Catholic Sat

This isn't a comment either way on the merit of the practice, but there's a bit of an irony when masses for Pentecost, where everyone understood what was being spoken, try to have readings done in as many languages as possible

Stephen Colbert, a professed Catholic, says he believes that when we die, "there is some continuance of some kind. But it’s like a dispersion of the self into some other greater being. And I don’t have any other feelings beyond that.” This sounds more like the Gnostic concept of the Pleroma than the Catholic doctrine of Heaven.

Pope Leo XIV is working to change how we calculate Easter. There is a major new push inside the Vatican to get every Christian worldwide celebrating Easter on the exact same day. Let's look at the breakdown of this historic plan Pope Leo XIV recently met with Catholicos Aram I of the Oriental Orthodox Church, and one of the massive talking points of their agenda was; ending the centuries-old calendar split so all Christians can celebrate the Resurrection together every single year. Currently, Western Christian churches (Catholics and Protestants) and Eastern Christian churches (Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox) usually celebrate Easter on entirely different Sundays weeks apart. The division comes down to how the different branches of Christianity calculate the spring equinox and astronomical cycles. The Western churches use the modern Gregorian calendar, while the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches (including the Armenian Apostolic Church) base their liturgical calculation on the ancient Julian calendar. And because the Julian calendar is mathematically behind by 13 days, their spring equinoxes are set to different dates. Also, Eastern traditions strictly adhere to a rule from the early Church stating that Easter must take place after the Jewish Passover festival. Western calculations do not factor Passover in, which sometimes places Catholic Easter before or during Passover. Although the two calendars occasionally align by pure astronomical coincidence, for instance in 2025 when both traditions celebrated Easter on April 20, they quickly fall out of sync again. For example, Catholic Easter was observed on April 5, while Orthodox Easter took place a week later on April 12. Pope Leo XIV and Catholicos Aram I want to permanently end this split. The proposal is to agree on a fixed structural solution, such as permanently anchoring Easter to a specific Sunday in April (e.g., the second or third Sunday) or adopting a shared astronomical calculation. This would allow all global Christians to witness and celebrate the resurrection on the exact same day. Cool right?

As evidenced by the unbridled promotion and implementation of technology at the expense of human dignity, we are truly experiencing an eclipse of the sense of what it means to be human. It is imperative to recover an understanding of the true meaning and grandeur of humanity as intended by God. It is in this sense that the challenge we currently face is not technological, but anthropological, and it is my hope that the Encyclical Letter to be published within a few days will contribute to answering this challenge.