“Choosing Christ is the most important decision anyone can make because it is the only decision that has eternal consequences.” ~Father Larry Richards The young Catholics of the world are preparing for World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro this upcoming July. Pope Francis has already marked this event as his first trip back home [...]
I have a love/hate relationship with the comment box. On my blog where it’s moderated and readers are spiritually mature and have attended Combox-Finnishing school, I can kick my shoes off and put my feet up like I do on my sister’s coffee table. But elsewhere on the world wide web, writing about politics or [...]
The mainstream media has done an excellent job of completely ignoring the trial of Kermit Gosnell. As everyone knows by now, Gosnell was the Philadelphia abortionist famous for “snipping the spines” of newborns who happened to survive his efforts to abort them. The state health authorities ignored his clinic for 17 long years. Then one [...]
How many times have you — as a parent — sat in Mass and not heard a word the priest said because you were playing referee, peacekeeper, or bad cop in the pew? Since I can answer that question in the triple digits, I was thrilled to learn about the new DVD “Understanding Sunday Mass: A [...]
Graduation from college is a transition from working towards a goal to accomplishing it. Some are ready to save the world while others simply want to make their mark in it, but either way, it is the threshold of new possibilities. Inevitably however, within any group of graduates, time brings surprises both good and bad. [...]
Please, open your heart and consider this situation. Brian Gadbois is a permanent deacon and his wife Nissa has just, as in today, given birth to their ninth child. A couple of years ago a dream that they had nurtured for many years came true when they purchased a foreclosed and abandoned farm property. As a [...]
Get this: Social media are making us ruder. According to Reuters, social media users face “an increase in rudeness online with people having no qualms about being less polite virtually than in person.” I think our rudeness began ticking up with the introduction of another technological innovation: the telephone. As phones became commonplace in American [...]
Our relationship with the things of this world requires a very delicate balance between loving creation and allowing it to rule our hearts. The Lord is very clear in Scripture that we are to bow to only One Being. Surprisingly, our TV screen or our iPhone is not that Supreme Being who demands our full [...]
As someone who has long appreciated the catechetical value of CS Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, it was a great pleasure for me to have the opportunity to interview Max McLean, director of the stage adaptation of The Screwtape Letters and its lead actor, portraying Screwtape. McLean originated the role of Screwtape in New York, Chicago, [...]
This is a reflection I wrote after viewing Spiritual Growth in Tough Times which centers around the healing process. Sister Joyce Rupp discusses the process of healing with the analogy of the seasons. We all want to live in the spring and summers of our lives but we have to live through the difficulties of [...]
Television is discovering the Bible makes for good viewing. In addition to The History Channel’s airing an epic 5-part Bible series, the second season of The American Bible Challenge game show begins this Thursday, March 21 at 9 pm EST on GNS. Hosted by Jeff Foxworthy, this fast-paced, one-hour game show pits Bible loving groups [...]
March 6, 2013, Wednesday – Silence Silence, of a sort, has descended over the meeting of the cardinals in the lead-up to the Conclave. The American cardinals today canceled their scheduled press conference at the North American College — the NAC, as it is called, on the Janiculum Hill just above the Vatican. Cardinal Timothy [...]
Recently, Pope Benedict XVI, now Pope Emeritus, criticized the media for it’s continued misrepresenting of Vatican II. In response, NET (New Evangelization Television) debuted a 10-part weekly series called Vatican II: Inside the Vatican Council, on Thursday, February 21 at 8:30 PM ET. CNA/EWTN reported that “Pope Benedict XVI said that many of the misinterpretations of the Second [...]
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The Bible speaks for itself, or rather, it speaks for God. Yet, we have a generation of young people that are generally more excited about video games and special effects than the Word of God. So, what’s a parent to do? If you are executive producer Mark Burnett and his wife, “Touched by an Angel” [...]
February 24, 2013, Sunday – Angelus “The Lord is calling me ‘out to the mountain’ to devote more time to prayer and meditation, but this does not mean I’m abandoning the Church.” –Pope Benedict XVI, in his final Sunday Angelus address as Pope, at noon [Feb. 24] in St. Peter’s Square The Sun Broke Through at [...]
“[N]ews reports abound which are often unverified or unverifiable, or completely false…” –Communique this morning from the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, released at the Vatican Press Office The Vatican Speaks Out Evidently concerned that the upcoming papal conclave to elect a successor to Pope Benedict XVI (the conclave is now expected to be held between [...]
“…As we grow older the world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated…” –T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets, East Coker The Witnesses Last night, my phone rang twice, just before 3 in the morning. In the morning, I found three emails from the same person, a priest I know. He called again this morning. He wanted [...]
“Therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me; my heart within me is desolate” – Psalm 143:4. The Secret Report Given to the Pope on December 17 Today a veil of secrecy was shredded in this eternal city. Today therefore marked the beginning of a difficult, important struggle for the purification of the government of the [...]
Garry Wills [ex-seminarian]: “What we really need are no priests.” James Carroll [ex-priest]: The pope “has seen only a solemn obligation to defend the church.” [Italic added.] Richard Sipe [ex-priest]: “Certainly, he did a lot, but it was all reactionary.” [Italic added.] Daniel Maguire [ex-priest]: The “scandal of the papacy [is] one of the last absolute monarchies in a [...]
Monday’s announcement by Pope Benedict XVI that he will resign the papacy at the end of this month because of his increasingly frail health has revealed what we practicing Catholics in America have long understood: Our faith remains a mystery. No time has been wasted stirring up a frenzy of speculation about what will happen [...]
For the past several weeks, Catholics around the Internet have been talking about a scandal, and, surprisingly, they’re more or less in agreement. It is a real-life scandal of a bishop who forgave a criminal for robbing from him. It is a fictional scandal of a criminal who broke parole, became a successful businessman and [...]
