Category: Featured

What’s Wrong with This Picture?
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What’s Wrong with This Picture?

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by on Feb 20, 2012 in Catechesis, Columnists, Contraception & Abortion, Featured, Government & Politics, Law & Justice, Leadership, On Media
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A very conscientious Catholic, Harold Baumeister, saw this cartoon in his hometown paper and had the conviction and gumption to do something about it! He wrote to the editor (letter follows) to let him know that he was deeply offended by this crass cartoon and that the pope and all Catholics will fight to defend our freedoms. […]

For This I Came into the World
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For This I Came into the World

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by on Feb 20, 2012 in Featured, Parenting
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Phrases scroll across my mind during these weeks following the peaceful but unexpected death of my 26 year old son Paul.     “I want my baby back!” I cried to God the first week or two, although he was no baby.     Another one that plays across my mind is:  “Why did you […]

Knights of Columbus Battle Abortion Insurance Mandate of Wash. State
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Knights of Columbus Battle Abortion Insurance Mandate of Wash. State

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by on Feb 20, 2012 in Featured, Government & Politics, Life Issues & Bioethics
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  Need a little dose of humility?  Try testifying before a legislative committee in Olympia, Washington chaired by condescending Senator, Karen Keiser.  Want to be humbled?  Get reprimanded by this same pro-abortion Senator calling herself a Lutheran Christian, who co-sponsored the redefinition of marriage bill, and who has been homesteading in the legislature for 16 […]

<em>Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance</em> Burns Out
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Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance Burns Out

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by on Feb 18, 2012 in Arts, Leisure & Culture, Featured, On TV and Movies
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In Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, Nicholas Cage returns as Johnny Blaze, the man who once made a deal with the devil to save his father’s life, and became the devil’s bounty hunter. In the original Ghost Rider film, when he is in the presence of evil, Blaze turns into the Ghost Rider, a flaming […]

The Announcement of the Gospel Today
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The Announcement of the Gospel Today

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by on Feb 18, 2012 in Featured, The Shepherd's Voice
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Today, New York’s Archbishop Timothy Dolan was elevated into the College of Cardinals in Rome. Here is full text of the address he gave to yesterday’s pre-Consistory  gathering of the Pope and Cardinals. The Announcement of the GospelToday, Between missio ad gentes and the New Evangelization Holy Father, Cardinal Sodano, my brothers in Christ: Sia […]

Snow and Palm Trees
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Snow and Palm Trees

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by on Feb 18, 2012 in Columnists, Featured, MyChurchParish.com
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Across Italy, up and down both coasts, one notices a very unusual sight.  Driving down the Adriatic coast of Italy, along the eastern provinces known as Le Marche, all of the palm trees in sight are leafless.  Along beautiful beachfront boulevards the trees still stand tall, and look strong, but with no tops.  For the […]

Dark Evangelization: The Mandate as the Gospel of Mammon
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Dark Evangelization: The Mandate as the Gospel of Mammon

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by on Feb 18, 2012 in Apologetics, Catechesis, Featured
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The great theologian and catechist Frank Sheed wrote in his book Are We Really Teaching Religion: “The aim of teaching religion is that at minimum, children should emerge with a tremendous devotion to Christ, Our Lord, with an awareness of Him, a considerable knowledge of His Life and Personality, and a desire to increase that knowledge” […]

Compatibly Incompatible
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Compatibly Incompatible

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by on Feb 18, 2012 in Columnists, Featured, Marriage
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At the time Mark and I became engaged, our diocese required couples to complete a six-month Pre-Cana program that involved meeting a few times with an older, more experienced couple, attending a one-day retreat, and taking a premarital inventory. We were excited to complete the program, because we wanted to start things off right. We […]

Lessons from the Paralytic
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Lessons from the Paralytic

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by on Feb 18, 2012 in Catechesis, Columnists, Featured, MyChurchParish.com
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Sometimes we act as if sins are just black marks against us in God’s ledger, debits against our rewards account. But the gospel story of the paralytic (Mark 2:1-12) should wake us up to the real nature of sin.  For sin is more than a demerit–it is distancing of a person from God, who happens […]

The Contraception Mandate Fix: Fact vs. Fiction
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The Contraception Mandate Fix: Fact vs. Fiction

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by on Feb 18, 2012 in Featured, Life Issues & Bioethics
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If you read the emails and tweets coming from abortion-rights members of congress and pro-abortion feminist groups you have probably heard that Senator Blunts amendment will prevent women from obtaining contraception. International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) claims making birth control inaccessible is by male design to set us back to the dark ages when there […]

The Cross is the Key to Eternal Life
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The Cross is the Key to Eternal Life

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by on Feb 17, 2012 in Catechesis, Featured, MyChurchParish.com
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Action!  Saint James tells us that we must demonstrate our faith with actions.  As Catholics, that means taking up our crosses and following the Lord.  “Faith of itself, without works, is dead,” James says (2:17).  His teaching comes directly from the Lord.     At Mass word and deed connect.  The Scriptures offer the affirmation that […]

Obama Administration to Court: “Please Look the Other Way”
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Obama Administration to Court: “Please Look the Other Way”

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by on Feb 17, 2012 in Featured, Law & Justice
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No attempt to defend the constitutionality of the mandate  On Thursday, the Obama administration filed its first legal response to Belmont Abbey College’s lawsuit challenging the controversial contraception mandate. This was its first opportunity to explain to the court and the country why the mandate is not illegal and unconstitutional. So what did the administration […]

Controlling Human Genetic Engineering Before it Controls Us
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Controlling Human Genetic Engineering Before it Controls Us

