Did Christ found His Church on St. Peter? Was Peter prince of the Apostles and visible head of the Church? Was he infallible in his doctrinal teaching? Had he the power to make laws that bind all Christians? Was he the first bishop of Rome? Were his privileges communicated by divine law to succeeding Roman Pontiffs? Is there a consensus on the answer to these questions discernible in the New Testament and in the Early Fathers and Councils? No one could be better qualified than Cardinal Merry del Val (1865-1930) to answer these questions. Distinguished for his learning and holiness, he was selected by Pope St. Pius X as his right hand man and spent his adult life in the most senior Vatican posts. This book, written in reply to Protestant propaganda, effortlessly sweeps away errors and misunderstandings leaving the truth plain to any sincere reader. It quotes all the major sources of the early centuries. An ideal book to instruct Catholics or convert Protestants.
Replying to an Anglican theologian living in Rome in 1902, who had challenged this future Cardinal, then Archbishop Rafael Merry del Val responded with this book, providing a profound explanation of the true nature of the Church - founded by Our Lord on the Rock of Peter and his successors, and including all the Apostles with their successors in union with the Pope. These govern the Church which is spread throughout the nations of the world, as living branches on that Vine that is the one Mystical Body of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Catholic and therefore universal.
This is a reply to 'The Validity of Papal Claims, by F. Nutcombe Oxenham, DD, English Chaplain (Anglican) in Rome. IT is never a pleasing task to have to deal with an opponent who delights in sophistry, but when a writer forgets his good manners and finds it necessary to couch his specious reasoning in terms which are offensive and discourteous, the task becomes more displeasing still. Dr. Oxenham, in his little book entitled "The Validity of Papal Claims "-a book in which he endeavours to reply to the Pope's Encyclical on the Unity of the Church-appears to revel in abusive epithets, and he accuses Leo XIII. of "deliberate mistranslations and forgeries," of "most presumptuous" and "profane Impostures," just as on a previous occasion he did not hesitate to charge the venerable Pontiff with having uttered a "deliberate and audacious falsehood." But abuse is not argument, and I fancy that most people will be inclined to suspect that his position must be a weak one if it requires such weapons for its defence. The main point at issue, as Dr. Oxenham himself acknowledges in the opening chapters of his book, is no other than this: -Did S. Peter hold the privileges of supremacy and infallibility now claimed for him, and were those privileges recognised by all the venerable Fathers of antiquity, and by all the holy and orthodox Doctors of the Church, as the Vatican Council asserts, and the present Pontiff teaches in his Encyclical on the Unity of the Church, according to the divine promise of our Lord and Saviour given to the Prince of His Apostles? 1. Now, as regards Dr. Oxenham's manner of dealing with the subject, I must first point out that he seems to have experienced considerable difficulty when he came to translate the very simple text of the Vatican Council. No one in the least familiar with the terms of ecclesiastical language, or indeed with the etymology of words, would venture tv translate "discipulorum principi" by "the wisest of His Apostles." And yet, this is the version as it appears on page 8 of Dr. Oxenham's little book. However, after he had printed his book, Dr. Oxenham discovered his mistake, and in the copy which I possess,l there is inserted a strip of paper with some Errata, and we are asked to read Prince instead of wisest. It is not easy to pass over the mistranslation as a printer's error, and we are led to wonder how far we can trust Dr. Oxenham's manner of handling the texts which he quotes, and whether he is in any way competent to pronounce upon atranslation given by Leo XIII., whom he accuses of deliberately falsifying" the testimony of one of the Fathers. 2. Dr. Oxenham proceeds at once to abandon the main point at issue, mentioned above, and, after the manner of the hero of Cervantes, to combat an imaginary foe. He adds page to page in order to prove that the Vatican Council and the Pope were wrong in saying that which they never did say. For nowhere has the Councilor the Pope asserted that all the venerable Fathers and orthodox doctors of the Church, at all times and on every occasion, even when dealing with a subject other than the supremacy of S. Peter, have expressly described or expounded at length the position of S. Peter, or that each one of the Fathers has been at pains to mention that doctrine every time that he may have had occasion to refer to one or .other of the three famous texts quoted by Dr. Oxenham, viz.: -" Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth, it shall be bound also in Heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in Heaven" (Matt. xvi. 18). "Simon, Simon, behold Satan has desired to have you that he may sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not: and thou being once converted, confirm thy brethren". "Feed my lambs . . Feed my sheep".
If you could sit down with St. Thomas Aquinas over a pint of beer and ask him any one question, what would it be? Pints With Aquinas contains over 50 deep thoughts from the Angelic doctor on subjects such as God, virtue, the sacraments, happiness, alcohol, and more. If you've always wanted to read St. Thomas but have been too intimidated to try, this book is for you.So, get your geek on, pull up a bar stool and grab a cold one, here we go!""He alone enlightened the Church more than all other doctors; a man can derive more profit in a year from his books than from pondering all his life the teaching of others." - Pope John XXII
A New York Times columnist and one of America’s leading conservative thinkers considers Pope Francis’s efforts to change the church he governs in a book that is “must reading for every Christian who cares about the fate of the West and the future of global Christianity” (Rod Dreher, author of The Benedict Option). Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in 1936, today Pope Francis is the 266th pope of the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Francis’s stewardship of the Church, while perceived as a revelation by many, has provoked division throughout the world. “If a conclave were to be held today,” one Roman source told The New Yorker, “Francis would be lucky to get ten votes.” In his “concise, rhetorically agile…adroit, perceptive, gripping account (The New York Times Book Review), Ross Douthat explains why the particular debate Francis has opened—over communion for the divorced and the remarried—is so dangerous: How it cuts to the heart of the larger argument over how Christianity should respond to the sexual revolution and modernity itself, how it promises or threatens to separate the church from its own deep past, and how it divides Catholicism along geographical and cultural lines. Douthat argues that the Francis era is a crucial experiment for all of Western civilization, which is facing resurgent external enemies (from ISIS to Putin) even as it struggles with its own internal divisions, its decadence, and self-doubt. Whether Francis or his critics are right won’t just determine whether he ends up as a hero or a tragic figure for Catholics. It will determine whether he’s a hero, or a gambler who’s betraying both his church and his civilization into the hands of its enemies. “A balanced look at the struggle for the future of Catholicism…To Change the Church is a fascinating look at the church under Pope Francis” (Kirkus Reviews). Engaging and provocative, this is “a pot-boiler of a history that examines a growing ecclesial crisis” (Washington Independent Review of Books).
