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The word venial comes from the Latin word venia, which means “pardon” or “forgiveness.” According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a venial sin is a sin that “allows charity to subsist, even though it offends and wounds it” (1855). The rationale behind this teaching is that charity orders us to God as our life’s goal, or final end. That order can be either completely destroyed or merely disturbed by sin. This order is completely destroyed when we sin in such a way as to turn …

Among those throughout the history of the Church who have written and spoken about purgatory, many have emphasized the sorrows or pains. They have done so rightly, since the sufferings of purgatory are real.However, I think it’s safe to say some have over-emphasized the pains of purgatory, such that many have lost sight of its joys. It’s important that we find a happy medium. St. Francis de Sales taught, “If purgatory is a species of hell as regards suffering, it is a species of paradise …

Remember Zika?In 2016 the virus was linked to birth defects in thousands of Brazilian newborns striking fear across the countryIt was in that climate that, aboard a plane headed from Mexico back to Rome, a Spanish reporter named Paloma García Ovejero asked Pope Francis what should have been a simple softball question:“Some authorities have proposed abortion, or else avoiding pregnancy. As regards avoiding pregnancy, on this issue, can the Church take into consideration the concept of ‘the lesser …

I think that a lot of what’s wrong in the world is that the Church is so weakened and so corrupted that she’s not that beacon on the hill, not leaven for the world, any longer. She can be leaven, and she hasn’t lost the light, but the corruption is deep. Yet I do not blame the Second Vatican Council for that. I blame the human corruption that was already there prior to the council. As a kid who grew up in the sixties and seventies, I remember so much of that in the larger culture: the turmoil, …

People lament that there is no longer a Christendom, but, you know, Christendom wasn’t exactly heaven on Earth. The Church doesn’t have worldly power any longer, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing.So it has to be nuanced, this idea that we’re living in a post-Christian world that’s so much worse than it was in the past. In some ways, we’re more similar to Christians living in the Roman Empire of the first century than to those in other eras throughout the centuries. It’s almost like we’re …