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In a homily delivered to lawyers and politicians at the annual Red Mass in Phoenix, AZ on Tuesday, Archbishop Raymond Burke emphasized the sacred nature of a vocation to public service, reports the Catholic News Agency. The Red Mass, a tradition which started in the middle ages, is celebrated every year around the second Sunday in January to remind those in public positions of authority that true justice is found only in God. Burke became well-known in 2004 for his very public battle with then-presidential candidate and Catholic John Kerry. Burke, then Archbishop of St. Louis, MO, told reporters that he would not give communion to Kerry because of Kerry's pro-abortion stance.
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Out praying at the Planned Parenthood facility in Aurora, Illinois last Friday, I was reminded of an important point made by Fr. Frank Pavone in a talk once. Father Frank asked what the first step of any effective pro-life effort must be. As I would guess most in the audience did, I thought, "Prayer." But Father Frank took it deeper than that. He explained that the first thing we must do, if our pro-life witness is to be effective, is to repent. One might think that to repent is to pray, but repentence per se is an act prior to prayer. It is the admission, in the dark of one's own heart, that one has sinned, and stands in need of healing grace.
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By decoding the inscription on a 3,000-year-old piece of pottery, an Israeli professor has concluded that parts of the bible were written hundreds of years earlier than suspected. A breakthrough in the research of the Hebrew scriptures has shed new light on the period in which the Bible was written. By decoding the inscription on a 3,000-year-old piece of pottery, an Israeli professor has concluded that parts of the bible were written hundreds of years earlier than suspected. The pottery shard was discovered at excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa near the Elah valley in Israel -- about 18 miles west of Jerusalem. Carbon-dating places it in the 10th century BC, making the shard about 1,000 years older than the Dead Sea scrolls.
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CCI NOTES: After 10 years of listening and re-listening to Dr. William Luckey's 14 part lecture series 'Principles of Political Theory' on cassette tapes, it is a pleasure to recommend them to all our readers as they are now available on CD in MP3 at a bargin, BARGAIN price of just $9.97 for the ENTIRE SET of 14 lectures. This is one of the best overviews of political theory from a Catholic perspective we have come across, and it is highly recommended for any Catholic interested in deepening their understanding of what has caused many of the political problems our nation faces, and how they can be overcome. These lectures are timeless reminders of Catholic truth, and a 'must have' for every Catholic library. To order your copies (buy 2 and give one to a friend), CLICK HERE.
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Thomas Storck's paper is unconvincing, to say the least. Its principal arguments rest on an incomplete or misleading portrayal of neoclassical economics, and the paper itself neglects the Austrian School of economics, to which many of its claims do not apply. No doubt the paper may give the novice the impression of having successfully identified flaws in mainstream economics, but it is no exaggeration to say that not a single neoclassical economist would recognize himself in Storck's portrayal. There are plenty of good criticisms to be made of neoclassical economics, to be sure, but Storck either lacks the requisite knowledge or is too intent on caricature to find them. It retards rather than advances human knowledge to critique a position that no one would recognize as his own, but that, for whatever reason, is what Thomas Storck has chosen to do.
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Pope Benedict XVI, a man of immense learning in philosophy and theology, has just been quoted as saying that rich nations must assume environmental duties, should shed their "consumerism" and embrace more sober lifestyles: this datelined Vatican City by Reuters. Let's get this straight. We Catholics believe the Pope is infallible on matters of faith and morals but with this caveat: The doctrine of infallibility is a negative i.e. the Pope cannot err on faith and morals. Moreover infallibility does not mean impeccability. The Blessed Virgin, conceived without Original Sin, was and is impeccable but Popes are not. Peter, the first Pope, certainly was not nor was any of his successors.
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Christopher J. Check is the Vice President of The Rockford Institute. He holds a B.A. in English literature from Rice University. Before joining the Institute he served as a captain in the United States Marine Corps, where he specialty was field artillery. He served as editor of The Family in America and is an award-winning commentator for Illinois Public radio. He has been published in the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, the Wanderer, National Review, New Oxford Review, Culture Wars, Touchstone and Defense Media Review. The subject: "Henry VIII, the Divorce" and the welcome "home" by Benedict XVI to Anglicans wishing to return to full communion with the Roman Catholic Church. CCI luncheons are at 12:00 noon at the Union League Club, 65 W. Jackson Blvd, Chicago. The dress code for the Club allows casual business attire (collared shirt and slacks for men; slacks or skirt with blouse or sweater for women. Jeans, sweat shirts, or tee shirts are not permitted.) Tickets are $30.00. For reservation, call Maureen at 708-352-5834.
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Everywhere we hear that the necessity for a dogmatic belief, the profession of a fixed creed, the certainty of any doctrines whatever that have a right to command the submission of the human understanding, slips away increasingly from the minds of men. The cold sophistry of certain men, esteemed by not a few as the thinkers of the age, has gone so far as to proclaim that God cannot be known by man [a la Paul VI], and that all left for man is to reverence in some negative way what he can neither approach nor understand. God is to be sent into exile from the world that He has created, and the creature may no longer know his Creator. Dreadful it is to reflect that such a notion has found a following [Paul VI]. But once throw aside the Church's divine authority and replace it with man's private opinion, and what is there that man will not substitute for God's revealed truth? What truth implanted in our nature will not be driven off by the pride of self-opinion?
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As a law student, I'm fairly used to debating my peers on a whole host of issues legal, political, moral, and spiritual. And it's always frustrating when my opponent refuses to engage my position for what it is, and feels he must score cheap shots to an audience who largely sympathizes with him, by refuting a straw man, a caricature which is so obviously fallacious as to be indefensible. And so it is with Mr. Tim Dunkin's latest attempt at early Christian revisionism. There's actually quite a bit of common ground between Dunkin and myself, though one wouldn't know it by reading his piece, which completely misstates the positions I articulated in my rebuttal to his earlier article. I never claimed that the early Church subscribed precisely to the doctrine of transubstantiation - a term which Mr. Dunkin and other Fundamentalist polemicists take delight in fetishizing, evoking in the minds of their sola scriptura co-religionists all sorts of fantasies rooted in conspiracy theories of an ignorant Christian flock goaded by Machiavellian, pagan-sympathizing pastors "straying further and further away from Biblical truths, as the centuries went by." This is precisely the narrative put forward by Dan Brown, Michael Baigent, and the folks at the Jesus Seminar, except that they at least take this mythology to its logical conclusion, assuming that the Apostles themselves were the first to suffer from a sort of "Great Apostasy," forgetting and then manipulating the true teachings of the historical Jesus. When Protestant apologists set out to refute these historical narratives, they are pulling the weeds they themselves have sowed for half a millennium.
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In recent years, faithful Catholic groups and organisations have networked and now form a solid foundation that is beginning to rebuild and renew the faith. They are being supported by a growing contingent of bishops who recognise how deep the rot has gone and are determined to do something about it. There are more and more young people who are on fire with the love of God and who are willing to live the faith to its fullness. They are certainly not a majority but they are now present and visible in many places. Not a few have entered the seminary or novitiate. It will be these young people of today who will be rebuilding the Church in America.
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Second Annual Springfield (Illinois) Nativity Scene Display to Stand in State Capitol Rotunda Building: Opening Day Ceremony December 1st 2009 between 12 Noon and 1 P.M. The Springfield Nativity Scene Committee (SNSC) will again erect a Nativity Scene that will stand in Illinois' state Capitol Rotunda Building. Opening day ceremonies regarding the Springfield Nativity Scene (SNS) will take place between 12 Noon and 1 P.M. on December 1st in the state Capitol Rotunda located at South 2nd Street & East Capitol Avenue in Springfield, Illinois. The public is invited to attend the event.
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Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the way MSNBC host Chris Matthews handled his interview with Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin last night on "Hardball": "We were deluged with phone calls, faxes and e-mails after what happened yesterday on "Hardball." After watching the first portion of the interview between Chris Matthews and Bishop Tobin, I wondered what all the fuss was all about: Chris was just being his usual aggressive self. But it didn't take long before Matthews literally spun out of control."
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Rev. Robert A. Sirico. President of the Acton Institute. Fr. Sirico studied at the University of Southern California and the University of London and received his Master of Divinity degree from Catholic University of America. He founded the Acton Institute with Kris Alan Mauren in 1990 to address the fundamental economic principles in today's social problems. He lectures at colleges, universities and business organizations. His writings on religious, political, economic and social matters have been published in a variety of journals and he has provided commentary on CNN, ABC, the BBC, NPR, and CBS 60 Minutes. He is currently pastor of St. Mary Catholic Church in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The subject: "Does Social Justice Request Socialism?" Luncheons are at 12:00 noon at the Union League Club, 65 W. Jackson Blvd, Chicago. Tickets are $30.00. For reservation, call Maureen at 708-352-5834.
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"Let's remember that the Founders encouraged an active role for religion in the nation's public life. Let's recall that freedom of speech for Catholics, their leaders and their Church is constitutionally protected, just as it is for all citizens. Let's also finally remember that Catholic-baiting is one of America's oldest and most favored forms of hatred. The irony is that some of today's ugliest bigots posture themselves as socially "progressive" and work in politics or the mass media, or both."
