Rejoice, Holy Chief Apostles Peter and Paul!

Orthodox and Catholic Christians are united today in their celebration of the feast day of the Coryphaei of the Apostolic band, Saints Peter and Paul.
Both Orthodox and Catholics (regardless of rite), likewise, will surely be edified by praying this beautiful Akathist service to the holy Apostles Peter and Paul (from the website Ss. Peter and [...]

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Eastern Papal Florilegium

From the blog FideCogitActio comes an Eastern Papal Florilegium. Florilegia, of course, have the clear drawback of presenting quotes apart from their literary and historical contexts; on the other hand, it is a handy little reference.

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I’ve been nominated …

… for excommunication and anathema as an “Orthodox heretic looking to join the Roman heretics” by the SSLI, the Society of Saint Leo I, which, as far as I can tell, stands somewhere between the SSPI (the Society of Saint Pius I) and the SSPV (the Society of Saint Pius V*). The SSLI looks like [...]

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From Monk Patrick

A thought-provoking comment from our friend Father Patrick:
The universal jurisdiction of Rome for appeals I believe is one of the core aspects of its Petrine role in the Church. I would expect to see appeals to Rome from all over the Church, West and East. This should not be very common though because most matters [...]

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Farewell to Pontifications

This is a sad day. Father Al Kimel has announced that Pontifications has closed. What’s worse is that the archived posts of the old Pontifications seem to have been lost forever (although there may be a way to find at least some of them archived somewhere; see here). I’m not happy about this, but I [...]

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CatholiDoxies on Soloviev

Irenaeus, over at CatholiDoxies, has a post about Vladimir Soloviev’s classic Russia and the Universal Church (currently in print only in an abridged English edition, under the title The Russian Church and the Papacy). I too have read through the abridged work, and I have mixed feelings about it.
On the negative side, those who know [...]

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Speaking of “Lex orandi” …

The final witness to the mind of the early church, and thence to the mind of Christ, is the liturgy. Being the official prayer of the church, it is a testimony to the belief not of individuals but of the whole community. Needless to say, the liturgical feasts do not all date back as far [...]

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In case your comment disappears …

… remember that the blog owner reserves the right to edit or delete comments, or else to shut down discussion altogether. I try my best to be fair to all, whatever your viewpoint. Sometimes drastic measures need to be taken to get discussion back on track, especially when the comboxes appear to be generating more [...]

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The tomb of Peter

Just in time for the Feast of Ss. Peter and Paul (June 29), I was delighted to find online the full text of two classic studies on the discovery of the tomb of the Apostle Peter in Rome:

Margherita Guarducci, The Tomb of Peter (1960)
John Evangelist Walsh, The Bones of St. Peter (1982)

The entire host site, [...]

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Ancient Spheres of Papal Jurisdiction

I had planned on writing a long post on what one scholar of the Papacy, Michael Winter (following Pierre Batiffol), calls the three distinct “zones” of papal power and influence in the ancient Church: Metropolitan Italy, the Western Empire, and the Eastern Empire. But then I found this admirable summary by the patristic scholar, Brian [...]

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