The Vatican held its first round of formal talks this morning with the breakaway Society of St. Pius X.

A communiqué is expected either later today or tomorrow.

The Vatican’s goal in these discussions is to bring about a reunion with the traditionalist order, which broke away from the Church on the grounds that it could not accept the teachings of the Second Vatican Council. The SSPX blames the conciliar reforms for many of the Church’s difficulties.

The Vatican is optimistic about the outcome of the talks. It’s argued that officials wouldn’t have taken this initiative if they didn’t see a real possibility of bringing the SSPX back into communion.

But how long these meetings...READ MORE

Pope Benedict XVI’s historic, momentous decision Oct. 20 to create structures for groups of Anglicans to be received into the Catholic Church deserves an Anglican perspective.

Rev. R. William Franklin, an Episcopal priest, is an academic fellow of the Anglican Center in Rome and associate director of the American Academy there. He is also a pastor at St. Paul’s Inside the Walls, the Episcopal church in Rome, and teaches theology at the Pontifical Angelicum University. He spoke about the announcement and its implications.

Did news of the apostolic constitution come as a surprise?

This does not come as a surprise, because we have heard rumors of the preparation of such a document for at...READ MORE

A new film about Fatima, a history-spanning documentary featuring George Weigel and Robert George, and a film on the life of a woman close to Pope John Paul II are among the films selected for the inaugural John Paul II International Film Festival in Miami, running Oct. 29 - Nov. 7.

Organized by three Florida Catholics, the John Paul II International Film Festival “John Paul II International Film Festival” is intended to highlight less-noticed films that celebrate themes of human dignity, forgiveness and hope.

Rafael Anrrich, a social worker, and Laura Alvarado and Frank William Brennan cite the teaching and spirit of Pope John Paul II as their inspiration, but have solicited film...READ MORE

A final version of the apostolic constitution that would allow disaffected Anglicans to come into full communion with the Church has yet to be written, as canonists from around the world continue to iron out some key canonical concerns, the Register has learned.

Church lawyers are grappling with a whole new section of the Code of Canon Law, which will need to be added to ensure the new structures function as planned. The current code is without any reference to the “personal ordinariates,” and so the apostolic constitution is designed to ensure that they mesh with Church law.

The new norms need to set out, for instance, the nature of the relationship between the Anglican bishop in the...READ MORE

Try as it may, Spain’s Socialist government cannot extinguish the faith of its people.

The Christian Post reported that an estimated 1 million people took to the streets of Madrid to protest Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s bill that would allow unrestricted abortion at up to 14 weeks of pregnancy and allow girls age 16 and 17 to abort their children without parental consent.

Under the banner “Every Life Counts,” protesters Oct. 17 called for the government to withdraw the bill from parliament.

Typically, as with the March for Life in Washington and other pro-life marches, the official number of the crowd was underestimated. Police said 250,000 participated in the protest, while...READ MORE