Flashes
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Just look up at the sky and fix Easter’s divided date
Settling on a shared Easter date requires no new doctrine, no church council, and no theological debate. As one theologian wryly observed, the calculation is less a matter of scripture than of stargazing: “To compute the date of Easter, don’t dive into manuscripts; just look up at the sky!”
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The words we pray shape who belongs in the Church
The language used in Catholic worship is not a neutral tool — it actively shapes who feels seen, welcomed, and addressed by God. When liturgical words no longer resonate with the lived experience of the assembly, the Church’s ability to gather all the baptised is quietly undermined.
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From hope to silence: when the Church blinked
A Jesuit bishop reached for a medieval image — bridegroom, bride — to slam the door on women’s ordination. He didn’t stop there. He criticised fellow Jesuit, Pope Francis, for leaving the question open at all. The message was unambiguous: this conversation is over.
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Finding truth and holiness outside the Catholic Church
Holiness is not a closed door. The Church’s relationship with the modern world changed when it began to see the “fullness of religious life” through a broader lens. In Nostra aetate the Church to find common ground with Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam.
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God is not a weapon
Pope Leo XIV’s Palm Sunday homily quoted Isaiah directly at those prosecuting the Iran offensive, saying God does not hear the prayers of those whose hands are full of blood. It was among the sharpest papal condemnations of an active military campaign in recent memory.
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Bishop’s 2028 ultimatum: married priests or collapse?
With Belgium’s seminary pipeline effectively empty, Bishop John Bonny argues that importing clergy from other continents is a form of pastoral colonialism. His 2028 target is a direct challenge to a Church model he believes is structurally broken in the secularised West.
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Catholic voters and a crisis of conscience
The Catholic moral tradition places the common good at the center of political life. A sobering look at how U.S. Catholic voters in 2024 weighed that tradition against the record of a twice-failed president — and what their choice has cost the world.
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Paul VI’s emerald ring returns to Canterbury on Mullally’s finger
Mullally wore the emerald ring Paul VI gave to Michael Ramsey in 1966, while a belt buckle from her years as a working nurse was refashioned into the morse clasp of her cope — storied symbols grounding the ceremony in both ecumenical history and a life spent caring for the sick.
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A Holy Thursday and a meal of friends
The story of the Mass moves from intimate home gatherings to imperial basilicas, from the Greek of early Christians to Latin, from Trent to Vatican II. Each shift carried theological weight, and each provoked resistance — a reminder that how a community prays has always been contested ground.
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The report Rome buried — and couldn’t keep secret
In 1976, a Vatican commission quietly reached a landmark conclusion on women’s ordination — and Rome quietly buried it. Fifty years later, that suppressed finding is back in focus, raising hard questions about authority, transparency, and what the Church’s own scholars actually said.
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