Here are some articles, essays, and editorials that caught our attention this past week or so.*
Dissent and double standards at ‘Where Peter Is’ (The Catholic Herald): “The thesis that McManaman is suggesting, and that Lewis is promoting, is that even a doctrine proclaimed by the Church to be ‘irrevocable’ and ‘taught infallibly’ may turn out to be wrong.”
Morrissey: Watchman of the West (Spe Salvi Institute): “’I found myself in Paris,’ Morrissey sings on the title track of his new album, Make-up is a Lie, his first in six years. And where else would he be these days?”
Vatican appeal court orders review of financial trial investigation (The Pillar): “The Vatican City Court of Appeal issued a decision Tuesday ordering a review of the investigation and indictment which opened the landmark financial crimes trial in 2022.”
How Catholics Do Political Protest (Catholic Answers):“Recent ICE protests open up the question: how should Catholics publicly air their grievances?”
Trump’s Objectives in Iran and the Fog of War (Providence): “A student asked me the other day what right America had to go to war with Iran. My response to the student was that America’s moral and ethical right was clear, particularly if you date this war to 1979 and the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran.”
Vatican theological commission warns of replacing God with ‘a world governed by machines’ (Our Sunday Visitor): “The Vatican’s International Theological Commission has warned that if humanity places total trust in technology in a ‘world ruled by machines,’ it risks replacing the ‘living God; with a counterfeit ‘virtual God.”
Christendom Alumnus Matthew Walz Named President of Thomas More College (Christendom College): “Walz, a distinguished professor, author, and valedictorian of his undergraduate class at Christendom, has taught at the college level since 1998 and will now bring his deep passion for the education and formation of students to his new role as a college president.”
Further drop in US married households spurs call to action for Church leaders (Our Sunday Visitor): “America finds itself at a proverbial sociological crossroads, confronting a disconcerting question about a millennia-old institution: Does marriage matter anymore?”
The Cuban Mirage: A Revolution Exposed (The American Mind): “Fidel Castro and his Communist epigones have brought only misery and despair.”
(*The posting of any particular news item or essay is not an endorsement of the content and perspective of said news item or essay.)
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St. Cyril of Jerusalem: A beacon of courage in the face of misunderstanding and opposition
Three great Lenten themes
“Cuba has long suffered under medical apartheid, with shiny state-of-the-art facilities for the party elite in Havana camouflaging the lamentable state of medical clinics that cater to ordinary Cubans—where even bandages and other minimal essentials are in desperately short supply. Thirty-three percent of Cubans “were unable to acquire the medicine they needed due to price or scarcity,”
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Poor Cubans today can lack even basic medications like antibiotic salves. We take so much for granted here where we can pick up a tube at the Dollar Store. Minus that, a wound can become life or limb threatening.
@ Further Drop in U.S. Married Households
We read: “What is the Church to do.?” One easy step might be in the Prayers of the Faithful,” the meaning of “vocations” should be extended— alongside the priesthood and religious life— to marriage which also enjoys the full stature of nothing less than another vocation.
In our skittish, careerist, and real-time world, the deeper and permanent meaning of “vocation,” itself, needs to be restored.
JEAN-PIERRE DE CAUSSADE (1675-1751) writes: “So we must recognize that there is no special or singular road leading to perfection but that for most people easily the best thing is submission to all that God will for their particular [!] way of life [….] This is why I preach self-abandonment and not any particular way of life. I love whatever is the state [of life!] in which your grace places souls [!] and have no liking for one more than another” (“Abandonment to Divine Providence”).
In the long term, then, a restored family culture can lead to vocations of all types.
And, on the COMMENT (in the article) that the pending population winter is unmatched in history, how about this not-irrelevant reminder of the ancient world:
“Late marriages and small families became the rule, and men satisfied their sexual instincts by homosexuality or by relations with slaves and prostitutes. This aversion to marriage and the deliberate restriction of the family by the practice of infanticide and abortion was undoubtedly the main cause of the decline of ancient Greece, as Polybius pointed out in the second century B.C. And the same factors were equally powerful in the society of the Empire. . . .” (Christopher Dawson, “The Patriarchal Family in History,” The Dynamics of World History,” 1962).
@ Dissent and double standards at ‘Where Peter Is’
“Common doctrine is not irreversible and open to debate” (Deacon McManaman Where Peter Is). Feser would definitively correct this citing two Roman pontiffs John Paul and Benedict. Unfortunately Francis I opened it to discussion.
Feser’s proposition is that Lewis [Editor Where Peter Is] is challenging a doctrine that is not merely 8 years old, rather one that reaches beyond to the institution by Christ of hands on ordination exclusive to the Apostles. Apostleship that is exclusive to men.
Whereas, from this writer’s perspective, there’s the more modified, salient proposal that ordination may be limited to women as deacons as permanent rather than transitory and open to Priesthood. Experience in the African missions presented a scenario of African nuns entering the evangelical domain of missionary priests, simply because of the shortage of priests. Women who braved elements and danger from tribesmen. Bringing Christ absent of offering Mass and those sacraments exclusive to priests.
Arguments have swirled around this seeming possibility, whether ordination can be instituted as permanently limited to diaconate. Argument rests on recognition, arguments against that ordination is nonetheless a feature that relates to ordination to the priesthood. Deacons can read and preach the Gospel, officiate at weddings. They cannot anoint, offer Mass, hear confession and absolve.
That a layperson can read the Gospel, preach outside of Mass, baptize, distribute the Eucharist reduces ordination of women as deacons as seemingly superfluous. Taking that into account the singular merit for ordaining women would be to leave the possibility of priesthood open.
@ FURTHER DROP IN US MARRIED HOUSEHOLDS SPURS CALL TO ACTION FOR CHURCH LEADERS
Essayist Kimberley Heatherington quotes David Crawford of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family Catholic U that “Catholics live in a wider social, cultural, political and legal environment, from which they cannot and should not close themselves and their families to their cultural milieu”.
Both agree that married Catholics must witness to a culturally depraved pornographic milieu, pornography now a ‘normalized’ form of entertainment. Read recently that some families children and all consider pornography home entertainment. And worse, parents offering their own children to perform for the equivalent of Judas’ silver coins.
Approach given to the immense issue destroying marriage as ordained by God is good in respect to content and ends. The issue however seems that good ideas are likely not the answer – unless they are strengthened by spiritual dedication of both family and religious – and by consistent clarity upholding to Apostolic doctrine as seems the case with Leo XIV in his directives to Roman Rota on marriage, his similar effort to the Cardinals now on a yearly basis.
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Three great Lenten themes
Extra, extra! News and views for Wednesday, March 18, 2026
Vatican court orders partial retrial in ‘trial of the century’ finance case
On Saint Patrick’s challenge to Catholics today
From Catholic News Service: Five years after Pope Benedict XVI lifted most restrictions on celebration of the Tridentine Mass, a senior Vatican official says that much work remains to make the traditional liturgy fully accessible […]
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