A Catholic Take

November 12th, 2026 - The Archdiocese of Portland has asked the laity to stop raising their hands, and to stop holding hands, during the Our Father at Mass. Its Office of Divine Worship says the orans posture belongs to the priest. Nick Cavazos of The Traditional Thomist joins Joe to explain what the Church's law says, where the practice came from, and why posture at Mass matters.

Then: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn exposed the Soviet gulag and told the West, "Men have forgotten God." His grandson, Dmitri Solzhenitsyn, is a Russian Orthodox layman who has written a book on healing the thousand-year split between Rome and the Orthodox. He wants reunion, and he says it must come on Orthodox terms. Joe asks him the questions a Catholic has to ask.

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November 11th, 2026 -Did a Vatican cardinal just try to cancel what a pope personally granted? In July, a note from Cardinal Fernández's doctrine office said confessions heard and marriages witnessed by SSPX priests are invalid. Pope Francis granted those faculties himself. Now Die Tagespost reports that the Vatican's own legal office has tried several times to get the note corrected. Mark Lambert of Catholic Unscripted joins Joe to walk through what the July 2 note said, what Francis granted in 2015, 2016 and 2017, what Archbishop Arrieta said about who can undo a pope's act, and what a Catholic who went to an SSPX priest for confession should think right now.

Then, Dr. Janet Smith on Cardinal Joseph Bernardin: what do his admirers say, what do his critics say about the seamless garment and the bishops he promoted, and how should Catholics weigh grave accusations that have never been proven against a man who cannot answer them?

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November 10th, 2026 - The Archdiocese of Detroit is restructuring every one of its parishes, and draft plans could end weekend Mass at as many as 90 of them. When more than 600 Catholics from over 120 parishes rented a hall to learn
what rights Church law gives them, the man who speaks for them says he received a canonical directive from his archbishop ordering him to stop giving canonical guidance to Catholics in the archdiocese. Then, author Rosemary McGuire Berry on her TAN Books title "Piety and Personality: The Temperaments of the Saints." Were the saints born holy? Which saint shares your temperament, and how did they conquer it?

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November 9th, 2026 - Cardinal Joseph Zen, 94, wrote to the Church on the feast of St. Charles Borromeo and asked Pope Leo XIV to put a stop to the Synod on Synodality. Then, Jason Jones joins us on Israel's election: Eisenkot has the mandate, Netanyahu is fighting to stay, and the Iran war is still not over.

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November 6th, 2026 - Pope Leo XIV just made a theologian who criticized the Vatican's 2021 "no" to blessing same-sex unions an under-secretary in the Roman Curia, 17 days after naming her to the International Theological Commission. Mark Lambert of Regina Unscripted calls it "a growing incoherence." Plus, Dr. Anthony Stine asks why Latin Mass pilgrims were stopped at the obelisk in St. Peter's Square.

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