Reminder: IVF is immoral for three distinct reasons. 1) It separates procreation from the conjugal act, which undermines the sanctity and purpose of sexual relations. 2) It stores human embryos in freezers, which is an affront to human dignity. 3) It typically involves discarding "leftover" embryos, which is direct murder. It's really the trifecta of contraceptive immorality. Catholics cannot for any reason obtain or support IVF treatments.

“No earthly pleasures, no kingdoms of this world can benefit me in any way. I prefer death in Christ Jesus to power over the farthest limits of the earth. He who died in place of us is the one object of my quest. He who rose for our sakes is my one desire.” – St. Ignatius of Antioch

RONALDO BRACE TO GIVE PORTUGAL THE LEAD! 40 years old and STILL doing it 🔥

NEW: Cardinal Sarah on the Latin Mass — “when we really look at Christians who practice today, they are the ones who go to traditional Mass. So why forbid them? On the contrary, we should encourage them.” Read on @PerMariam permariam.com/p/cardinal-sar…

RT @EricRSammons: I pray that one day our bishops will be as strong and forceful in opposing abortion, homosexuality, and transgenderism as…

Gen Z is completely enamored with sacred music. They have no interest in what sounds like bad 70s music combined with shallow theology. They want the ancient and timeless music of the church.

Regarding Pope Leo’s controversial words and actions this week, many people are either overreacting or underreacting, with both hysterical extremes feeding off of one another. The cycle is routine on social media, and tiresome. The reality, I would say, is this. On the one hand, the impromptu answer the pope gave in response to the question about the Durbin affair was manifestly bad and scandalous. It gave aid and comfort to those who want to minimize the intrinsic and uniquely grave evil of abortion by treating it as merely one of several “life issues,” no more urgent than any other. And in seeming to equate abortion and the death penalty, it gave aid and comfort to those who claim that the death penalty is intrinsically wrong, a position which contradicts scripture and tradition and the adoption of which by the Church would thus undermine her credibility. Even though the pope’s remark was off the cuff and has zero magisterial significance, the average person doesn’t understand that. Popes need to be extremely careful whenever they say anything that touches upon doctrine. It is perfectly legitimate, then, for faithful Catholics respectfully to note the problems with what he said. On the other hand, it is quite absurd to suppose (as some worried Catholics and critics of the Church alike are doing) that this episode in any way casts doubt on Catholic claims about the papacy. Papal statements are infallible only when they are issued ex cathedra, i.e. when in a solemn act a pope formally declares and defines a doctrine as absolutely binding on all Catholics for all time (or, naturally, when he is simply reiterating something that has already been taught infallibly by the Church, as when he discusses Christ’s divinity or original sin or whatever). Ex cathedra statements are very rare. They don’t typically occur even in official teaching documents like encyclicals or catechisms, and they certainly never occur in off the cuff remarks to reporters. So, the fact that the pope said something bad in such a context, while highly regrettable, has exactly zero relevance to questions about papal infallibility. It is also rash confidently to conclude that such off the cuff remarks show how Pope Leo is going to teach when he does issue official magisterial documents (which are all that ultimately matter where doctrinal issues are concerned). Yes, it is possible that the documents that emerge from Leo’s pontificate will be problematic in the way some of the documents issued during Pope Francis’s pontificate were (such as Amoris Laetitia, Fiducia Supplicans, and the 2018 change to the catechism). But this is far from certain, and indeed, I doubt it will happen. Official magisterial documents are of their nature much more cautiously formulated than remarks made in interviews, press conferences, or even homilies and other official public addresses. They are thought through over a long period of time before being promulgated, with multiple people having a hand in composing them, suggesting alterations, and the like. That does not guarantee that they will be unproblematic, as Francis’s pontificate showed. But it does make it more likely that they will be. Much depends on a pope’s personal temperament and vision, and on who he appoints to the DDF. Pope Francis had little patience with theological precision and was keen to shake things up. And, especially later in his pontificate, he appointed people to positions of influence on doctrine who shared these traits. Pope Leo appears to be different. He seems genuinely concerned to restore to the Church the unity that was damaged during Francis’s pontificate, and he seems to have at least a somewhat more academic temperament. That doesn’t mean everything he says off the cuff is going to be well thought out. He was not trained as a Scholastic theologian, and the era in which he was formed was in general not conducive to producing priests and bishops habituated to thinking in a theologically rigorous way. The effects of that era are, regrettably, going to be with us for some time, until the subsequent generation (whose theological formation was generally better) comes to dominate leadership positions in the Church. It does suggest, though, that Leo will be more cautious about who he appoints and about what gets issued by way of official magisterial documents. His appointments to offices relevant to doctrine will be much more indicative of the direction of his pontificate than any impromptu remarks. We will see. What is certain is that while respectful criticism has its place, right now the pope needs our prayers more than such criticism.

BREAKING: FBI Director Kash Patel terminated an FBI agent trainee for displaying a ‘pride’ flag on his desk, per MSNBC.

On the left: Cardinal Reginald Pole, the last Archbishop of Canterbury, who died in 1558. Rest in peace. On the right: a woman in a costume.

