Church History
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Coptic patriarch praying in Venice matters more than it looks
The Coptic Church does not treat sacred space casually. That Pope Tawadros celebrated liturgy at a Catholic basilica — not once, but twice in three years — signals a quiet theological recognition that cuts deeper than diplomatic courtesy or interchurch goodwill.
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St Jerome’s crude language used to destroy a rival thinker
Vatican II worked to restore the centrality of baptism and the equal dignity of all the faithful — precisely the ground Jovinian occupied in the fourth century. If the Council’s teaching is orthodox today, the logic that condemned Jovinian deserves to be revisited formally.
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“Pure-blood” bishops sound more like Harry Potter than the Gospels
Jesus measured faithfulness by whether people fed the hungry and visited the imprisoned, not by tracing clerical lineage. The doctrine of Apostolic Succession, built on mistranslation and selective memory, distracts from the radical simplicity of the Gospel’s own demands.
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Peter’s failures were preserved for a reason
The word “constitutive” was applied freely across Church documents to evangelisation, charity, canon law, and even the male-only diaconate. The one thing it was never again permitted to describe was the Church’s relationship to justice.
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From hiding to mission
Pope Francis’ call to proclaim the Joy of the Gospel is not simply a programmatic slogan. For the Church in Nagasaki — and everywhere — it signals a fundamental reorientation: from protecting what has been received to offering it openly to the world.
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In the Easter story, women are the first to proclaim the resurrection – but…
Women made up only 14% of U.S. congregation leaders as of 2018-19, despite constituting nearly a quarter of professional clergy. That gap sits uneasily alongside Easter Gospel narratives in which women are the first — and sometimes only — witnesses to the resurrection.
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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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