Have you ever wondered how the process of becoming pope works?
Here's a five minute video that explains it quite well.
It's actually a pretty good summary of how the process works (with some humor thrown in), though there are a few missteps (see below).
Incidentally, the odds of any particular person becoming pope are rather long.
There are more than a billion Catholics in the world, but there is only one pope at a time, so the odds are literally a billion to one...
The First Epistle of St. Peter is one of those books of the New Testament whose authorship is disputed.
Since the time of the early Church there has been a strong consensus that it was written by the apostle Peter.
There was less consensus in the early Church about 2 Peter, but the consensus about 1 Peter was strong, and it remained so until the rise of modern biblical criticism.
Modern critics, using a methodology of systematic doubt, have viewed the traditional...
Recently I was contacted by someone who just had a relative die.
The family will be getting together this Friday and, as most of the family is not Catholic, they do not observe abstinence from meat during Lent.
Furthermore, this person knew for a fact that a meat dish was being prepared for the family gathering.
What are this person's options?
Option 1: Don't eat the dish
There are several variants here:
...
Homosexual activists have begun using the slogan "Civil Marriage Is a Civil Right."
At first glance, this might be seen as a meaningless truism.
Yes, any given single person has a civil right to get married.
That was established in the Supreme Court's 1967 decision, Loving v. Virginia, which struck down laws preventing people of different races from getting married.
But the idea...
I learned about Pope Benedict's decision to renounce his office at around 4:30 in the morning, in a phone call from a friend on the East Coast.
He told me, "Prepare yourself for a shock."
"Okay," I said.
"Pope Benedict has resigned."
It actually wasn't a shock.
I hadn't expected the announcement, but I wasn't very surprised.
I accept and respect his decision, as disappointed as I am.
I'd been picking up on clues that, for Pope...
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