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More than 150,000 people have so far signed the Manhattan Declaration, just a week after the document was unveiled. And one of the document's drafters, Chuck Colson, hopes the number will soon reach a million so that Christians would put America on notice that they will not compromise their faith, no matter what. Leaders from the evangelical, Orthodox and Catholic traditions released "The Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience" last week to stand firm on what they consider the three most foundational issues in society - the sanctity of life, the historic understanding of marriage, and religious liberty. It serves as a proclamation to the nation's leaders that they will not abandon or compromise their conscience on the three issues and as a call to the Christian church to unite in upholding the truths as followers of Jesus Christ.
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Freedom of speech is a great thing. Unfortunately, it comes at an unavoidable price: When citizens are free to say what they want, they'll sometimes use that freedom to say some pretty silly things. And that's the case with the 12 claims we're about to cover. Some of them are made over and over, others are rare. Either way, while the proponents of these errors are free to promote them, we as Catholics have a duty to respond.
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For the Fall 2009 Catholic Citizens newsletter, CLICK HERE
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For the Summer 2009 CCI Newsletter CLICK HERE
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With Halloween around the corner and Hollywood releasing horror movies such as "Paranormal Activity" and "Saw VI," one cannot help but feel chills running down his or her spine. St. John's Catholic Newman Center had the timing right when it invited exorcist Father Vince Lampert to speak about his experiences Monday night at Foellinger Auditorium. Lampert, the head priest at St. Francis and Clare parish in Greenwood, Ind., was ordained a priest in 1991. He was later asked by the archbishop of Indianapolis if he was willing to train as an exorcist, said Monsignor Gregory Ketcham, director and head chaplain at the Newman Center. "Father Lampert was asked to take on the role of an exorcist because he is very prayerful and faithful, and he has a lot of integrity - he's a good man," Ketcham said.
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For the CCI Spring 2009 Newsletter CLICK HERE
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For the Winter 2009 CCI Newsletter CLICK HERE
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As you may know, this year will be the second annual display of the Springfield Nativity Scene. Last year was the first time in Illinois history such a religious display stood in the state capitol. Statues of Joseph, Mary and the baby Jesus stood in a handcrafted manger in the Capitol Rotunda Building. The project was originally underwritten by the Chicago-based Thomas More Society and its President Tom Brejcha. The three statues were handcrafted and made in Italy, costing nearly $7,000 and we are still paying the bills for last year's event and we would like your help.
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CCI NOTES: Here's another site to add to your "favorites" list. Launched by a handful of ambitious Europeans, the 'about us' at the site says, "Gloria.tv offers news, homilies, entertainment and other Catholic content. It wants to be a Catholic pulpit on the Internet. You are warmly invited to collaborate. The easiest way to do so is to produce your own video and to upload it to Gloria.tv. Film homilies or religious events in your own parish, or elsewhere. Talk Catholic to the world. Gloria.tv will also become your personal pulpit. Also, you are invited to integrate the videos published on Gloria.tv into your personal homepage, too." To check out Gloria.tv CLICK HERE.
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Readers of both RenewAmerica and American Thinker should pay careful thought and scrutiny to Mr. Shane Corsey's recent contribution to the latter's pages: "God, Conservatism, and Values." Mr. Corsey's piece is a welcome stimulant to a discussion conservatives need to have among themselves regarding the metaphysical underpinnings of their philosophy and their policy proposals. Corsey is an agnostic, and it his aim to promote a conservatism that is religion-neutral, though not value-neutral: One of the reasons I am a proud conservative is because it comes closest to the belief of what our Founding Fathers had in mind for this country, and the values of that system give an equal shake to anyone who wishes to come here. Religion in my opinion is not as forgiving, and can be as big of a divider in this country as race.
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In his book, Character and Destiny: A Nation In Search of its Soul, the late Dr. D. James Kennedy tells about a speech given by Gary Bauer at the 1994 Reclaiming America for Christ Conference. Though Bauer's speech was given 15 years ago, its content is most relevant even today. Bauer said that most Americans fail to understand just how removed lawmakers typically are from the values of the people they represent. He said many believe that government can create a utopia on earth. They believe that morals are relative and not absolute. They argue for a radical individualism, yet also demand that a strong central government be in control of every area of life. Bauer said the people of this country believe very much in personal responsibility, truth, virtue, and faith, but the "elites" in government want something of a new world order which isn't impeded by tradition or religious conviction.
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On December 1st, 2009, the Springfield Nativity Scene Committee (SNSC) will again sponsor a display depicting the birth of Jesus Christ. For the second year in a row, the crèche--with figurines representing Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus--will stand in the State Capitol Rotunda Building in Springfield, Illinois. In 2008, the SNSC made history when the Secretary of State's office provided a permit to the group, allowing the Nativity Scene to go on display. The crèche and manger scene stood in the State Capitol Building, in accordance with the U.S. Constitution which provides for such religious expression in the public square as long as such displays are privately-funded.
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First, I haven't seen Michael Moore's new movie, "Capitalism: A Love Story," and I have no plans to do so. But from friends and the media I've heard a great deal about how Moore "gets religion" in his new movie, or at least how he gets religion to say what he wants it to say. In this case, the religion exploited is Catholicism, a religion I know a little something about. Is anyone else tired of Hollywood types and politicians who spend most of their public lives ignoring Church teaching, but who suddenly show reverence for the Faith when it appears (even superficially) to complement their already determined position? I'm told that near the end of his "love story" Moore lines up a series of Catholic clergy to agree with his general premise that Capitalism is evil. Moore's hypocrisy aside (is he charging people to see his movie?) this premise is not at all Catholic.
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"I will always forcefully defend the right of the bishops to criticize me," Barack Obama pledged just before his meeting with Benedict XVI last July 10. Indeed. About 80 of the Catholic bishops of the United States are in open disagreement with him on crucial questions, in primis the defense of life. Among these is Cardinal Francis George, president of the bishops' conference and archbishop of Chicago, Obama's city. And there's also the bishop of Denver, Charles J. Chaput, 65, member of a Native American tribe and a Capuchin Franciscan. Last year, he published a book that starts getting its point across right from the title: "Render unto Caesar. Serving the Nation by Living Our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life." It is right to give Caesar that which belongs to him. But one serves the nation by living one's own Catholic faith in political life. Chaput does not like the fact that in Rome, at the Vatican, they turn a deaf ear to the criticisms of Obama made by the American Church. He especially didn't like the effusive praise heaped on the American president last July - in conjunction with Obama's meeting with the pope - by a venerated cardinal of the curia, Georges Cottier of Switzerland, theologian emeritus of the pontifical household, in an article published in the magazine "30 Days."
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A ten minute YouTube video of excerpts from a past EWTN interview with Fr. John Corapi has been making its way onto many Internet blogs and websites recently. Its perceived high relevance to the West's ongoing cultural and social meltdown appears to be the reason for its popularity. Corapi's blunt comments in the video titled, "Fr. Corapi and Corruption in the Church," take head on the contraception, abortion and euthanasia issues and his perception of the root cause of their deadly rise. Corapi states that the rejection of Pope Paul's encyclical Humane Vitae "has everything to do with everything that you're seeing now - the meltdown of Western Civilization." He indicates that because of the resulting explosive spread of contraceptive use and it's frequent failure, the backup method of abortion has itself "become a form of contraception." He adds, "Pope Paul VI warned about that."
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CCI's annual awards dinner will feature Bishop Thomas Doran from the Diocese of Rockford. Bishop Doran will offer "Some Observations on he Church in the 21st Century." The St. Thomas More Award for Catholic Citizenship will be presented to Kathleen Sullivan, founder of Project Reality and a longtime Catholic activist. The dinner will be held at Drury Lane in Oak Brook, IL on October 7. Tickets are $65 per seat, $500 for a table of 10. Send contributions/reservations to CCI, 106 Calendar Court, PMB 122, Lagrange, IL 60525 or by phone by calling Maureen at 708-352-5834. Reception from 6 pm to 7 pm. Dinner at 7 pm, program immediately following dinner.
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It is clear that we are experiencing today a period of intense and critical struggle in the advancement of the culture of life in our nation. The administration of our federal government openly and aggressively follows a secularist agenda. While it may employ religious language and even invoke the name of God, in fact, it proposes programs and policies for our people without respect for God and His Law. In the words of the Servant of God Pope John Paul II, it proceeds "as if God did not exist" (Pope John Paul II, Post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles laici, "On the Vocation and the Mission of the Lay Faithful in the Church and in the World," 30 December 1988, no. 34)... As we share the same commitment to foster respect for human life and the integrity of marriage and the family, I wish to offer some fundamental reflections on how to advance the culture of life in our nation.
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President Obama attempted to allay the concerns of pro-life advocates last week by assuring Americans that federal funding for abortion will not be included in "his" health care reform plan. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius sought to reinforce this sentiment in a recent interview: "Well that's exactly what the President said and that's what he intends that the bill he signs will do.... I think the legislative language will reflect what the President has just said." What's going on here? Either President Obama has experienced an epiphany regarding the sanctity of human life at every stage of development, or once again his Administration is attempting to pull the wool over the American people's eyes with a rhetorical bait and switch. A review of the facts may provide insight as to which is the case.
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Another U.S. Catholic bishop has joined in criticizing President Obama's health care overhaul, insisting that any such legislation must avoid promoting abortion and urging against the unwarranted expansion of government into the private sphere. Bishop Thomas Doran of Rockford, Illinois wrote in the diocesan newspaper The Observer last month that the principles of subsidiarity, solidarity, and interest in the common good are indispensable to positive health care reform. Doran advised that health care be treated as "more of a market than a system," and warned against the pitfalls of a government takeover. "Our federal bureaucracy is a vast wasteland strewn with the carcasses of absurd federal programs which proved infinitely worse than the problems they were established to correct," wrote Doran.
