I was not blessed to personally attend the National Eucharistic Congress this past July. However, I know several bishops, priests, religious sisters, and seminarians, both religious and diocesan seminarians, who had attended, and all of … [Read more...]
Ecclesiology After the NEC with Bishop Barron as Our Guide
August 23, 2024 by Rev. John P. Cush, STD
The Eucharistic Christology of Pope Benedict XVI
In Commemorationem Christi
January 17, 2019 by Marcus Benedict Peter
Christ is truly present among us in the Eucharist. His presence is not static. It is a dynamic presence that grasps us, to make us his own, to make us assimilate him. Christ draws us to himself, he makes us come out of ourselves to make us … [Read more...]
An Analysis of the Motherhood of the Church as Expounded by Henri Cardinal De Lubac
May 18, 2018 by Dr. William R. Luckey, PhD
“Hear, O daughter, consider, and incline your ear; Forget your people and your father’s house; And the king will desire your beauty.” Psalm 45:10 This quote from the Psalms refers analogously to the nuptials of Christ and his Church; a be … [Read more...]
The Sacramental Ecclesiology of St. Ignatius of Antioch and Joseph Ratzinger
February 24, 2018 by Veronica A. Arntz
In a 1978 lecture entitled, “On the Meaning of Sacrament,” Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger describes modern man’s inability to understand symbolism and sacraments. Ratzinger was addressing an age greatly influenced by the historical-critical metho … [Read more...]
Orthodox Christians and the Modern Church
May 1, 2017 by John Madigan
With the recent meeting of Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, and all Russia, it is important and helpful to remind ourselves of developments in the Church’s teachings regarding our Eastern brothers. This article explores how l … [Read more...]
The New Pagans and the Church
A 1958 Lecture by Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI). Translated by Fr. Kenneth Baker, S.J.
January 30, 2017 by Fr. Kenneth Baker, SJ
According to religious statistics, old Europe is still a part of the earth that is almost completely Christian. But there is hardly another case in which everyone knows as well as they do here that the statistic is false: This so-called … [Read more...]
Sacramental Ecclesiology in the Loaves and Fishes
September 27, 2016 by Scott Pauline
In Catholicism, there are those big-time verses that the Church has dogmatically defined as dealing with central questions of doctrine. The papacy is found at Mt 16:18 when Christ himself names Peter as the rock of the one Church he has now … [Read more...]
Late Summer Reading
August 29, 2016 by Book Reviews
Unity in the Church or The Principle of Catholicism. By Johann Adam Möhler. (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1996). 487 pages. $34.95. ISBN: 978-0-8132-2876-1. Commentary on Thomas Aquinas’s Treatise on Law. By J. Bu … [Read more...]
The Church Just Did for Movements What She Did for Religious in 1978, Only Better
August 1, 2016 by Fr. Matthew P. Schneider, LC
The Church does not rush to judgement, but reflects and ponders clearly to ascertain what is God’s will. This can take years, even decades. Vatican II renewed many aspects of Catholic life: the sacramental character of a bishop’s con … [Read more...]
Nilus Cabasilas and a Modern Greek Theologian on “the Heresy of Anti-Papism”
January 15, 2016 by James Likoudis
Nilus Cabasilas (c. 1295-1363) succeeded Gregory Palamas on the archepiscopal throne of Thessalonika, and was one of the most distinguished Byzantine intellectuals and theologians of the 14th century. He was heavily involved in the … [Read more...]
Our Church and Vision
January 15, 2016 by Fr. John Navone, SJ
St. John affirms the mystery which is at the heart of our Christian faith: the “love which the Father has lavished on us in letting us be called God’s children” (1 Jn 3:1), the love that takes flesh in Christ, and the outpouring of his Spiri … [Read more...]
Peter, Mary, and the Cross
An Examination of the Ecclesiology of Von Balthasar’s Dialectic
June 13, 2015 by Paulino Forte
Hans Urs von Balthasar has proposed that a dialectic, or “reciprocal relationship,” exists between the objective and subjective holiness of the Church—represented by the persons of Peter and Mary—which he associates with its institutional an … [Read more...]
“The Indelible Mark”
Sacramental Character in Patristic and Scholastic Theology
May 12, 2015 by Nicholas Senz
The history of the development of doctrine is, in many ways, a history of language. It is a story of the perpetual struggle to adequately communicate the divine realities in human words, or at the very least, to attempt to do so without … [Read more...]
Lumen Gentium
The Church’s Explanation of Her Nature, Mission, and Structure in the World
April 27, 2015 by Jayson M. Brunelle, MEd, CAGS
October 11, 2012, marked the 50th anniversary of the opening session of the Second Vatican Council. The newly canonized Pope St. John XXIII, born Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, was elected to the papacy in October of 1958, at the age of 77. Much … [Read more...]
New Testament Witness
March 11, 2015 by Fr. John Navone, SJ
The faith of the early Christians in Jesus and the Kingdom of his Father constituted them as a community or Church. If it was their shared faith that formed them into a community, who and what they believed in would be the decisive factor … [Read more...]
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