You could say this of the teaching of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, but it is by no means clearly true of Francis. There are two especially problematic texts. First, his 2018 revision to the catechism asserts that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.” People always talk about the “inadmissible” part, but the real problem is with what follows. On the most natural reading, this is asserting that the death penalty is intrinsically or of its very nature an attack on human dignity. Such a claim cannot be reconciled with scripture, tradition, and previous papal teaching. To be sure, one can instead read the 2018 revision as asserting that the death penalty is attack on human dignity if certain conditions are not met. And as I’ve always said, that is indeed how it should be read. But that does not change the fact that it is not a natural reading, so that the revision was badly formulated insofar as it gives the impression of a doctrinal reversal. Magisterial statements should not be ambiguous – especially in a catechism, the whole point of which is to convey doctrine simply and clearly. Second and much more serious is Dignitas Infinita, which asserts that “the death penalty… violates the inalienable dignity of every person, regardless of the circumstances.” The document also asserts that human dignity must be upheld “beyond every circumstance,” “in all circumstances,” “regardless of the circumstances,” and so on. Here there is no wiggle room for saying that the document judges capital punishment to be contrary to human dignity only if certain conditions are not met. No, it flatly asserts that it violates human dignity “regardless of the circumstances.” Nor is there any wiggle room for saying that the document nevertheless allows in principle for such a violation of human dignity under certain circumstances (which would be a bizarre claim in any case). For it explicitly says that human dignity “prevails in and beyond every circumstance, state, or situation the person may ever encounter,” and so on. The logical implication of all this is that capital punishment is absolutely ruled out as always and intrinsically wrong. And that straightforwardly contradicts traditional teaching. The saving grace (if you can call it that) is that this document came, not directly from Pope Francis, but from the DDF under him. But it is gravely scandalous all the same. It is so manifestly at odds with traditional teaching that those who pretend that only “dissenters” and Pope Francis haters could see any problem with it succeed only in showing themselves to be intellectually dishonest and unserious. DDF documents are not infallible have been deficient in the past, but never more obviously than in this case.

It’s just an answer to a reporter’s question rather than anything magisterial, but intellectual honesty requires frankly acknowledging that Pope Leo’s remarks here as reported by @cnalive were poorly thought out and harmful. Abortion is always and intrinsically wrong, whereas the death penalty and restrictions on immigration are not. Scripture, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church and all popes up until Benedict XVI were crystal clear on this, until Pope Francis’s extreme and imprecise statements muddied the doctrinal waters. One hopes that in official magisterial documents rather than off-the-cuff remarks, the pope will be more cautious than his predecessor. Otherwise he will foment the opposite of the unity in the Church I believe he sincerely wants to promote. catholicnewsagency.com/news/…

With due respect to the pope, the remark is manifestly false. To cite just a few names among many, sainted doctors of the Church such as Thomas Aquinas, Alphonsus Liguori, and John Henry Newman were against abortion and for the death penalty, as were sainted popes such as Innocent I, Pius V, and Pius X. I imagine Leo would not dare to suggest these great heroes of the Catholic faith were “not really pro-life.”

Thank God. Nick Fuentes is a horrible influence on young men.

A teacher hugs her crying student in a kindergarten and when the other children see this, they all hug their teacher and form a ball of love 🥹

Chris Jones: “You don’t even have 100 yards.” Jalen Hurts: “We won the f*ckin game shut your ass up.” 💀

🚨MOTION OF NO CONFIDENCE TRIGGERED The motion required 150 signatures and is well passed that point. A VOTE WILL NOW BE HELD TO REMOVE HIM AS PRESIDENT This will place on 18th October IN PERSON, members must travel to Oxford and vote him out. Thank you @AllumBokhari

Pope Leo XIV today expressed his condolences for Charlie Kirk and said that he is 'praying for the widow of Mr. Kirk and his children' He made the remarks to US Ambassador Brian Burch

Kiley has Williams syndrome, a genetic disorder that makes it hard for her to make friends. 💔 This is the beautiful moment two friends she met at camp drove 3 hours to surprise her on her 15th birthday. 🥹❤️

In the wake of Charlie's assassination, many people are demanding that we redouble our devotion to the "free marketplace of ideas." The call seems at first glance courageous and noble. In reality, it is reckless and impractical. We had an open marketplace of ideas; the Left shot it up. Not only have extreme leftists committed violence in the marketplace of ideas; more scandalous still, mainstream left-wing voices have cheered and made light of the violence. There can be no open marketplace—of ideas or anything else—under such conditions. Marketplaces require rules, confidence, and common media of exchange. They require, in other words, order. Liberty requires order. One cannot be both free and undisciplined, for instance, or free and ignorant. We know this philosophically, and we also know it intuitively. It's why we don't let toddlers vote. What we require now is the reassertion of order. We must insist upon the acceptance of basic truths and moral goods, not as the asymptotic goal of endless debate but as the axiomatic foundation without which debate cannot occur. We must foreclose certain antisocial behaviors and suicidal ideologies. We must, to borrow a phrase from Chesterton, stop "the thought that stops thought." In practical terms, this means we must stigmatize certain evil ideas and behaviors, and we must ostracize people who insist upon them. More practically, this means that people who persist in such disorder should lose their social standing. In certain cases, they should lose their jobs. There must be consequences. With any political reform, it is wise to err on the side of caution. The offenses that merit such ostracism should be particularly egregious. A good place to begin would be with those who celebrate the murder of an innocent man.

On my way to have a minor disagreement with a liberal