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The photo below is a view of part of the crowd of protesters who gathered in Washington, D.C. and around the country today to demand control of reckless runaway government spending and to voice their opposition to the government takeover of healthcare. D.C. police estimates the crowd at 1.2 million. ABC News, however, reported this afternoon that the crowd was estimated at 2 million. By the way, one of the Patriot's steet reporters asked one policeman what he thought: the DC police officer said, "I've been here 20 years and this is the largest crowd I've ever seen." No matter which way you cut it, the size and scope of today's citizen march on Washington is an historic, groundbreaking event. Ordinary citizens who have been called 'the great silent majority' normally do not protest...at least not in public. That day is long gone.
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Until relatively recently, antidiscrimination laws usually included exemptions for churches and other religious groups so that they could practice and manifest their beliefs in freedom. That word exemptions is actually a misnomer, suggesting as it does some sort of concession from the state to eccentric minorities. These provisions are better described as protections of religious freedom-and such protections are increasingly being refused or defined in the narrowest possible terms in new antidiscrimination measures, with existing protections eroded or construed away by the courts. In Australia last year, the act of Parliament decriminalizing abortion in the State of Victoria included provisions that made a mockery of conscientious objection, requiring doctors who object to refer patients to medical practitioners who will provide abortion. Where an abortion is deemed necessary to save the life of a pregnant woman, doctors and nurses are legally obliged to provide it, regardless of any conscientious objections they may have.
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September 11 - Fr. Brian Mullady, O.P., entered the Dominican Order in 1966 and was ordained in 1972. He has been a parish priest, high school teacher, retreat master, mission preacher and university professor. He received his Doctorate in Sacred Theology from the Angelicum University in Rome. He has taught at several colleges and seminaries in the United States. He currently teaches at Holy Apostles Seminary in Connecticut. He has had four series on EWTN television network. CCI's monthly luncheon forums are held on the second Friday of every month, from 11:45 AM To 01:30 PM, at a new location, the Union League Club 65 W Jackson Blvd, Chicago, 60604 - (312) 427-7800. Ticket price includes for a full course meal, and are $30.00. Reservations required. Call Maureen at 708-352-5834. The public is welcome.
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With a projected national shortage of pharmacists, two U.S. Catholic colleges just inaugurated new pharmacy schools to help fill the gap in meeting the country's pharmaceutical needs. Seventy students at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland in Baltimore began their first day of classes Aug. 24 at the Catholic institution's new School of Pharmacy, the first one to be opened at an all-women's college. Like the other graduate programs at College of Notre Dame, the new pharmacy school is open to both men and women, and 29 of them are men. Jesuit-run Regis University in Denver also began classes Aug. 24 for the 50 students in its new School of Pharmacy. Graduates at both schools will earn a doctor of pharmacy degree.
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The current global economic crisis shows that capitalism without ethical grounding doesn't work, and Christians should keep this in mind whether they are business people, policymakers or simply consumers, a top Vatican economist said. Thomas Han Hong-soon of the Vatican Prefecture for Economic Affairs said that "the root of this crisis is a moral deficit" and that when it comes to business Christians have not always followed the principles of charity and justice found in the Gospel. "Let's start by honestly recognizing that the spirit of capitalism doesn't agree with that of the Gospel. The heart of Christianity is love for others. The nucleus of capitalism, rather, is competition, which is the opposite of love," Han told the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano Aug. 22.
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As summer plays itself out on the beautiful campus by the lake where the young Holy Cross priest, Edward Sorin, C.S.C., pitched his camp 177 years ago and began his great adventure, we must clarify the situation that so sundered the church last spring: What it is all about and what it is not about. It is not about President Obama. He will do some good things as president and other things with which, as Catholics, we will strongly disagree. It is ever so among presidents, and most political leaders. It is not about Democrats versus Republicans, nor was it a replay of the recent general election. It is not about whether it is appropriate for the president of the United States to speak at Notre Dame or any great Catholic university on the pressing issues of the day. This is what universities do. No bishop should try to prevent that.
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Separation of church and state is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution but that doesn't mean the Bible can't be admired and appreciated by a public or government institution. Take the Library of Congress in Washington. It has an immense Bible collection, one augmented with modern technology. The interactive equipment available in the Library of Congress is making the Scriptures accessible to a high-tech generation, said Robert M. Sokol, project manager for the "New Visitors Experience" program at the largest library in the world. The most celebrated Bibles in the collection are the Gutenberg Bible and the Giant Bible of Mainz -- proudly featured in the library's Great Hall.
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There has been a surge in interest in topics such as Bible prophecy and the Rapture in the last few years, largely due to the surprising success of the Left Behind series written by two devout Protestants. This article seeks to outline Catholic beliefs about the "last days," relying on Scripture and the Catechism of the Catholic Church and to compare those teachings with the belief in the Rapture as it is found in the Left Behind books and similar works. Have you ever had non-Catholic friends ask questions such as, "Do Catholics believe in the Rapture?" and "Why doesn't the Catholic Church interpret the book of Revelation literally?"? Perhaps you or someone you know has read the best-selling Left Behind books and wants to know if they are "biblically sound." Maybe you saw a televangelist explaining that Christ will come soon to Rapture Christians from earth, but you've never heard your priest talk about it.
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The death of Robert Novak has led many to remember the career of the expert political journalist. Some noted his conversion to Catholicism later in life, with one former colleague calling it his "most important" change of heart. Novak died of a malignant tumor at his Washington, D.C. home on Tuesday. One half of the Evans-Novak "Inside Report," begun in 1963 with journalist Robert Evans, Novak was known for his ability to explain the feuds and factions of American politics with the help of his many inside sources. For a long time he was co-host of the CNN debate show "Crossfire."
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How much sin is in America?It depends on where you live, according to four Kansas State University geography researchers. In what researcher Thomas Vought described as a not-too-serious study meant to garner attention at a convention of geographers in Las Vegas as much as to contribute to understanding the habits of people around the country, the foursome found that the South -- encompassing an arc from North Carolina through Louisiana -- was most prone to the traditional seven deadly sins. And the least sinful areas? The Midwest and western Appalachia, the study's findings showed.
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Former Alaska governor and possible 2012 presidential candidate Sarah Palin is not backing down from her charge that the House health care bill includes "death panels." Palin faced significant criticism after saying provisions in the measure could lead to euthanasia or rationing of medical care. Last week, Palin posted a well-received note on Facebook saying she worries the health care bill will be paid for on the backs of the elderly and disabled, who could be pushed into euthanasia and assisted suicide via rationing of medical treatment. "And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course," she said.
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It would seem to a dispassionate observer that there is no longer any real belief among contemporary Catholics in the last item of the Nicean Creed, "life everlasting." There are calls to conversion and repentance, but no suggestion, explicit or implicit, of what may befall those who are not converted or who fail to repent; much talk of salvation, but no definition of what it is from which we are to be saved; no warning that while the gospel may be good news for some, it is decidedly bad news for others.
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"Evangelicalism doesn't need a bailout. Much of it needs a funeral." So writes Michael Spencer in a sobering article in The Christian Science Monitor ("The Coming Evangelical Collapse," Mar. 10). "We are on the verge - within 10 years - of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity. This breakdown will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and it will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West. Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants.... Millions of Evangelicals will quit. Thousands of ministries will end." It will be, Spencer says, "the end of evangelicalism as we know it."
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Sister Mary Paul McCaughey, O.P., Superintendent of Schools for the Archdiocese of Chicago. Sister Mary Paul is a member of the Dominican Sisters of Springfield and has more than 37 years of experience in Catholic education as a teacher and administrator. She received her bachelor's degree in elementary education from Quincy University and a M.A. in Theology from St. Louis University and a M.S. in institutional business administration from the University of Notre Dame. The subject of her talk will be "A Vision for Catholic Education." CCI's monthly luncheon forums are held on the second Friday of every month, from 11:45 AM To 01:30 PM, at the Union League Club 65 W Jackson Blvd, Chicago, 60604 - (312) 427-7800. Ticket price includes for a full course meal, and are $30.00. Reservations required. Call Maureen at 708-352-5834. The public is welcome.
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"The Green Pope." Ever since Joseph Ratzinger's election as pope in 2005, this has been a popular description of Benedict XVI. It's partly fueled by events such as the Vatican City State adopting solar power paneling, and, more significantly, Benedict's discussion of environmental questions in several papal documents. The label will proliferate following the recent announcement that the pope's 2010 World Day of Peace message will focus on the connection between peace and respect for God's creation. The problem, however, is that the present hype about "the greenest pope in history"-to cite another headline-is misleading. A somewhat different picture emerges from careful analysis of Benedict's formal pronouncements on environmental matters.
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Human Events has just published an insightful and courageous piece by Rev. Michael Orsi of Ave Maria School of Law, wherein the good Father carefully elucidates the difference between perennial Christian teaching (reflecting immutable natural law) and prudential judgment in applying that teaching: "Bishops Wrong: Health Care Not a Right." The courage of this piece should not be lost on readers. Fr. Orsi is a Catholic priest, and we can safely assume it was only after much moral reflection that he decided on composing this piece, a charitable critique of the United States Catholic Bishops' statements relating to public policy.
