Tag: Pope Francis

Where Pope Francis Needs to Improve

Polls reveal that a large majority of Catholics have a positive view of Pope Francis. However,  far fewer look to him for moral guidance. (In one study, only 11% did.)  It is therefore difficult to know how many Catholics are...

Catholic Bishops’ Response to Biden’s Vaccine Mandate

President Biden has made clear his belief that everyone has a moral obligation to receive the Covid vaccine. The refusal of many citizens to act accordingly has, in his view, put the health of many Americans at risk. He therefore signed an executive...

Dark Shades of Papal Green

There is a truism in science dating back several centuries that states the book of science is always open. Man-made global warming a.k.a. climate change, thanks to erstwhile President Barack Obama, is the first and the only scientific issue where...

The Loss of Innocence

If there is one issue of Catholic moral teaching that has wasted more time and energy of the faithful in the pews, it is the death penalty. Acceptance and approval of capital punishment within the Catholic Church has varied throughout history...

Pope Francis’ Message to a Struggling World

Pope Francis’ new book, Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future, was published on December 1, 2020. The publisher called the book, co-authored by Francis’ biographer Austen Ivereigh, “an epiphany” and “a call to arms” and noted that it...

Canonizing Joe Biden

Canonizing Joe Biden? I know my Republican friends will think this is a misprint. A week or so ago I would have thought the same thing. I regarded Biden as a man of little competence and less integrity whose most significant “achievement” was using...

Pope Francis’ Curious Encyclical, Part 2

Summary of Part 1: In Rerum Novarum (1891) Pope Leo XIII wrote: “The first and most fundamental principle . . . if one would undertake to alleviate the condition of the masses, must be the inviolability of private property.” [Paragraph 15. Emphasis...

What Pope Francis Got Wrong

Since becoming the head of the Catholic Church in 2013, Pope Francis has not shied away from the political domain. Recently, the religious leader used the COVID-19 pandemic to renew his criticisms of free-market capitalism. “The fragility of world...