I’d like to thank a Register reader who recently alerted me to a recent USA Today column by Amy Sullivan, who—according to her blurb—“is a contributing writer at Time and author of The Party Faithful: How and Why Democrats Are Closing the God Gap.”

If the Democrats are closing the “God gap,” it isn’t because of the level of thinking displayed in her column, which is titled:

Let’s put ‘Christ’-mas in its place

Titles are often chosen by editors rather than authors, so this may not be her fault. But right now we’re only bouncing on the end of the diving board, and we’re about to plunge into the 12-foot end of the pool.

If it’s December, then it must be time to choose sides in the...READ MORE

The Register’s own Edward Pentin scored an interview with Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput when the archbishop was in Rome for his ad limina visit last week. The interview was conducted after the release of the archbishop’s dramatic letter to his flock and contains some additional detail on the subjects he touched on in the letter. Here’s the portion of the interview that deals with that:

You issued what seems to be a very well-received pastoral letter to the archdiocese on the feast of the Immaculate Conception in which you aired a variety of serious concerns and spoke about difficult times ahead with the completion of your review of priests accused in the grand jury report and...READ MORE

On December 8th, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, Archbishop Charles Chaput, the newly-installed archbishop of Philadelphia, released a pastoral letter to the faithful of his archdiocese. It will be read this weekend at Masses, even as Archbishop Chaput is returning home from his ad limina visit to Rome.

A copy of the letter was obtained by Whispers in the Loggia and has now been published online.

Pastoral letters from bishops can range from being “ho-hum” letters to being “Wham!” letters. Archbishop Chaput’s is definitely at the “Wham!” end of the spectrum.

Let’s read it together.

The letter begins with the kind of gentle, winning tone that one would expect in a pastoral letter...READ MORE

A reader writes:

I know that it is always good to pray for the souls in Purgatory.  Otherwise, the souls won’t make it to Heaven.  However, is it O.K. to pray that all of the souls in Purgatory be released and allowed to go to Heaven.  In fact, the moment all souls would be released (if God wants to do this), then a new batch would come into Purgatory and take their place.  Am I correct in this?  Or, are we only supposed to pray for people we know that have died?  Let me know (if you would). Thank you so much.  Happy Advent (it’s still not Christmas yet).

Thank you for the questions! And Happy Advent to you as well (good point about it not being Christmas yet!).

Allow me to go through...READ MORE

Back on November 10, well-respected Vaticanista Sandro Magister reported:

Precisely when the G20 summit in Cannes was coming to its weak and uncertain conclusion, on that same Friday, November 4 at the Vatican, a smaller summit convened in the secretariat of state was doing damage control on the latest of many moments of confusion in the Roman curia.

In the hot seat was the document on the global financial crisis released ten days earlier by the pontifical council for justice and peace. A document that had disturbed many, inside and outside of the Vatican.

The secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, complained that he had not known about it until the last moment. And precisely for...READ MORE

The Register recently asked me to do a post on what I saw at Mass this Sunday, the first Sunday of Advent, the first Sunday using the new translation of the Roman Missal.

Happy to oblige! So here’s what happened . . .

I arrived at Mass a few minutes early and took my seat in the pew. The particular parish I was attending had not done a lot of prep work for the new translation.

In fact, I saw that the Roman Missal they had was still in its shiny, new shrinkwrap.

And behold, there were seven seals upon its shrinkwrap.

I heard the cantor proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the Missal and break its seals?”

And no one in the parish was able to open the Missal or to look...READ MORE