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Noted Catholic activist Stephen Brady has decided to dissolve his Petersburg, Illinois-based organization Roman Catholic Faithful. The last few years have been particularly painful for Mr. Brady, with the loss of his son Daniel in a tragic automobile accident and subsequently suffering life-threatening injuries in a motorcycle accident. Steve's letter to supporters is printed here and at www.RCF.org.
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It is a wild romance, like a river with tributaries and rapids shooting from all directions. Semi-comedic episodes intermingle with terrifying darkness, history vies with romance, the plot lurches, drags, and sprints until one peak among many, like one of the Adirondacks in which so much of the book is set, looms in stillness above the rest. Just when it seems as though the multitudinous strands of symbolism in James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans (1826) cannot possibly be tied together in time for the finale, a silence falls over the book as Cora Munro, the book's heroine, pleads desperately to Tamenund, the Lenape chief, in a final attempt to spare herself and her sister from being handed over to the Huron tribe. The moment is a study in character and symbolic depth...
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"The July 8 issue of Catholic San Francisco covered the 2009 book The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist, by Matt Baglio. The Rite, describes the training and practice of San Francisco-born Father Gary Thomas, a contemporary Bay Area exorcist. In 2005, Father Thomas was sent by San Jose Bishop Patrick McGrath to study in Rome under master exorcist Capuchin Father Carmine De Filippis. Father Thomas observed 80 exorcisms as Fr. De Filippis apprentice. From the Catholic San Francisco, article: "What sets exorcists apart from priests who are skeptical of the ministry may be their biblical belief in the physical reality of evil and the power of prayer and the sacraments to vanquish it."
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The April 23, 2009 edition of The Rhode Island Catholic featured a column entitled "Rhode Island, Most Catholic State, Welcomes Gay Marriage". The column was written by the Bishop of Providence. The Most Rev. Thomas Tobin decried the "abysmal" Catholic apathy and said it must be overcome to oppose those who are "fiercely determined" to impose homosexual "marriage". With bluntness uncharacteristic of many bishops, he noted that the homosexual lobby is well-organized, well-funded and determined to impose its agenda on all of the citizens-human history, culture and moral principles notwithstanding. He added that anyone who opposes them is quickly labeled a bigot. Bishop Tobin said also that if only 5% to 10% of Rhode Island's Catholic population became involved in the issue "we could have an enormous impact and help Rhode Island maintain its moral sanity." Without actually saying so, the Bishop was referring to the laity. However, the Bishop noted that the typical Rhode Island Catholic's response to the homosexual agenda being imposed on everyone was indifferent. He attributed that indifference to "not wanting to judge people" and that Catholics "give rationalizations about the decline of Catholic influence". Perhaps he was also including his clergy in the latter statement.
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Mystical, meaningful sevens throng the Bible, from the seven days of Creation through the seven fat years and seven lean years foretold by Daniel to the seven angels of the Resurrection and Judgment. In Catholicism, seven is the number of sacraments, of cardinal virtues, of gifts of the Holy Spirit, and of deadly sins. In traditional catechetics, seven is the age of reason, the beginning of the capacity for knowledge; in folk wisdom, seven is the pivotal anniversary in marriage, the passing of the first hurdle toward mature intimacy. For me now it is seven years since I was baptized and confirmed as a Catholic. So I celebrate my seventh birthday in the Faith, my seventh spiritual anniversary, by reflecting gratefully on how it all came about. My parents, who came from India, imparted to me a nominal Hinduism backed by a solid belief in God and His desire for man to engage in regular prayer, but I did not make progress toward a systematic religious faith until the awkward years of junior high school. In between gossiping about girls and complaining about algebra, my best friend Kent and I argued about the meaning of life. Kent's born-again Protestant view of the world contrasted with my worldly view of religion. His view of a world motivated by love and self-sacrifice was certainly more hopeful, though to me less relevant, than my own notion of selfish actors attempting to satisfy their own desires and showing little concern for others. Kent gave me few convincing answers, but he did raise questions that were to lead me to some very surprising places. He planted the seeds.
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In our oh-so-secular age, it's paradoxical that religious leaders' pronouncements on subjects ranging from marriage to markets invariably receive considerable media attention. This makes it even more surprising that no one seems to have noticed the parallels between Benedict's XVI's encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, released on July 7th, and a provocative op-ed written by Britain's Chief Rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks, in the London Times two weeks earlier. The pope and the rabbi had a similar message, which amounts to the following. Some of our contemporary economic problems reflect a deeper moral crisis within Western civilization. Until we acknowledge this, shifts in economic policy and business practice will only provide limited solutions. To be sure, it's not a message everyone will appreciate. But that doesn't diminish its accuracy.
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About 800 pages of the earliest surviving Christian Bible have been recovered and put on the internet. Visitors to the website www.codexsinaiticus.org can now see images of more than half the 1,600-year-old Codex Sinaiticus manuscript. Fragments of the 4th Century document - written in Greek on parchment leaves - have been worked on by institutions in the UK, Germany, Egypt and Russia. Experts say it is "a window into the development of early Christianity".
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The latest issue of Christifidelis, from the St. Joseph Foundation, is out and it's a corker! The lead article by Philip Gray, J.C.L. is a great discussion on what obedience is and when a person is required to obey a lawful authority. Obedience is a subset of the cardinal virtue of justice which requires us to give to God and neighbor what is due to them. We owe absolute obedience to God, so all other laws are subservient to and subject to God's laws. When there's a conflict between God's law and a lower law, guess what we have to do? "We must obey the higher [law] lest we sin." There are limits on human authority. "Directives that violate divine law must be ignored, and in many circumstances we have an obligation to resist them actively." Gray gives China's forced abortion laws as an example.
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When I awoke as a boy, it was always to bells; first to the slow, dipodic clanging of the switch engine bells on the Norfolk and Western Line, the main yard of which ran past our house and carried millions of tons of freight and coal, troop and passenger trains, and shrouded armaments for war. No matter the time of day or night, the bells were there, a part of consciousness as sure as the fog and drizzle of the Appalachian valleys. Then, from the Spanish gothic bell tower of Sacred Heart, the lesser bell rang out the Angelus, serving notice to the world that the Word had become flesh and dwelt among us, calling us to kneel and pray. At Mass the triple hand bells I rang insisted on the greatest happening in the universe, and they echoed in the stone of the sanctuary, a place where bells said, "Awake! Awake to these Mysteries!" At Easter, when the Gloria was sung for the first time since Ash Wednesday, we rose exulting as two bell-ringers were lifted off their feet, pulling hard on the bell ropes, and the great bells pealed out the news that He is risen. On school mornings, Sister Innocentia stood in the school door and rang the large hand bell, which must have reminded her of school and her own youth in Germany. And, a special memory: One morning my mother and I were on the way to church when every train and church bell (and steam whistle) sounded together. I looked to her in fear and amazement; she explained through her tears, "The war is over!" Bells permeated my existence then: life meant bells; church meant bells; bells called me to the mystery of things.
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Relativists beware. Whether you like it or not, truth matters - even in the economy. That's the core message of Pope Benedict XVI's new social encyclical Caritas in Veritate. For 2000 years, the Catholic Church has hammered home a trio of presently-unpopular ideas into the humus of human civilization: that there is truth; that it is not simply of the scientific variety; that it is knowable through faith and reason; and that it is not whatever you want or "feel" it to be. Throughout his entire life, Benedict XVI has underscored these themes, precisely because much of the world, including many Christians, has lost sight of their importance. Perhaps Caritas in Veritate's most important truth-claim about economic life is that the market economy cannot be based on just any value-system. Against all relativists on the left and the right, Benedict maintains that market economies must be underpinned by commitments to particular basic moral goods and a certain vision of the human person if it is to serve rather than undermine humanity's common good: "The economy needs ethics in order to function correctly - not any ethics whatsoever, but an ethics which is people-centred" (CV no.45)
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Myron Kuropas, teacher, counselor, principal of the Chicago Public Schools. He was regional director of Action anti-poverty agency. He was Special Assistant for Ethnic Affairs to President Gerald Ford and Legislative Assistant to Senator Bob Dole. Principal and teacher at DeKalb Public Schools, and currently Adjunct Professor at Northern Illinois University. The subject: "How the Ukrainian Catholic Church Survived Nazism and Communism." CCI's monthly luncheon forums are held on the second Friday of every month, from 11:45 AM To 01:30 PM, at a new location, the Union League Club 65 W Jackson Blvd, Chicago, 60604 - (312) 427-7800. Ticket price includes for a full course meal, and are $30.00. Reservations required. Call Maureen at 708-352-5834. The public is welcome.
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There is a paradox at the heart of liberty, a tension between our desiring what is good and our willingness to sacrifice true happiness for fleeting satisfaction. "Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom," abolitionist Wendell Phillips said. Lord Acton echoed the idea, calling liberty, "the delicate fruit of a mature civilization." The delicacy of freedom cannot be explained without recourse to the realities of good and evil. Freedom is both universally sought and everywhere in jeopardy because of the imperfection of human nature. We are beings who seek what is good, but are tempted by what is evil. Freedom--the capacity to know and choose what is good--is the path to fulfillment, but reason is clouded and the will is compromised by our inclination to pursue what is base. This is why liberty blooms only in a mature civilization, a culture in which the discipline to act virtuously is widespread. It requires a political order in which the proclivity to acquire power is checked by constitutional limits and, more critically, by the moral formation of electorates and officials alike.
