On Oct. 4, the solemnity of St. Francis of Assisi, the 16th Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on “synodality” opened. Many opposing statements and controversies have preceded and are accompanying the event. On October 2, in the face of “various statements by some senior prelates (… ) blatantly contrary to the constant doctrine and discipline of the Church, and which have generated and continue to generate among the faithful and other people of good will great confusion and the fall into error,” five…
The great Juan Donoso Cortés (1809-1853) said that behind every political problem there is a theological and metaphysical problem. Sometimes, however, behind a theological problem there is a political problem that explains it. This is what must be kept in mind in order to predict what will happen in the next Synod: a religious assembly, desired and organized by a pope for whom politics prevails over theological and moral doctrine. Some episodes that have happened in recent days help us understand this. On September 22,…
We do not know if the decade between the beginning of 2013 and the end of 2023 will be remembered as among the most intense of the twenty-first century, but they have certainly been the most unpredictable of our lives. The decade, in fact, opened with a bombshell — the resignation of Benedict XVI on 11 February 2013 — and is drawing to a close with another bombshell, or rather, as it has been aptly called in a recent book by Julio Loredo and José…
The two major disasters that have struck North Africa in recent days-first the earthquake in Morocco and then, the hurricane with the collapse of two dams in Libya-have caused thousands of casualties, mourning and devastation of all kinds. On Western TV and Internet channels, scenes of grief alternated with the voices of experts: meteorologists, geologists, climatologists. Never, however, was the name of God heard. God has been the great absentee from this dramatic horizon, as if to mention him, to juxtapose his name with these…