As the Vatican synod on marriage and the family draws to a close with no significant change in Catholic doctrine or practice, liberals are left nursing their wounds over yet another revolution that didn’t happen.
A law professor at Jesuit-run Fordham University in New York is appealing for an end to the institution of marriage in America, which he describes as “religious, gendered, and bourgeois.” Ethan J. Leib published his essay in the Fordham Law Review.
On Friday, an unprecedented letter written to Pope Francis by thirteen cardinals taking part in the Vatican synod on marriage and the family was published online, revealing contention regarding the revamped synodal process as well as the suitability of the draft document being used to guide the bishops’ discussions.
In a word intended to reassure conservatives, Pope Francis told the bishops gathered in the Vatican Synod on the family Tuesday that Church teaching on marriage is “still valid,” while also urging them to broaden their horizons, instead of focusing on internal questions such as Communion for the divorced and remarried.
More than 130 notable converts to Catholicism have published an open letter begging Pope Francis and the bishops gathered at the Vatican Synod on Marriage and the Family to stand firm in teaching traditional Christian beliefs regarding the permanence of marriage, human sexuality, and the meaning of the family.
In his opening address to bishops gathered in Rome for the Vatican synod on marriage and the family, Pope Francis reminded them that the Synod is not a “Parliament” where participants argue their case or negotiate, but a gathering of believers attentive to the Holy Spirit.
The Pope said that Christian marriage is a cure for much of the solitude experienced by men and women in our own day. Our world, he said is characterized by loneliness and paradoxes. Today we enjoy “many sophisticated means of entertainment, but a deep and growing interior emptiness; many pleasures, but few loves; many liberties, but little freedom.” People need the family, even if they don’t realize it, Francis said.
WASHINGTON—Seventy national conservative leaders have issued a “Memo to the Movement” on the Supreme Court, calling on conservatives to focus Republican presidential candidates on what sort of justices they would appoint. These leaders have one simple demand: “No more surprises.”
On the eve of the Vatican synod on marriage and the family, progressive German Cardinal Walter Kasper has come out publicly against doctrinal “fundamentalism” in the Church, while expressing his hope that the synod will open a “dialogue” on contraception for Catholics and reconsider the situation of homosexuals.
In the lead-up to October’s Vatican Synod on Marriage and the Family, the drafters express their deep concern over what they see as “widespread confusion” over the possibility of divorced and remarried Catholics receiving Holy Communion as well as the acceptance of homosexual unions, which they describe as “contrary to Divine and natural law.” On Tuesday morning, the petition was delivered to the Vatican, requesting that Francis offer “a clarifying word” to dispel the confusion that reigns among many of the faithful around the globe.
At his final celebration in the United States before departing for Rome, Pope Francis told approximately one million people who attended Mass outdoors in Philadelphia Sunday that the simple daily acts of love expressed by family members to each other are what nurture both life and faith.
Pope Francis warns marriage has been stretched and distorted in the United States, to the point where it is no longer even similar to the Christian sacrament of matrimony. The pontiff noted the “unprecedented changes” taking place in contemporary society, “with their social, cultural – and sadly now juridical – effects on family bonds,” referring to the Supreme Course decision in June to legalize same-sex marriage for the entire nation in Obergefell v. Hodges.
After a year’s work by a special legal commission, Pope Francis has approved a reform of the Code of Canon Law to simplify and streamline the marriage annulment process. The new rules were presented at the Vatican Tuesday at noon and were laid out in two brief papal letters.
The decision by a federal judge to jail county clerk Kim Davis suggests that Christianity is being criminalized in America, says GOP presidential candidate and Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.
“For us it is important that we not simply be married by the mayor. We love each other, and it’s beautiful to have the acceptance of the church,” said Isabell Storm and Cecilie Mundt, who were both born male. In June 2012 the Danish parliament approved a new law to allow gay marriages in the Lutheran National Church, but so far had not officiated unions between transsexuals.
A buried item in the Office for National Statistics data dump today reveals that UK-born women are the least likely to give birth while married. In 2014, the ONS reveals, “a much higher proportion of births to non UK-born women
In a strongly worded statement to American Catholics, Pope Francis declared that marriage between one man and one woman is “under attack from powerful cultural forces,”
In his weekly audience Wednesday, Pope Francis continued his series of reflections on the family, focusing on the situation of the divorced and remarried and their participation in the life of the Church.