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Eight years ago today, a famous American philosopher died who had lived as a Catholic the last year of his life. Not so long ago, his name -- Mortimer J. Adler -- was synonymous with the "great books" approach to education he had pioneered with Robert Hutchins at the University of Chicago in the 1940s and 1950s. His edition of The Great Books of the Western World is still often seen if you survey the bookshelves of the homes and offices you visit. Adler's pedagogy, like his Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy, was rejected by the academy he left in mid-career. He continued to edit, read, and discuss great books at seminars -- like those he taught at the Aspen Institute -- and to write scholarly books. But these were increasingly ignored, so in the late 1970s he took his case to general readers in an excellent memoir, Philosopher at Large: An Intellectual Autobiography, and books like Reforming Education and Aristotle for Everybody. Adler's career began to revive.
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I sometimes find myself thinking about the homilies I wish I'd heard but haven't. Here are a few of those I would most like to hear; I'm sure you will have some of your own. To an outsider, one of the odder things that many of us Catholics do occurs when we go into church: apparently, rather absent-mindedly, we dab a bit of water on our faces, or thereabouts, and then (apparently) swat an invisible fly or brush a cobweb off our noses before grabbing a Mass book and parish newsletter. What should we really be doing? I have never had it explained. I would like to have been told that, when we dip into the holy water stoup and cross ourselves we are publicly acknowledging that we have been taken up into the life of the Blessed Trinity in the waters of baptism and mysteriously united with the heavenly host of angels and saints to whom we prayed at the last Easter Vigil when that water was blessed. I would like Father to go on to explain that, when we say "In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit", as we so often do (and often so casually), we are professing our faith in the triune God, affirming our Christian identity and proclaiming the fact that, as heroic explorers of old claimed new-found lands "in the name of" their princes, so the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity have "claimed" us, "named" us and committed themselves to us.
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In a spirit of hope and Christian charity, OneNationUnderGod is launching a yearlong prayer campaign specifically focused on the conversion of Catholic politicians to further foster a Culture of Life in our country. This effort will commence June 22, 2009 -- the feast day of St. Thomas More, whom Pope John Paul II proclaimed the patron saint of statesmen and politicians. A 16th-century English chancellor who refused to accept King Henry VIII as the head of the Church of England, St. Thomas More held a passion for the truth that enlightened his conscience and led him to know that, just as man must be one with God, so politics must be with morality. In the 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae, John Paul II reiterates what the Catholic Church has always taught: that lawmakers have a grave and clear obligation to oppose any law that contradicts humanity's fundamental right to life.
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In the latest show of tensions between Catholic and Jewish leaders, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has issued a critical statement about a document released by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). ADL president Abraham Foxman said that the bishops' statement might be considered "unacceptable." Unacceptable to whom? In their statement, released without fanfare at the close of their meeting last week, the American bishops corrected several defects in an earlier statement, Reflections on Covenant and Mission, which had been produced as a joint product of Catholic and Jewish authors in 2002. The clarification, as the new document explained, was necessary to clear up some false impressions about the nature of Catholic teaching. In other words the US bishops, through their committee on doctrine, were doing what Catholic bishops are morally obligated to do: providing clear guidance about the authentic teachings of the Church.
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It is difficult to gain attention in an era that uses superlatives to describe dishwashing liquid and mayonnaise. Perhaps speaking simply and directly might prove such an oddity that words may again have their proper power. And so, here it is: The greatest moral crisis is now upon us. I don't mean the continual, factory slaughter of thousands of babies a day; or the endless parade of carnal innovations mincing across the public square, howling for recognition; or even the redefinition of marriage to include the indefinite union of anything. These are effects, more or less, of the real moral crisis.
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CCI had the great pleasure to be in attendance during the Notre Dame Alumni weekend seminar series addressing the Catholic culture at Notre Dame, "Mission Accomplished or Mission Adrift?" All four of the speakers did an outstanding job outlining the steps required to restore Notre Dame's Catholic identity through the increased recruitment of faculty who respect that identity, and actions by alums and students to demand that Notre Dame not abandon the faith. The seminar was hosted by www.projectsycamore.com President and Notre Dame alum William Dempsey and featured presentations by Summa Cum Laude Philosophy graduate Jonathan A. Buttaci (ND 2009), ND grad and founder of several on campus pro-life organizations Arina M. Grossu (ND 2006), Walter J. Nicgorski, Ph.D., Professor, Program of Liberal Studies, Concurrent Professor, Political Science, and Professor David Solomon of the ND philosophy department, a last minute substitution for Ralph M. McInerny, Ph.D., Michael P. Grace Chair in Medieval Studies, who was ill. Videos of the speeches will be avaiable shortly at www.ndresponse.com.
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Fr. David J. Simonetti, a priest in the Archdiocese of Chicago, Master of Divinity and Bachelor of Sacred Theology from University of St. Mary of the Lake, currently in Institute for Priestly Formation at Creighton University. Fr. Simonetti is spiritual director of the Eucharistic Adoration Association of the Archdiocese of Chicago and a regular contributing Spiritual Director, "The Inner Life" on Relevant Radio. The subject: "Lived Discipleship of Christ in the Church." CCI's monthly luncheon forums are held on the second Friday of every month, from 11:45 AM To 01:30 PM, at a new location, the Union League Club 65 W Jackson Blvd, Chicago, 60604 - (312) 427-7800. Ticket price includes for a full course meal, and are $30.00. Reservations required. Call Maureen at 708-352-5834. The public is welcome.
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Our Sunday Visitor announced today its acquisition of Harcourt Religion Publishers (a division of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. This brings together two of the nation's leading Catholic publishing groups. Terms of the transaction were undisclosed. The strategic combination of the two companies' product lines, services, and innovations represents an unprecedented, one-source solution for lifelong faith development within Catholic parishes and schools. Joined together, they provide a dynamic approach to systematic and intentional catechesis for all members of the faith community.
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Though it went virtually unnoticed, April 16 marked the 150th anniversary of the death of one of the significant thinkers of modern times. Author of the classic Democracy in America (1835/1840), Alexis de Tocqueville's prophetic insights into America have been cited approvingly by figures ranging from Nobel Prize economist Friedrich Hayek to Pope Benedict XVI. Today, de Tocqueville is largely ignored in his native France, where the left-dominated intelligentsia dismisses him as "anti-democratic." Americans of all generations, however, have regularly turned to this 19th-century aristocrat to understand their past and future. This is especially true when it comes to de Tocqueville's thoughts about democracy's promise and perils which, more than ever, seem relevant for America.
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As U.S. firms struggle to compete in the global marketplace with escalating employee benefit costs, workers are increasingly liable for medical expenses. Many citizens lack health care insurance altogether. Should corporations be held accountable for employee health care coverage? After a historical review of U.S. employee health care benefits, the "shareholder" and "stakeholder" models of corporate responsibility are considered, as well as Catholic social teaching. Despite the well-established precedent for employer provided medical benefits, the current trends are not sustainable. While acknowledging differences, consensus is possible with these theories of corporate responsibility. Companies with sufficient competitive advantage may be able to provide these, and other, benefits to attract and retain employees. However, firms should not be compelled to provide medical benefits. In fact, the common good may be better served when health care insurance is obtained outside the workplace.
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The Catholic faith is not simply a collection of doctrines and ideas, or a body of knowledge, or even a system of beliefs, although all those things are important. At its root, Christianity is an experience: a life-changing, personal experience of the risen Jesus Christ. Everything else in the writings of St. Paul, and everything else in our life as Catholics, flows from that personal encounter with Jesus Christ. If we truly seek him, then we will always find him. But when we find him, we need to be ready for the consequences, because nothing about our lives can be the same... Blessed Franz wrote beautiful letters to his wife from prison. In one of them he talked about the great martyrs of the Church. He wrote: "If we hope to reach our goal some day, then we, too, must become heroes of the faith. For as long as we fear men more than God, we will never make the grade." Another time he wrote: "The important thing is that we do not let a single day go by in vain without putting it to good use for eternity." That's the heart of the matter for anyone who wants to be a real Christian. That's the path to a new life in Christ: Put every day to good use for eternity. And the time to begin that is now.
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Americans for Life (www.americansforlife.com) have announced a March for Life to be held on May 22 in the Chicago business district. A rally will be held at the State of Illinois building from 11:30am to 12:15pm. The March to the Federal Plaza will be from 12:15 to 1pm. From 1pm to approximately 2:30pm a wide range of topics and speakers will be featured at the Federal plaza. For more information, see the event website at www.americansforlife.com. For more information CLICK HERE
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On Friday, May 15th events which are being called "Solidarity Rallies" will take place in 100 cities across America http://www.stopobamanotredame.com/. The purpose of these gatherings of pro-life activists, like yourself, is to bring attention to Barack Obama's invitation to speak at the May 17th commencement ceremony at the University of Notre Dame--where the U.S. President will also receive an honorary degree. Although the Vatican and a majority of Catholic clergy, along with many other pro-life advocates of all faiths, have been critical of Notre Dame's decision to invite and honor the President because of his radical attacks on the innocent unborn, your attendance at either Friday or Saturday's Solidarity Rally in Chicago would be deeply appreciated.
