Cardinal Willem Eijk, Archbishop of Utrecht, gave a talk at the Rome Life Forum May 16 on the threat gender theory poses not only to objective moral reality, but also to the proclamation of the Christian faith.  Here he is, above, with Cardinal Raymond Burke during a question and answer session May 17.

Here’s a link to my story on the talk now published at The Catholic Register.

Here’s a link to the entire talk, posted at Voice of the Family, organizer of the event.

Cardinal Eijk also spoke of the damage the dissociation of gender from biological sex does to an understanding of the priesthood and the necessity of the priest’s being male, because Jesus is male, and of the spousal relationship of Christ to His Church.

For many of us former Anglicans, it was the tampering with Holy Orders by various national bodies of the Anglican Communion to allow the ordination of women that revealed the necessity of coming into the Communion of the Catholic Church.

Cardinal Raymond Burke also gave an excellent talk on the virtue of Patriotism.  His answer to a question related to large-scale Muslim immigration won the headlines, but this was probably the best talk I have heard Cardinal Burke give and I learned a great deal from it.   So often patriotism and nationalism—which gets a bad reputation—are conflated, and in this talk he explained how patriotism, and the honoring of one’s homeland, is related to the fourth Commandment to honor one’s father and mother.

Voice of the Family has links to the other talks at the 6th annual Rome Life Forum here.  

My visit to Rome will soon end.   Among the highlights was meeting Patrick McCain, our seminarian for the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter who is living at the Pontifical North American College and studying at the Angelicum, the Dominican university in Rome.

Patrick comes from a Southern Baptist family background, and, upon stumbling across a Book of Common Prayer, was led into the Episcopal Church.   He said he found it just Protestant enough to keep him there as he began his journey into the Catholic faith.  Eventually, as he was exposed to more and more of the Anglo-Catholic tradition, he knew he had to become Catholic.  He was catechized for entry into the Church by Fr. Dwight Longenecker, a well known Catholic priest-blogger and former Anglican.  He entered the Catholic Church in 2008.

He’s 33 and worked for four years in social services in Florida, before discerning the call to the priesthood.

Patrick expressed his enthusiasm and hope for the future of the Ordinariates.

I met him at the North American College where I was struck by the quality of the young men there.  They seemed joyful, purposeful, confident in their faith (Patrick included!).  Before attending Vespers, he took me on a tour of the college, including its view of the city of Rome.

My French was good enough to get the gist of what Cardinal Sarah said on May 14 at the launch of his most recent book Le soir approche et déjà le jour baisse, but not good enough to try to translate it.

Thus, I am grateful to see that Sandro Magister has reported on it today.

Cardinal Robert Sarah took everyone by surprise on the evening of May 14 in Rome, in the auditorium of the cultural center of the church of St. Louis of the French, when everyone was expecting him to present his latest book, entitled “Le soir approche et déjà le jour baisse,” on the Church’s crisis of faith and the decline of the West.

Because instead, the cardinal said right away, “this evening I will not talk about this book at all.” And the reason – he explained – is that “the fundamental ideas that I develop in it were illustrated, presented, and demonstrated brilliantly last April by Pope Benedict XVI in the ‘notes’ that he had composed in view of the summit of the presidents of the episcopal conferences on sexual abuse convened in Rome by Pope Francis from February 21 to 24.”

Cardinal Sarah continued:

“His reflection has revealed itself to be a true source of light in the night of faith that touches the whole Church. It has prompted reactions that at times have bordered on intellectual hysteria. I have felt personally struck by the wretchedness and coarseness of several comments. We must be convinced that once again the theologian Ratzinger, whose stature is that of a true father and doctor of the Church, has seen correctly and has touched the deepest heart of the Church’s crisis.

He has posted the entire text of Cardinal Sarah’s talk here in French.

Greetings from Rome.

I apologize for the light blogging as in the run up to my trip I had one of the busiest weeks in my work life as a journalist covering the events around Canada’s National March for Life. 

I caught a cold even before the events got into gear, so I had to martial my energy carefully to make it through the week.

Part of the reason why I’m here is related to the Symposium 2019 in October to mark the 10th anniversary of Anglicanorum coetibus.

Today, I met Patrick McCain, a seminarian of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter who is at the North American College, (he’s holding the umbrella) and Fr. Walter Oxley, of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.  I will attend Vespers at the College tomorrow night and take Patrick out for supper.

I seem to have brought Ottawa weather with me to the Eternal City.  It’s cloudy and chilly, with rain and temperatures around 5 or 6 C predicted for tomorrow.  A highlight of my trip is that I attended an event where Cardinal Sarah presented his latest book with Nicolas Diat: Le soir approche et déjà le jour baisse.

The event was in French, but I understood everything said well enough to be riveted.  Cardinal Sarah decided not to speak about his new book, and instead about Pope-emeritus Benedict’s recent letter: The Church and the scandal of sexual abuse.  

He expounded on the letter, stressing that as Pope Benedict said, the sexual abuse crisis is a crisis of the loss of faith in God.  He said it is true that homosexuality is not the cause of the sexual abuse crisis, but is, instead, a symptom of the loss of God, as is all unchaste behavior on the part of priests.  He told me he plans to publish the text, and when he does I will provide a link.

Last week there was news a group of theologians, clergy and others, including Fr. Aidan Nichols, OP and Fr. John Hunwicke, had signed a 20-page letter accusing Pope Francis of heresy and asking the bishops of the Catholic Church to act.

We have great affection for Fr. Aidan Nichols whom many of us met personally in 2011 when he addressed a conference aimed at Anglicans interested in a possible ordinariate.  He’s shown above with then Bishop Peter Wilkinson of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada.  He is now Msgr. Peter Wilkinson and retired in Victoria, B.C.

Upon reading the news of the letter I felt like I was trying to navigate between the Scylla of heresy and the Charydis of schism.  I do not like this tension between the Catholic faith as handed down from the Apostles and loyalty to the Pope who is a sign of unity and Communion.  The Pope should be the guarantor of that Catholic and Apostolic faith, and that is the reason why he is a sign of unity.   When I became Catholic I was not required to believe the Pope is an oracle of the Holy Spirit and everything he says on a plane or in a private letter is directly the voice of God.  There are limits on the definition of papal infallibility.  In some quarters, however, you would never know that.  Seems those most dissident under Pope Benedict XVI are singing the oracle song today. Continue reading →

Now is the time to register for Symposium 2019, an academic conference on the liturgical, ecumenical, ecclesial and canonical implications of Anglicanorum coetibus on its 10th anniversary.

You can find details of the symposium and registration here.

Space is limited and if you are planning on traveling to Rome, best to book your accommodations as soon as possible.

Register here: http://bit.ly/CDF-ACS2019

Peter Jesserer Smith has a great interview up at the National Catholic Register with Andrew Petiprin, a former Episcopalian canon working in the chancery of an American diocese, who became Catholic with his family on Jan. 1.

Some might therefore look at Andrew Petriprin as a man who has sold everything to run into a burning house. He left his priestly ministry and position as a canon to the bishop in the Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee to follow Jesus Christ’s call to enter the Catholic Church Jan. 1, the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God.

But Petiprin told the Register that amid the Church’s worst scandal since the Reformation era, there is an “outpouring of grace happening now” — and that, for whatever reason in the midst of this present crisis, God has drawn him and other Christian disciples of Jesus Christ into the fullness of communion and truth found in his Catholic Church.

And, of course, we have to look at what he says about Anglicanorum coetibus and Anglican patrimony! Continue reading →