There’s a website looking to pick up what might be called the aftermarket business from cheater websites: FidelityDating.com, which is pitching itself to what the New York Post describes as “‘infidelity survivors’ seeking other singles who’ve also been through cheating scandals.”
A California Democrat has introduced a U.S. House resolution designed to ban the use of “husband” and “wife” from the United States Code.
In a bizarre sequence of events, the German edition of Vatican Radio published a cover photo of two lesbians kissing, with the caption: “Church’s sexual morality is in motion,” only to be removed, then reposted, then removed again.
If Jimmy Carter is “history’s greatest monster,” as deemed by the good people of Springfield in “The Simpsons,” then President Obama is “history’s most deluded jester.”
Kelly Shackelford’s debate with Evan Wolfson on Fox News Sunday highlights the battle lines for religious liberty in America now that the Supreme Court has grossly overstepped its authority by declaring gay marriage a constitutional right. This war will center on whether religious liberty extends to how you earn your living, get an education, and run a business.
In her first interview since her husband, Dr. Ben Carson, announced he is running for the Republican presidential nomination, Candy Carson spoke exclusively with Breitbart News about their 40 years of marriage, their faith, and the trials and tribulations of taking on a presidential campaign.
Like for many conservatives, the Supreme Court’s recent liberty-crushing rampage was an incredibly difficult pill for me to swallow. Having to listen to the continuous parade of mainstream media pundits trot out their prized leftist activists to tell us all how common interpretations held by the public and the courts had been completely wrong for more than 200 years was nauseating to say the least.
Californians have seen it before. From the overturn of voter approved Proposition 8 and Proposition 22 to this week’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges to institute homosexual marriage in all 50 states, judges overruled the will of the people.
Bottom line: the Marriage Mandate is an idea whose time has come. It combines the reasoning of the Supreme Court’s decisions on ObamaCare, gay marriage, and disparate impact into one atomic fireball of compulsory social justice. Conservatives will love the results, while statists will love the methods.
Friday’s case will go down in US judicial history as one of our nation’s most misguided decisions. Fortunately, the four dissenting justices have also furnished the country with a goldmine of rational, lucid arguments that could eventually serve as the foundation stones to rebuild what has been lost.
On Wednesday, Pope Francis continued his reflections on the family, addressing the delicate question of divorce and separation, as well as its effects on family members. He invited his hearers to think more about the effects that adults’ actions have on the most vulnerable, especially little ones.
The Vatican’s new document that will serve as a guide for discussions in the upcoming synod on marriage and the family has caused consternation among liberals who see the text as a barrier to more progressive reforms in Catholic teaching on marriage.
Despite a torrential downpour, an estimated 500,000 people gathered Saturday in Rome under the banner of “Family Day,” protesting gender ideology and LGBT programs in schools and reaffirming the nature of marriage as the lifelong union of one man and one woman.
In the U.S. today, all the focus seems to be on gay marriage. It’s a central topic at the Supreme Court this month, for example. But the real story isn’t the death of men; it’s the death of marriage.
In an address to Bishops of the Dominican Republic this week, Pope Francis returned to a theme he has been hammering home all year: marriage as the union of one man and one woman, an institution that he said is undergoing a “serious crisis.”
In his weekly audience Wednesday, Pope Francis gave dating couples some radically countercultural advice, encouraging them to hold off on sex until they are properly married.
Prominent rap figure P Diddy, also known as Sean Combs, but not to be confused with his old persona Puff Daddy, has announced he doesn’t believe in the sanctity of marriage, but he is down to sign a “love contract.”
During his commencement address at Liberty University on Saturday, presumptive 2016 presidential candidate Jeb Bush blistered the Obama administration for its “use of coercive federal power” to restrict religious freedom.
As more and more countries enact laws permitting same-sex marriage, Pope Francis devoted his weekly “general audience” to the topic of Christian matrimony, distinguishing it from the merely social institution of marriage in its diverse forms and insisting that the life of the Church “deteriorates” whenever marriage “is disfigured.”
While climate change activists busily campaigned the Pope for support for their projects, Francis’s mind was elsewhere, reflecting on the importance of traditional marriage and the plight of women in the world.
Temel Kotil, the CEO of Turkish Airlines, made headlines this week by recommending marriage as the best way to avoid future murder-suicide plane crashes, like the one co-pilot Andreas Lubitz carried out aboard a Germanwings airliner.
Continuing with his insistence that Christians speak the truth boldly and “without fear” of the consequences, on Wednesday Pope Francis took on both the gay lobby and radical feminists by contending that men and women are essentially different and not interchangeable.