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For centuries the Shroud of Turin has inspired millions of Christians and is generally considered to be the most extraordinary relic in Christendom. The advances in science over the past 40 years have increased the profile of the holy Shroud, which has been submitted to highly technical analysis and scrutiny. For over 30 years, author, lecturer and movie producer John C. Iannone has been researching and writing about the Shroud of Turin, and his lecture on May 3, 2009 to the members of Catholic Citizens of Illinois was more exciting and intriguing than an episode of "CSI." Mr. Iannone was motivated to study the Shroud when in 1978 he learned of the team of scientists who had been assembled to conduct the first detailed analysis of the relic. The Shroud of Turin Research Project (STRP) is credited with identifying some of the most compelling scientific proof that the Shroud is indeed the burial cloth of Jesus of Nazareth. "The Shroud is truly ecumenical," said Mr. Iannone. "People of all Christian denominations are amazed by the Shroud. It speaks to the heart and soul of our Christian message." Modern scientific study of the Shroud began in the late 1800's when an amateur photographer took the first pictures. When converted to negatives, they showed a clear image of the body and face, bringing to view for the first time details never before seen. As a result, Turin became a popular destination for Christians and the Shroud became an international sensation.
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Americans are embracing Pro-Life! What caused the rightward turn in American values reported by a liberal research group despite overwhelming liberal media bias and political activism? This shift is due to the underestimated and continuing influence of organized religion in America. An understanding of the impact of community churches on American values and American life is essential to rebuilding conservative coalitions in America. The Pew Research Center recently announced that despite the election of a pro-abortion President the public attitude toward abortion is moving in a conservative direction. In one year the percentage of Americans who affirm that abortion should be legal in all cases has decreased from a majority at 54% to just 46% while 44% declare that abortion should be illegal in at least some cases.
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In his 1992 book Hostage to the Devil: The Possession and Exorcism of Five Living Americans, Fr. Martin wrote, "In every case of possession that comes to the point of Exorcism, the subject has reached a crucial crossroads. Some small corner of reservation remains, some glimmer or recollection of the light of Jesus still shines." It is from that last redoubt that the possessed manages to muster sufficient autonomy of will to call for help. That is why their possession is only partial instead of complete. Not so with the perfectly possessed. Fr. Davies, in his 2008 book Exorcism: Understanding Exorcism in Scripture and Practice, observes that the far more terrible state is that of the possessed who are complacent. He calls such cases "perfect possession" because the individual has freely given himself totally to evil. It is instructive to note that although the Gospels recount numerous instances of Christ casting out demons, Our Lord did not exorcise Judas, nor did St. Peter exorcise Ananias, nor St. Paul Elymas. Those three did not want to be exorcised, and God always respects our free will.
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John Iannone, writer, lecturer and filmmaker, has studied the Holy Shroud for 30 years. He received his Masters in Religious Studies from Catholic University in Washington, with additional studies at Fordham Theological and Union Theological Seminary in New York. He published the Mystery of the Shroud of Turin: New Scientific Evidence in 1998 and was invited by Cardinal Giovanni Saldarini to view the Shroud in Turin. He has done several television programs for PBS and EWTN and recently published The Image and The Rose. The subject: "The Holy Shroud of Turin." CCI's monthly luncheon forums are held on the second Friday of every month, from 11:45 AM To 01:30 PM, at a new location, the Union League Club 65 W Jackson Blvd, Chicago, 60604 - (312) 427-7800. Ticket price includes for a full course meal, and are $30.00. Reservations required. Call Maureen at 708-352-5834. The public is welcome.
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A divided House Judiciary Committee yesterday voted to send a federal "hate crimes" bill to the House, after free speech advocates failed to secure protection for pastors who might preach biblically-based injunctions against homosexual activity. In a motion almost completely ignored by the mainstream media, the Judiciary Committee voted 15-12 to allow the hotly contested H.R. 1913, known as the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Act of 2009, to go forward. The measure would grant the federal government a new authority to prosecute any violent crime anywhere in the country that is perceived to be "motivated by prejudice" against a number of protected characteristics, including "sexual orientation" and "gender identity."
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Many priests, in my observation, seem to be of two minds when it comes to some of the aspects of evangelization. On the one hand, many priests will roll their eyes and tell me how many parishioners they already have; why would they ever want more? On the other hand, priests will wring their hands over statistics about the growing number of Catholics who are not present at Mass, while twisting their lips so as to say, ''What can we do about this?'' Behind the hand wringing, eye rolling and lip twisting lies a very human reality: priestly numbers are on the decrease, responsibilities are on the increase, and we feel faced with factors that cannot easily be understood or explained. We see the graying of our congregations, as Catholics raised before the Second Vatican Council continue to worship regularly, but in diminishing numbers -- for the simple reason that this group is now retired, aging and dying.
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As we continue the celebration of the resurrection of the Lord, we are grateful to the elected officials who heard our opposition to HB 2354. When we act together, great things are possible! May we be as eager to express our thanks as we have been in expressing our opposition to this legislation. According to the Catholic Conference of Illinois, the legislators whose names appear below did not support HB 2354. These elected officials recognized that attempts to weaken the health care right of conscience, prohibit any regulation of abortion and expand taxpayer funded abortions was offensive not only to Catholics, but to many people of good will in Illinois. Please call the following legislators to thank them for standing up against HB 2354.
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As I write this it is safe to say that there is more fear, insecurity, uncertainty, and distrust of authority than at any other time in my lifetime of over sixty years. This can be said for the United States and for most other countries in the Western world, probably the entire world. Why? The secular and worldly thinker will come up with a veritable flock of cackling, screeching, barking, whining and screaming excuses. They will all be wrong. To understand our tenuous position, one must go to the order of causes rather than mere effects. The serious illness we see manifest socially, economically, and politically has its origin in the moral and spiritual realm.
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St. Michael's exorcism of heaven is witnessed in the 12th chapter of the Book of Revelation where he forcefully casts out the ravenous dragon from God's realm, and his minions with him. The devil wanted to devour a new-born baby and deprive a woman of her motherhood - kind of like the abortion industry does today - but God would have nothing of it. Yet, Revelation also warns us of the consequences of that exorcism: "But woe to you, earth and sea, for the devil has come down upon you!" Woe, indeed. The devil must also be cast from the earth to the one place where he belongs, in the hell that God created for him and his angels, and this definitive exorcism of the earth was accomplished on Good Friday. Jesus exorcised the devil from our lives by the one and only force that has the power to separate man from the devil and cast him out: His own Precious Blood. One week before His death the Lord Himself solemnly proclaimed that He would apply His authority in this way...
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Supporters of Notre Dame University's decision to honor Barack Obama at its commencement employ elevated and even aspirational language in their attempt to characterize the meaning of the event. They invoke the language of "engagement" and "common ground" and "dialogue." But no matter their intentions or even their hopes, the very contents and structures of their argumentation ultimately denigrate the Catholic "brand" of speaking in the public square. This "brand" involves relying upon empirically supportable assertions and rational argumentation, and respecting one's listeners. But the arguments deployed by supporters of Notre Dame's decision do not exhibit these qualities. If Catholics are persuaded to adopt or accept them, our "brand" will be diluted and the Church will be a less effective advocate on all issues and in every arena where it operates. This should concern all Catholics who toil in public arenas -- before legal bodies, academic critics, the media, or the public generally -- no matter what issues are on the table.
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As we engage in public debate about social policies that have such a grave moral outcome, it's important for Catholics to recognize that "the natural law of human reason is human, not Catholic. We're not asked anyone to go to Mass or accept the Catholic sacraments," said Bishop Morlino, when we base our moral arguments on human reason and common sense. It is in the best interest of humanity that we insist that the civil laws reflect the common law of human reason, the natural law. The Bishop insisted that Catholics have to make this clear to our opponents as well as to our supporters. How does one define the common law of human reason? Bishop Morlino noted that there are four components: firstly, the fact that God exists; second, that each individual has sacred dignity; third, the sanctity of marriage; and fourth, that violence is irrational.
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The remission of the excommunication of the four Bishops consecrated in 1988 by Archbishop Lefebvre without a mandate of the Holy See has for many reasons caused, both within and beyond the Catholic Church, a discussion more heated than any we have seen for a long time. Many Bishops felt perplexed by an event which came about unexpectedly and was difficult to view positively in the light of the issues and tasks facing the Church today. Even though many Bishops and members of the faithful were disposed in principle to take a positive view of the Pope's concern for reconciliation, the question remained whether such a gesture was fitting in view of the genuinely urgent demands of the life of faith in our time. Some groups, on the other hand, openly accused the Pope of wanting to turn back the clock to before the Council: as a result, an avalanche of protests was unleashed, whose bitterness laid bare wounds deeper than those of the present moment. I therefore feel obliged to offer you, dear Brothers, a word of clarification, which ought to help you understand the concerns which led me and the competent offices of the Holy See to take this step. In this way I hope to contribute to peace in the Church.
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Hundreds of Catholics took part in the funeral for Jesuit historian Fr. Ludwig Stiller, celebrated on March 12 by Bishop Anthony Sharma, apostolic vicar for Nepal. Many intellectuals and religious representatives were also present at the church of the Assumption in Kathmandu. For the Hindus and Muslims as well, Fr. Stiller's death is "a great loss" for the country. Bishop Sharma commemorated the Jesuit missionary saying that "Fr. Stiller was a true Catholic who served the nation at his best, but his demise has caused irreparable loss to us."
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Pope Benedict XVI is no stranger to controversy. His recent decision to lift the excommunications of four traditionalist bishops has sent shockwaves reaching far beyond Christendom. This controversy may prove the greatest challenge of his pontificate to date -- for more reasons than one... The Pope's January decision marks the close of years of dashed hopes on the part of the Vatican. Benedict's repeated "magnanimous gestures of peace" made toward the Lefebvrists have not been followed, so far, by any significant step of reconsideration and reconciliation on their part. The Pope's previous effort at reconciliation fell apart just last year when the SSPX failed to respond to a set of conditions laid out by the Holy See, most notably that the Society would avoid "the pretext of a Magisterium superior to that of the Holy Father." Of all the concerns, this one likely remains the most problematic. The Lefebvrists have long given the distinct impression that they have set up a parallel Magisterium -- yes, one they seem to consider superior to that of the See of Peter.
