun who is still hopping mad that the Catholic Church did not follow the Anglican lead in ordaining women in the 1990s. Weigel quotes Lav: If in the 1990s, the [Catholic] Church had followed the example of the Anglican communion and had accepted the ordination of women, it would look very different nowadays. . . . Had there been ordination of... Read more

Deacon Greg gets all the scoops. He reports here on American Catholic nun Jeanne Grammick who has written a letter to El Presidente advocating abortion. I kid you not. The curious thing is, the other day I was ranting about the dissenting sisters and said just that: that they support abortion. I was told off in the combox by a progressive who was “saddened” and “concerned” about my “lack of charity”. Here’s the letter. Another commenter asked, “Why is the... Read more

London’s Daily Telegraph reports here on the plight of Meriam Ibrahim–a Sudanese Christian woman who is pregnant and has been sentenced to death for renouncing Islam. She is being held in a Sudanese jail along with her infant son. An eight-months pregnant woman is being kept shackled to the wall of her cell as she awaits hanging, her husband has said after visiting her in prison. Meriam Ibrahim, 26, was sentenced to death in Sudan on Thursday for refusing to recant her... Read more

In this article over at National Catholic Reporter, Jamie Manson expresses what she feels is the core clash between the sisters of LCWR and the pope: Pope Francis believes women religious should continue to do the work of the church while remaining obedient to the voice of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. The women religious of the LCWR, on the other hand, believe their work and their faith demand that they remain radically obedient first and foremost to the voice of... Read more

Guest blogger Todd Unctuous is top commentator for MSM. With a degree in Media Studies from Scranton Community College, Todd writes for many papers and websites, and is known for his incisive writing, objective reporting and razor sharp comment. One year ago I wrote in this column that I was surprised and delighted at the choice of the Roman Catholic Church in their new pope. In choosing a pope with the name Francis they were honoring one of  the world’s... Read more

It’s pretty clear in today’s gospel isn’t it? Jesus says, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” This sounds clear: “Jesus is the only way to God.” When you combine this with the teaching in the third chapter of John’s gospel the message is even more stark. Jesus says to Nicodemus, “Whoever believes in him [God’s Son] is not condemned,but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they... Read more

There’s that scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in which Indy has to go through the tunnel in the cave to finally find the Holy Grail. To do so he has to pass three trials. The first one is that whirling blades unexpectedly fly from the walls to decapitate the victim. The clue to get past is the phrase, “Only the penitent man shall pass”. So Indy kneels down in penitence and the blade whirls harmlessly over his head and... Read more

We don’t know much about St Matthias except that one of the first things Peter does in the Acts of the Apostles is to get the others together to select a successor to Judas. Thus the foundation of what we know as “apostolic succession” is established as one of the foundational acts of the Apostles in the Acts of the Apostles. By the way, I am so glad that this book is named, “Acts” of the Apostles and not “the... Read more

Barbara Marx Hubbard gets a voice over at the National Catholic Reporter here. She says she is making a response to Cardinal Muller. The problem is, she doesn’t give a response to Cardinal Muller at all. Instead her article is not much more than a load of sentimental mumbo jumbo about “conscious evolution” along with her bibliography. Here is a sample: Now, meeting with so many women religious through LCWR, I see conscious evolution in action. They have been evolving... Read more

As our society drifts ever closer to a kind of de facto atheism the relevance and significance of theology wanes. What use has the secularist, the materialist, the default atheist of theology? For such people theology is a ridiculous study of the ridiculous. It is an illusionary discipline that presumes to study a fabricated fiction. For the secularist theology may be a time wasting past time for a handful of archaic academics, but it becomes dangerous when the theologians then... Read more