A monitum is a warning issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to an errant cleric, who is in danger of receiving an additional penalty.
The writings, not named but described as "gaining a good deal of success", including some published posthumously, of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin were the subject of a monitum by the Holy Office in June 1962, seven years after Teilhard's death. [1]
The Danube Seven – seven women on whom Rómulo Antonio Braschi, the founder of a schismatic community, attempted to confer priestly ordination on June 29, 2002 – were the target of a monitum dated 10 July 2002. [2] The women were: Christine Mayr-Lumetzberger, Adelinde Theresia Roitinger, Gisela Forster, Iris Müller, Ida Raming, Pia Brunner, and Angela White (pseudonym of Dagmar Braun Celeste). [3] [4]
In 1975, the CDF issued a monitum against certain of Hans Küng's writings. [5]
In 1961, the Holy Office issued a monitum against the use of form criticism in Catholic scriptural interpretation. [6]
In 1856, a monitum was published under Pope Pius IX which re-iterated the ban on publishing vernacular editions of the Bible which had not been approved by the Pope or the competent church authority. [7]
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a French Jesuit priest, scientist, paleontologist, theologian, philosopher and teacher. He was Darwinian in outlook and the author of several influential theological and philosophical books.
Ordination is the process by which individuals are consecrated, that is, set apart and elevated from the laity class to the clergy, who are thus then authorized to perform various religious rites and ceremonies. The process and ceremonies of ordination vary by religion and denomination. One who is in preparation for, or who is undergoing the process of ordination is sometimes called an ordinand. The liturgy used at an ordination is sometimes referred to as an ordination.
The Omega Point is a supposed future when everything in the universe spirals toward a final point of unification. The term was invented by the French Jesuit Catholic priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955). Teilhard argued that the Omega Point resembles the Christian Logos, namely Christ, who draws all things into himself, who in the words of the Nicene Creed, is "God from God", "Light from Light", "True God from true God", and "through him all things were made". In the Book of Revelation, Christ describes himself thrice as "the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end". The idea of the Omega Point is developed in later writings, such as those of John David Garcia (1971), Paolo Soleri (1981), Frank Tipler (1994), and David Deutsch (1997).
Traditionalist Catholicism is the set of beliefs, practices, customs, traditions, liturgical forms, devotions, and presentations of Catholic teaching that existed in the Catholic Church before the reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), in particular attachment to the Tridentine Mass, also known as the Traditional Latin Mass.
The Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) is an international fraternity of traditionalist Catholic priests founded in 1970 by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, a leading traditionalist voice at the Second Vatican Council with the Coetus Internationalis Patrum, and Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers until 1968. The society was initially established as a pious union of the Catholic Church with the permission of François Charrière, the Bishop of Lausanne, Geneva and Fribourg in Switzerland. In 2022, the society reached over 700 priestly members, with 1,135 total members.
Clerical celibacy is the requirement in certain religions that some or all members of the clergy be unmarried. Clerical celibacy also requires abstention from deliberately indulging in sexual thoughts and behavior outside of marriage, because these impulses are regarded as sinful.
During its long history, the Catholic Church has been subject to criticism regarding various beliefs and practices. Within the Church, this includes differences of opinion regarding the use of Latin at Mass, and the subject of clerical celibacy. In the past, different interpretations of scripture and critiques of clerical laxity and opulence contributed to separations such as the schism with the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Protestant Reformation. The Catholic Church has also been criticized for its active efforts to influence political decisions and governments, such as the Church's promotion of the Crusades, opposition to contraception, secular education, and LGBT rights, and its involvement with various 20th-century far-right dictatorships. Furthermore, the Catholic Church has been criticized for its teaching against the ordination of women to the priesthood, alleged financial corruption and embezzlement, along with its handling of incidents of sexual abuse.
Agostino Casaroli was an Italian Catholic priest and diplomat for the Holy See, who became Cardinal Secretary of State. He was the most important figure behind the Vatican's efforts to deal with the persecution of the Church in the nations of the Soviet bloc after the Second Vatican Council.