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Economists from Catholic institutions worldwide may differ in their approach to solutions for the economic crisis, but all agree a global strategy is required. The same economic scholars from U.S., Canadian and Australian Catholic universities also said while the Catholic Church may not be able to direct economic policy it can contribute most effectively by leading the charge in philanthropic endeavors that will ease the suffering of the most vulnerable caught up in the international crisis. "The key concern of the Catholic Church should be, as always, to look out for the poor and vulnerable, both at home and in poor countries," said Linda Nielsen, an economics professor at St. Mary's University College in Calgary, Alberta.
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It was the question that preoccupied President Ronald Reagan: Was Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev a religious believer? Reagan held a series of summits with Gorbachev from 1985 to 1988, and as their meetings proceeded, Reagan sometimes speculated to his aides that Gorbachev's use of phrases such as "God bless" might be an expression of religious faith. Many of the summit sessions involved large groups of U.S. and Soviet officials, discussing issues like arms control and regional conflicts. But in one-on-one talks with Gorbachev outside the presence of other senior officials like Secretary of State George Shultz, Reagan sometimes ventured off in directions of his own. The eternal optimist, Reagan was convinced that Gorbachev was capable of changing the Soviet system, and he thought the key to such a turnaround might be religion. Finally, during their fourth summit meeting in 1988, Reagan launched into a private conversation with Gorbachev, one that he promised the Soviet leader he would deny had ever taken place.
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In an hour I will be getting a call from a reporter at a major weekly news magazine. He emailed me last night asking if he could ask some questions about why the GOP leadership had said so little against the nomination of a pro-abortion Catholic governor, Kathleen Sebelius, to head the Department of Health and Human Resources. A very good question! After all, isn't it the Republican Party that has a right-to-life plank? Isn't it the Republican Party that sells itself under a "pro-life, pro-family" banner? With the exception of Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Sen. Jim De Mint (R-SC) there has been no perceptible outrage.
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In the following article, F.R. Hoare gives us seven principles to put our economic system back on the Catholic hinges that it was taken off of several centuries ago. These principles are called "radical" because they get to the root of the problem (the Latin word for root is radix). These principles would help to convert amoral capitalist economics to moral Catholic economics. Some of these principles are a bit deep and you will need to think, but the most important are simple: 1) The existence of God should be made the starting point of economic reasoning" and 2) The fundamental laws of economics are moral laws; Our Lord Jesus Christ said it a little differently, "But seek first the kingdom of God and His justice, and all these things shall be given you besides" (Mt. 6:33).
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To combat what they see as threats to the conscience rights of health care professionals who oppose abortion, the Catholic Medical Association and other organizations are taking both legal and educational steps. The Philadelphia-based Catholic Medical Association, which has some 1,100 members nationwide, has joined with the Christian Medical Association and the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists in an effort to intervene legally against lawsuits filed by the attorneys general of eight states, Planned Parenthood of America and the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association.
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I want to do three things with my time tonight. First, Father Rosica asked me to talk about some of the themes from my book, Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living Our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life. I'm happy to do that. Second, I want to talk about some of the lessons we can draw from the recent U.S. election. And third, I want to talk about the meaning of hope. As I begin, I need to mention a couple of caveats. Here's the first caveat. Canada and the United States have a long and close friendship as neighbors. It's so long and so close that Americans often forget that our histories, our political structures and the ways we look at the world are, in some respects, very different. Obviously I'll be speaking tonight as an American, a Catholic and a bishop - though not necessarily in that order. Some of what I say may not be useful to a Canadian audience, especially those who aren't Catholic. But I do believe that the heart of the Catholic political vocation remains the same for every believer in every country. The details of our political life change from nation to nation. But the mission of public Christian discipleship remains the same, because we all share the same baptism.
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God's plan can be found in football, and he can be given glory by a game well played, says Chicago Bears co-owner Patrick McCaskey. In addition to his work with the professional football team, McCaskey is the chairman of Sports Faith International, and he speaks and writes on topics of religion and athletics. In this interview with ZENIT, he spoke about his experiences as a Catholic owner of a professional team, his observations as the grandson of the Bears' founder, and the faith-based initiatives he works with.
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One of the greatest of recent seductions by that wily devil Screwtape - perfectly fitted to the times - is to puff a tiny sugar crystal of Christianity into sweetish airy cotton candy. "IN-clusiveness!" he will insist. "Christianity is about nothing if not IN-clusiveness." That is how Screwtape sweet-talks you into affirming that some abomination (divorce, abortion, euthanasia, adultery, gay marriage) is, actually, included within the broad reach of Christian love. It would be positively un-Christian to think ill of that "abomination." You should be ashamed you ever thought it was wrong. Are you a bigot or something?
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A Catholic charity has launched a scathing attack on the Green movement, describing the excesses of environmentalism as an ideology every bit as dangerous as Communism. While global warming should be a "crucial issue" for the Church, worshippers must be deeply sceptical about many of the claims made by the environmentalist lobby, a new booklet published by the bishops of England and Wales has said. Written by Russell Sparkes, an expert in ethical investments, it argues that there is a proven tendency among some "Deep Green" activists to exaggerate the threat of global warming to vindicate their calls for government measures to "forcibly" move the world toward a "sustainable path".
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CCI NOTES: CCI readers will enjoy a new website devoted to Catholic videos, news and view. "The mission of RealCatholicTV.com is to promote the faith given to humanity by Jesus Christ, the Son of God, God and the Messiah. This faith is the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church lead by the heir of Saint Peter, Pope Benedict XVI." Enjoy!
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Beginning two millennia ago with St. Paul, the author of the quote atop this page, Christian evangelists have traveled the world spreading the gospel of Jesus and courting controversy. They still do so today. It's just that many of the most famous ones also happen to play quarterback. Last month, Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford became only the second sophomore to win the Heisman Trophy. Less than 10 seconds after taking the podium, Bradford, speaking before a national television audience, declared, "First, I need to thank God. He's given me so many blessings. ... Without him I'd be nowhere. We'd all be nowhere."
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CCI NOTES: In addition to the existing weekly e-newsletter and search functions, CCI has recently improved our website. We have added E-commerce for online donations (see "Join The Catholic Restoration" button) and expanded our calendar ("Look Who's Talking") for Catholic events. Below each of the three major sections for press releases, views and news, we have added a "see more" functionality which shows articles from the most recent week. We've never asked for financial support or charged fees, but any help we get to defray the cost of maintaining this site are certainly welcome. We are using UXCAST media software the highly secure Google E-commerce platform to economically and safely process donations. We appreciate any support and encourage you to examine the "about us" section to learn more about CCI's mission and efforts. Thanks and God bless!
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The author draws significantly upon the thought of the late theologian, John Courtney Murray, S.J., who played a considerable role at Vatican II in the elaboration of the Council's pioneering Declaration on Religious Liberty, "Dignitatis humanae." Murray argued (and Chaput agrees) that the founding documents of American democracy drew upon a natural law vision that affirms universal truths about the human condition. Thus Catholics, with their commitment to the natural law tradition, have a crucial contribution to make to American public life and the political process. Indeed, how can one possibly contribute to the common good unless one brings to the discussion and debate one's deeply held values and moral convictions?
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There has been a running debate in the pages of the New Oxford Review on the nature of God's love. Several published pieces (e.g., "Is God's Love Unconditional?" article by Carmelo Fallace, Feb. 2008; "'Hate the Sin but Love the Sinner': Not Scriptural, Not Catholic Doctrine," guest column by Erven Park, June 2006; "The Same Old Yada-Yada," New Oxford Note, Oct. 2005; and numerous letters to the editor) have presented the important point that our relationship with God depends on our remaining in a state of grace. We cannot do whatever we wish and expect to remain blessed by God. Damnation is a very real possibility, and Hell is not empty. However, these articles leave us with an incomplete picture. There is no change in God. He is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
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Which is the real voice of American Catholics: The throngs of March for Life participants, including tens of thousands of Catholics, in Washington today for a rally decrying the Supreme Court decision that first legalized abortion? Or Catholic voters who turned away from the evangelical-led Republican party to vote for an anti-war, anti-poverty community organizer? Or the bishops? Gibson sees them as "struggling to find a strategy and a voice to deal with the new political reality."
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"I Believe in One God." Among all the truths which the faithful must believe, this is the first-that there is one God. We must see that God means the ruler and provider of all things. He, therefore, believes in God who believes that everything in this world is governed and provided for by Him. He who would believe that all things come into being by chance does not believe that there is a God. No one is so foolish as to deny that all nature, which operates with a certain definite time and order, is subject to the rule and foresight and an orderly arrangement of someone. We see how the sun, the moon, and the stars, and all natural things follow a determined course, which would be impossible if they were merely products of chance. Hence, as is spoken of in the Psalm, he is indeed foolish who does not believe in God: "The fool hath said in his heart: There is no God."[1]
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Meat-and-potatoes history fans, take note: The Great Medieval Heretics is good, solid, reliable history written in a no-nonsense style. Michael Frassetto teaches history at the University of Delaware and is an expert in medieval religion, heresy, and politics. His book delivers a detailed account of the heretics of the medieval period, starting with the false teachers of the tenth century and concluding with the fifteenth-century forerunners of the Protestant Reformation. The medieval heresies differed from those of the early centuries by being critical of the established Church. As the medieval Church grew in power and wealth, the reform movements formed in backlash. The medieval heretics were concerned to bring the Church back to its original purity, and their subsequent heretical teachings were the result. The leaders of the reform movements called for extreme forms of personal holiness and rejected the growing wealth and corruption of the clergy. Their criticism of the Church invariably ended in fiery heretical beliefs, while their leaders invariably ended in the flames.
