The Practical Parson

 This week, a news report broke which claimed that the Pentagon had demanded a meeting with the Vatican's US envoy, Cardinal Christophe Pierre; wherein they threatened the Roman Church unless the Pope "fell in line" with the President's administration's ideas.  On the surface that seems a fairly salacious and horrifying thing, yes?   But when we read the story further, it begins to fall apart at the seams.  Firstly, it was reported by "Free Press", not known for being a bastion of journalistic integrity to begin with.  Secondly, they name that famous person who knows all, sees all, hears all, as their source for the report- Anonymous Source.  There are no more deceptive words used in journalism than the lines "Anonymous sources report"  and "it is reported".  Neither require proof, they require no facts, they don't even require citation; putting journalistic integrity beneath high school and college term/ research papers, which ge...

  This week, a number of Traditionalist Anglican clergy and their Bishop (of Fulham), are on retreat in Rome.  They were invited by the clergy in charge of St. John in Lateran to hold a mass in the "choir" of the cathedral, behind the main altar of the church.  What to many Christians might seem a point of fraternal generosity or a sign of mutual respect; has instead inflamed the passions of a number of Roman Catholic churchmen and laymen across the Christian world.    How dare those silly protestants hold their service in our church???  The claim that is referenced in defending such position, is the old argument that because Pope Leo XIII issued the Papal Bull Apostolicae Curae which claimed Anglican Orders as "utterly null and void"; that this means definitively that Anglican Apostolic succession is indeed null and void.  Unfortunately for my more conservative minded Roman Catholic friends, a Papal Bull is not the law of the church.  There ...