Roy Bourgeois is an American activist, a former Catholic priest, and the founder of the human rights group School of the Americas Watch. He is the 1994 recipient of the Gandhi Peace Award and the 2011 recipient of the American Peace Award and also has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The Catholic Church holds no official position on the theory of creation or evolution, leaving the specifics of either theistic evolution or literal creationism to the individual within certain parameters established by the Church. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, any believer may accept either literal or special creation within the period of an actual six-day, twenty-four-hour period, or they may accept the belief that the earth evolved over time under the guidance of God. Catholicism holds that God initiated and continued the process of his creation, that Adam and Eve were real people, and that all humans, whether specially created or evolved, have and have always had specially created souls for each individual.
Marc Armand Ouellet is a Canadian prelate of the Catholic Church. He was the prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops and president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America from 2010 to 2023.
Henri-Marie Joseph Sonier de Lubac, better known as Henri de Lubac, was a French Jesuit priest and cardinal who is considered one of the most influential theologians of the 20th century. His writings and doctrinal research played a key role in shaping the Second Vatican Council.
The Danube Seven are a group of seven women from Germany, Austria and the United States who were ordained as priests on a ship cruising the Danube river on 29 June 2002 by Rómulo Antonio Braschi, Ferdinand Regelsberger, and a third unknown bishop.
The Écône consecrations were a set of episcopal consecrations that took place in Écône, Switzerland, on 30 June 1988. They were performed by Catholic Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer, and the bishops who were consecrated were four priests of Lefebvre's Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX). The consecrations, performed against the explicit orders of Pope John Paul II, represented a milestone in the troubled relationship of Lefebvre and the SSPX with the Church leadership. The Holy See's Congregation for Bishops issued a decree signed by its Prefect Cardinal Bernardin Gantin declaring that Lefebvre had incurred automatic excommunication by consecrating the bishops without papal consent, thus putting himself and his followers in schism.
The priesthood is the office of the ministers of religion, who have been commissioned ("ordained") with the Holy orders of the Catholic Church. Technically, bishops are a priestly order as well; however, in layman's terms priest refers only to presbyters and pastors. The church's doctrine also sometimes refers to all baptised (lay) members as the "common priesthood", which can be confused with the ministerial priesthood of the consecrated clergy.
Roman Catholic Womenpriests (RCWP) is an independent international organization that claims a connection to the Roman Catholic Church. It is descended from the Danube Seven, a group of women who assert that they were ordained as priests in 2002 by Rómulo Antonio Braschi, before being excommunicated by the Vatican, and their request for a revocation of the excommunication denied, in Decree on the Attempted Ordination of Some Catholic Women. According to a book published by the organization, Women Find a Way: The Movement and Stories of Roman Catholic Womenpriests, at least two other unnamed bishops were involved in the ordination. In addition, the RCWP considers these bishops to be in good standing, and the RCWP says the bishops acted in full apostolic succession.
Gabriele Allegra was a Franciscan Friar and Biblical scholar. He is best known for accomplishing the first complete translation of the Catholic Bible into the Chinese language. His Studium Biblicum Translation is often considered the definitive Chinese Bible among Catholics. He awaits canonization.
The Phenomenon of Man is an essay by the French geologist, paleontologist, philosopher, and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. In this work, Teilhard describes evolution as a process that leads to increasing complexity, culminating in the unification of consciousness. The text was written in the 1930s, but it achieved publication only posthumously, in 1955.
In the liturgical traditions of the Catholic Church, the term ordination refers to the means by which a person is included in one of the holy orders of bishops, priests or deacons. The teaching of the Catholic Church on ordination, as expressed in the 1983 Code of Canon Law, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and the apostolic letter Ordinatio sacerdotalis, is that only a Catholic male validly receives ordination, and "that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful." In other words, the male priesthood is not considered by the church a matter of policy but an unalterable requirement of God. As with priests and bishops, the church ordains only men as deacons.
Johannes Nicolaas Maria Wijngaards is a Catholic scripture scholar and a laicized priest.
