Any discussion about the Church always has two basic problems. The first is both the most comical and the most absurd. The ambitions of one side and the other of the quarrel are clearly exchanged. On the one hand, a multitude of non-believers, apostles of each one’s free decision on morals, make more sentences on ecclesial behaviour than Leviticus; on the other, the Church, which wants to be Universal, bewildered by seeing its particular instructions scrutinised in a public square – as was once again perceived in this week’s polemic on the position of the Cardinal-Patriarch of Lisbon, D. Manuel Clemente, in relation to the sexual “continence” of the remarried.

Read More “The controversial history of sex and the Church. How it all began and how we got here”

Jennifer Ristine has lived for four years in the place where Mary Magdalene was allegedly born and knew Jesus Christ when he went there to preach

The director of the Magdala Institute has recently published a book which investigates what she considers to be the true story of Mary Magdalene. Her main bet is to give a new biography to the woman that most people have always known as a prostitute. Jennifer Ristine does not agree and in this interview she explains her arguments for making Mary Magdalene a passionate follower of Christ and how she gave herself to this task.

Read More “The woman who wants to take away Mary Magdalene’s reputation as a prostitute”

Sinner, prostitute and unclean or holy, faithful and most beloved follower of Jesus? The life and history of Mary Magdalene continues a mystery which instils historians.

Christian or not, everyone has heard about the main biblical stories and their characters, such as Jesus, his parents, Mary and Joseph, the twelve Apostles, and the angel Gabriel, for example.

There are also those who have heard about a certain Mary Magdalene, a woman who has already been painted by the faithful as a prostitute and a saint. For the researchers, her trajectory was shrouded in mystery.

Read More “What you still didn’t know about Mary Magdalene and her relationship with Jesus”