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by on Feb 17, 2012 in Catholic Bioethics, Featured
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We do have the ability to control human genetic engineering without it controlling us.  To do that we must draw a line in the sand between morally laudable therapy and human altering enhancement. My previous article, What is the Catholic View on Genetic Engineering, was all about the distinction between gene therapy and genetic enhancement.  Now, […]

Obama's Catholic Church Gambit: Lessons from American Communists
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Obama’s Catholic Church Gambit: Lessons from American Communists

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by on Feb 17, 2012 in Featured, Government & Politics
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A fascinating theory has been advanced by Dick Morris, which, in turn, is being considered by Rush Limbaugh and other leading conservatives.  Morris speculates that the Obama HHS mandate on contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients is a fight with the Catholic Church that Team Obama wants — and with the focus based narrowly on contraception, not […]

Supreme Court Filing: Obamacare Compels Individuals to Pay for Abortion Coverage
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Supreme Court Filing: Obamacare Compels Individuals to Pay for Abortion Coverage

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by on Feb 17, 2012 in Featured, Life Issues & Bioethics
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The individual mandate not only forces individuals into private purchases, it also effectively mandates personal payments for surgical abortion coverage without exemption for individual’s religious or moral objections.  This is the argument presented by seven medical organizations in an amicus brief filed Monday in the U.S. Supreme Court by lead counsel Bioethics Defense Fund (BDF), […]

What if There Were no Working Moms?
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What if There Were no Working Moms?

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by on Feb 17, 2012 in Featured, Parenting
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Before you say it, I agree: there’s no such thing as a mom that doesn’t work. I’m all for moms that work, stay home, and those somewhere in between. —JDF A few weeks ago, an article “Motherhood and the Call to Holiness” seemed to pop up on every website, blog and feed I visited. Here, […]

Pres. Obama, the Right Not to Do Wrong, and Politics of Ruse and Delay
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Pres. Obama, the Right Not to Do Wrong, and Politics of Ruse and Delay

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by on Feb 17, 2012 in Featured, Law & Justice
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No one can be rightly coerced by the state to be directly complicit in the commission of a wrong. This goes for any businessman, employer, insurance company, or individual, regardless of faith. After three weeks of outcry from religious leaders regarding its Health and Human Services contraception insurance mandate, the Obama administration announced a “compromise” […]

Narcissus and Contraception's Curse
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Narcissus and Contraception’s Curse

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by on Feb 17, 2012 in Featured, Life Issues & Bioethics
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The myth of Narcissus is very suggestive for our day. There are many variations to the story, but they all end the same way. Narcissus is cursed to forever experience the pain of unrequited love. That happens to be our own curse, too. But first, here’s how it happened to Narcissus. Narcissus was a handsome […]

Hollow Compromise on Contraception Mandate
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Hollow Compromise on Contraception Mandate

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by on Feb 17, 2012 in Columnists, Featured, Government & Politics
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Give Barack Obama credit: The man has chutzpah. How else do you describe a president who uses his executive authority to unilaterally manufacture a government mandate for contraception coverage — a mandate with no conscience protection for the vast majority of religious institutions to which it applies — and then, when confronted with bipartisan backlash, […]

Congress Holds Hearing on Human Rights Abuses in China as China's VP Visits WH
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Congress Holds Hearing on Human Rights Abuses in China as China’s VP Visits WH

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by on Feb 16, 2012 in Featured, Life Issues & Bioethics
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This Tuesday Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ) chairman of the U.S. China Commission presided at a hearing entitled “The Case and Treatment of Prominent Human Rights Lawyer Gao Zhisheng” with Co-Chairman U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D–OH). At the same time China’s Vice President Xi Jinping (in line to assume the presidency in March 2013) was meeting with President Obama and Vice […]

Obama’s Anti-Religious Implosion
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Obama’s Anti-Religious Implosion

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by on Feb 16, 2012 in Featured, Government & Politics
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Barack Obama may have just lost the election. He has foolishly gone to war in an election year with tens of millions of Catholics, Protestants and Jews – Democrat, Republican and independent alike. He has thrown down a radical feminist gauntlet and dared the Church to pick it up. They’ve picked it up. From running […]

Freedom of the Church Impaired at the European Court of Human Rights
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Freedom of the Church Impaired at the European Court of Human Rights

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by on Feb 16, 2012 in Featured, Law & Justice
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On January 31st 2012, the third section of the European Court of Human Rights issued a judgment in the case of Sindicatul Pastorul cel bun c. Roumanie (no. 2330/09) whereby it determined that the refusal to register a trade union established within the Orthodox Church was contrary to freedom of association guaranteed by Article 11 […]

<em>Frack Nation</em> Digs Up the Not-So-Scary Truth
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Frack Nation Digs Up the Not-So-Scary Truth

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by on Feb 16, 2012 in Columnists, Featured, Government & Politics
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When it comes to 21st-century environmental and energy debates, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Especially when what little knowledge you may have is incorrect. And most especially when could be a lie. That’s the conclusion of documentary filmmakers Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer, who are on a quest to shed some light – […]

What If We Removed Wartime Conscience Exemptions?
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What If We Removed Wartime Conscience Exemptions?

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by on Feb 16, 2012 in Featured, Government & Politics
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Last Friday, President Obama responded to Catholic bishops’ concerns over his controversial mandate compelling Catholic institutions to provide contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing pharmaceuticals. Many media sources reported Obama’s action as an “accommodation,” with some describing it as a “reversal.” It is hardly that. Many Catholics find it arguably worse. Without dissecting the president’s action, the […]