De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

I think this post on the Muniment Room has some really important and necessary insights. It really joins together the dots so that you can see how things fit together. It begins by examining the position of Catholic Voices , how much authority does the organisation  have to speak on catholic issues? Who guarantees their Catholicity? These are questions which were voiced at the organisation's inception. Officialy, the authoritative source about Catholicism in the UK is the Catholic Communications Network (CCN) of the CBCEW. Catholic Voices then, is a conduit; a simple way for a media outlet to find an "every day Catholic" to comment when it needs somebody who isn't an official spokesman for the Church (mind you, when was the last time you saw any "official spokesperson for the Church"?). However, Ttony reports "that any call to the CCN asking for a Catholic comment on an issue of the moment gets forwarded routinely to CV and that, furthermore,...

Some of the best stuff on the Pope. Ttony at the Muniment Room has an excellent post here  where he remarks: His decision was taken some time ago: he told his brother six months ago, but he started dropping in on Celestine V rather longer ago. It's not unreasonable to suppose that everything he has done in the last two or three years has been done with his leaving in mind, and with his leaving everything in as good a condition as possible for his successor. Ttony explains that his... ...initial reaction - that he should have stayed on to death - is being replaced by an appreciation that Pope Benedict probably has a rather better idea of what he should do than me. We have had eight years - eight game-changing years - from a Pope who couldn't have been expected to last anything like this long. We are seeing the supernatural eddying into the natural world through his decision. The historian Timothy Stanley suggests that Benedict XVI will be known as... ...a l...