Look out for a new book from Garry Wills, What The Qur'an Meant, coming fall 2017. "The truth, we are told, will make us free. It is time to free Catholics, lay as well as clerical, from the structures of deceit that are our subtle modern form of papal sin. Paler, subtler, less dramatic than the sins castigated by Orcagna or Dante, these are the quiet sins of intellectual betrayal." --from the Introduction From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Garry Wills comes an assured, acutely insightful--and occasionally stinging--critique of the Catholic Church and its hierarchy from the nineteenth century to the present. Papal Sin in the past was blatant, as Catholics themselves realized when they painted popes roasting in hell on their own church walls. Surely, the great abuses of the past--the nepotism, murders, and wars of conquest--no longer prevail; yet, the sin of the modern papacy, as revealed by Garry Wills in his penetrating new book, is every bit as real, though less obvious than the old sins. Wills describes a papacy that seems steadfastly unwilling to face the truth about itself, its past, and its relations with others. The refusal of the authorities of the Church to be honest about its teachings has needlessly exacerbated original mistakes. Even when the Vatican has tried to tell the truth--e.g., about Catholics and the Holocaust--it has ended up resorting to historical distortions and evasions. The same is true when the papacy has attempted to deal with its record of discrimination against women, or with its unbelievable assertion that "natural law" dictates its sexual code. Though the blithe disregard of some Catholics for papal directives has occasionally been attributed to mere hedonism or willfulness, it actually reflects a failure, after long trying on their part, to find a credible level of honesty in the official positions adopted by modern popes. On many issues outside the realm of revealed doctrine, the papacy has made itself unbelievable even to the well-disposed laity. The resulting distrust is in fact a neglected reason for the shortage of priests. Entirely aside from the public uproar over celibacy, potential clergy have proven unwilling to put themselves in a position that supports dishonest teachings. Wills traces the rise of the papacy's stubborn resistance to the truth, beginning with the challenges posed in the nineteenth century by science, democracy, scriptural scholarship, and rigorous history. The legacy of that resistance, despite the brief flare of John XXIII's papacy and some good initiatives in the 1960s by the Second Vatican Council (later baffled), is still strong in the Vatican. Finally Wills reminds the reader of the positive potential of the Church by turning to some great truth tellers of the Catholic tradition--St. Augustine, John Henry Newman, John Acton, and John XXIII. In them, Wills shows that the righteous path can still be taken, if only the Vatican will muster the courage to speak even embarrassing truths in the name of Truth itself.
Raphael, Cardinal Merry del Val, Secretary of State to Pope St. Pius X from 1903 to 1914, was born in the Spanish Embassy in London in1865, the son of a distinguished Spanish diplomat. His father's family was partly Irish, his mother's part Spanish, part English. Brought up and educated in England, Merry del Val remained devoted to the cause of the conversion of England throughout his life - writing the prayer for the conversion of England which Pope Leo XIII included in his encyclical of 1895 to the English people, Amantissima Voluntatis. When Merry del Val had gone to Rome in 1885 to complete his studies for the priesthood his potential was immediately recognized by Pope Leo XIII, who insisted that he be enrolled in the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy (for the formation of priests to serve in the papal diplomatic corps or the Secretariat of State). Merry del Val spoke and wrote faultless Latin, English, Spanish, French and Italian, while his studies at the Gregorian University and the Accademia were to give him qualifications in theology, philosophy and canon law. He was ordained priest in 1888. Cardinal Merry del Val also led a penitential, hidden life, and was a great director of souls, spending hours in the confessional, preaching retreats, receiving over forty converts into the Church in the period 1894-1904, and working tirelessly in the Sacred Heart Association he had founded for destitute boys in 1889, to protect and nurture souls. This collection of his spiritual writings focuses on his labours as a shepherd of souls; this is what he asked to have inscribed on his tomb in the crypt of St. Peter's - "souls, souls, give me souls, take all else away." The letters of direction he wrote to his penitents, converts and spiritual children demonstrate that he was a simple, practical, direct and effective shepherd and guardian of souls. These writings form a comprehensive guide to the spiritual life suitable to lay Catholics who are taking the call to personal holiness very seriously. The cause for the beatification of the Servant of God Raphael, Cardinal Merry del Val is ongoing. Harriet Murphy taught modern languages at London, Dublin, Cork and Warwick universities, publishing on Goethe and Elias Canetti, before she began research at the Secret Vatican Archives. A member of the Society of St Pius X, the Society of St Catherine of Siena, and the Latin Mass Society, she contributes to Christian Order and Mater Dei, specializing in the intersection between literature, theology and politics.
The short; cryptic prophecies of St. Malachy; the Primate of Ireland; made circa 1140 while on a visit at Rome; about each Pope from his time till the End of Time--all based on visions he had at the time. From what we know of recent Popes; these prophecies are accurate; based on interior evidence alone. What is so very sobering is the fact there are only 2 Popes left after Pope John Paul II!!
