Kolbe Report 9-12-20 Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center, Pax Christi! I recently received an email from a convert to the Catholic Faith in another country who lamented the fact that we had not posted a new article on the Kolbe website since “Is the Catholic Rejection of Theistic Evolution a “Conspiracy Theory”? I wrote back to him and explained that we have a weekly newsletter to keep our members up to date on our activities, but that we are more concerned with quality than with quantity when it comes to posting articles on the website. Indeed, a good case could be made that the relentless pressure to change, update, and add new content flows out of an evolutionary mentality which holds that constant change is a sign of progress, even when objectively speaking the new thing is no better and perhaps not even as good as the thing that it replaces. The articles on the Kolbe website have been carefully crafted over a period of almost twenty years, and anyone who takes the time to work his way through them systematically will not fail to be impressed by the depth of the treatment accorded to a whole range of topics in the … Read More »

Kolbe Report 9-5-20 Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center, Pax Christi! We have just returned from our annual Kolbe Center leadership retreat at Our Sorrowful Mother’s Ministry Retreat Center in Vandalia, Illinois. The retreat was a great success and most edifying for young and old. After a series of fascinating presentations on theological, philosophical, historical and natural science topics related to creation, children and adults collaborated in presenting an inspiring play on the life and times of Venerable Maria of Agreda, “The Blue Nun,” a play which wove together many of the main themes of the retreat in a dramatic format. The audio and video of the retreat presentations and the video of the play will be edited during the next few weeks and made available on a dedicated website as soon as the editing is completed. COVID-19 and the Kolbe Leadership Retreat Throughout the world billions of people have been forced to submit to draconian regulations on spurious scientific grounds by various “authorities” in science and medicine. Here in the United States, most of our Bishops have meekly submitted to excessive government restrictions on worship and the administration of the sacraments and have encouraged the faithful to submit to these restrictions without … Read More »

Kolbe Report 8-22-20 Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center, Tomorrow we will begin our annual leadership retreat. Please pray that through the prayers of the Immaculate Heart of Mary God will bless all our endeavors! In this newsletter I would like to draw your attention once again to the work of Mrs. Bai Macfarlane at Mary’s Advocates, as I am convinced that it is intimately linked to the mission of the Kolbe Center. Bai has worked tirelessly to defend the permanence and indissolubility of Holy Marriage, but she has run up against a wall of opposition from Catholic Church leaders and canon lawyers who perpetuate the practice of sending married couples experiencing normal marital difficulties to a civil divorce court with the assurance that the diocesan marriage tribunal will decide the validity of the sacramental marriage after the divorce has been granted! As Bai explains on her website, this practice ignores the traditional interpretation of the canon law on Holy Marriage which requires a Bishop’s permission before one spouse can even separate from another and which provides various safeguards to protect the marriage bond. In effect, the current practice of sending Catholic couples to divorce court only exacerbates their … Read More »