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I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human... I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.
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Will free-market ideas further penetrate the thinking at the Vatican? When the Pope spoke to the group, he disappointed some by referring to a just wage, an idea rejected by economists since the days of Adam Smith. But they believed he was on sound footing when he condemned tax systems [that] penalize families or aggravate their economic condition. In summarizing the results of the conference, Becker, who is not a Catholic, said, I am struck by the similarity between the church's view of the relationship between the family and the economy and the view of economists-arrived at by totally independent means. Economic science and spiritual concerns appear to point in the same direction.
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Fr. Richard John Neuhaus slipped away today, January 8, shortly before 10 o'clock, at the age of seventy-two. He never recovered from the weakness that sent him to the hospital the day after Christmas, caused by a series of side effects from the cancer he was suffering. He lost consciousness Tuesday evening after a collapse in his heart rate, and soon after, in the company of friends, he died. My tears are not for him-for he knew, all his life, that his Redeemer lives, and he has now been gathered by the Lord in whom he trusted. I weep, rather for all the rest of us. As a priest, as a writer, as a public leader in so many struggles, and as a friend, no one can take his place. The fabric of life has been torn by his death, and it will not be repaired, for those of us who knew him, until that time when everything is mended and all our tears are wiped away.
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Redd Griffin, educator, lecturer, and writer/producer, whose work focuses on cultural history. He has co-founded organizations devoted to promoting American democratic civilization in the U.S. and Europe, and has served on boards of a Catholic hospital, a Great Books college and local, regional and state historical societies. He has experienced life-changing moments in events of far-reaching impact involving the Republican National Convention in Chicago, military intelligence in West Berlin, the township board in Oak Park and the Illinois House of Representatives in Springfield. Griffin's grappling with challenges and opportunities these events presented revealed enduring ideas and values that deepened his appreciation for Catholicism and its mission, more critical than ever in the current world. The subject: "A World Turned Upside Down."
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Regarding Father Edward T. Oakes's review of Father John W. O'Malley's book on the Second Vatican Council ("Chronicle of a Council," Dec. 26): It is not a stretch to assert that the Catholic Church, particularly in the U.S., has suffered greatly since the council took place. Kenneth C. Jones compiled an "Index of Leading Catholic Indicators: The Church Since Vatican II," published in 2003. Among his findings: While the number of priests in the U.S. more than doubled to 58,000 between 1930 and 1965, that number has fallen to 45,000, and by 2020 there will be only 31,000. In 1965, there were 180,000 Catholic nuns, but by 2002 that number had fallen to 75,000; Catholic marriages have fallen in number by one third since 1965, while the annual number of annulments rose from 338 in 1968 to 50,000 in 2002. (Regarding the annulment process, it is said that, for better or worse, psychological factors have been taken into consideration much more so post-Vatican II.) And, of course, we have the clergy sex abuse scandal that culminated in 2002 and continues to this day.
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In the name of the Babe of Bethlehem, Whose law you Christian fathers and mothers love and obey, stop your ears to that pagan philosophy, worthy of a Herod, which ignoring revelation and even human wisdom sets itself above the law and the prophets of the Old and the New Dispensation, of which the Christ Child is the beginning, the bond and end. Keep far from the sanctuary of your Christian homes, as you would an evil spirit, the literature of this unclean abomination. Sin not against children who, after all, are the noblest stimulus and protection to marital affection, fidelity and continency.
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Jesus spent over 90% of his years in the obscure nitty-gritty of family life. Though only a few chapters are devoted to this lengthy period, what they reveal is significant. First of all, despite the cuddly image of our nativity scenes, the original Christmas was anything but cozy. A woman nine months pregnant rides 75 miles on the back of a donkey over bumpy, dusty roads so she can have her baby in a stable full of dirty, smelly animals. Quickly after the birth they have to pick up and flee for their lives, seeking asylum in a foreign land. A few years later, the now adolescent son goes missing for several days, and there ensues a conversation characterized by no little emotion. Joseph is a saint, Mary is without sin, Jesus is God incarnate, yet there are still challenges, difficulties, tense moments, and opportunities for misunderstanding. Welcome to real family life.
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The blessed and joyous time of Christmas is here again. So, I'll just take the opportunity to thank all of our viewing and listening family for allowing us into your homes. I don't take that for granted. I am honestly grateful to you for allowing us to serve you in that way. As I look out the windows of my home in Montana it sure is "beginning to look a lot like Christmas." We have about a foot of snow and it's been below zero for about ten days. Two of my dogs are under my desk with their heads resting on my feet--looking like those big fuzzy slippers that little kids sometimes wear. Christmas is, of course, the best time to recall that Jesus, the Son of God, in fact was born in a poor stable or cave on a cold night-"for us men, and for our salvation." Amidst the escalating uncertainty and chaos of the modern world we must sit still for a moment and remember what really matters.
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Ave Maria Mutual Funds in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. is firing back at The New York Times editorial board's recent attack on the investment strategy applied by the Catholic values fund family. The Dec. 18 editorial chided the fund family's investment adviser, Schwartz Investment Counsel Inc., also of Bloomfield, for standing "starkly on one side of the old, deep ideological fault line that divides the church's conservative and liberal wings." The editorial took specific issue with investments in defense contractors such as United Technologies Inc. and "junk food giant" ConAgra Foods Inc. Omaha, Neb. while not investing in Playboy Enterprises Inc. of Chicago.
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"Take note all ye cultural fascists out to annihilate Christmas: The Catholic League has a nativity scene on public property in New York City, right in Central Park. We deliberately put it on the corner of 59th and 5th so that New Yorkers taking the 5th Avenue bus downtown can't avoid seeing it. Indeed, it's impossible to miss. Next to it will be the world's largest menorah, a religious symbol that some dunce lawyers still think is a secular symbol. "Every year we get a permit from the New York City Parks Department to display our life-sized crèche in Central Park, and every year there is some atheist group-the ACLU, Freedom From Religion Foundation, etc.-that files suit in federal district court trying to censor nativity scenes. Unfortunately, many municipalities give in to the tyrants.
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Pope Benedict XVI sent a telegram of congratulations to Mr. Obama calling his election a "historic occasion," and the two men later spoke by telephone. A papal spokesman said the Vatican hopes to work with him on Iraq, the Holy Land, Christian minorities in the Middle East and Asia, and the fight against poverty and social inequality. To be clear, the Vatican yields to no one in its pro-life commitments. In effect, "Dignitas Personae" is a reminder that there will be no "truce," no strategic silence, about the defense of human life from the moment of conception. The question now is whether the Vatican will find an equally effective way to mobilize those Catholics who hope to build bridges. This is one case in which the pope would do well to think a few American thoughts.
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Moral theology based on St. Thomas Aquinas is among one of theology's most popular branches today, says a Vatican official, but this popularity has come about only after decades of disdain. Archbishop Jean Louis Bruguès, secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education, spoke about his journey with moral theology when he delivered an address at a conference last Friday in Rome, which marked the 30th anniversary of the St. Thomas Aquinas International Society. Archbishop Bruguès contended that "after May of '68, moral theology, at least in France, fell into profound neglect." "During two years, the seminarians of Toulouse received no classes on this subject, considered disagreeable and boring, as no one was found who was willing to teach them," he said. It fell to then Father Bruguès, a young priest with a doctorate in morality, to take up these courses.
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Every year, the "God Squad," a group of volunteer tradesmen, erect one of the world's largest nativity scenes around Thanksgiving and take it down on the last day of December. On Saturday, November 29, at 11:00 AM Christian families will gather in Daley Plaza, at Dearborn and Washington Streets in downtown Chicago, to celebrate the annual dedication of the Chicago Nativity Scene. "The Nativity Scene has been an annual tradition in Daley Plaza since l985 when a beautiful life size scene was first displayed," said Jim Finnegan, IFI board member and co-chair of the Nativity Scene Committee.
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History is about to be made at the Illinois Capitol Building in Springfield as The Springfield Nativity Scene Committee has been granted a permit to display a Nativity Scene in the East Corridor, adjacent to the Rotunda, from the day of dedication on December 2 to December 28, 2008. A Christmas tree [now politically correct called a "Holiday" tree] has stood in the Rotunda for many years - never a Nativity Scene. The hope of the Committee is to give honor to Our Lord and Savior with this beautiful public display during the national legal holiday of Christmas and to encourage other Christian citizens throughout Illinois that the fundamental right to display religious symbols or icons in the public square is protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The Chicago-based Thomas More Society is honored to provide legal counsel in support of this project.
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One of 11 children, Fr. Dudley Day, O.S.A. was baptized at St. Rita's Parish in Chicago. He attended Villanova University and received his theology education from the Augustinian College in Washington, D.C. He was ordained in 1953 and was appointed vocations director for the Augustinian order in 1961, serving in that capacity for 15 years. He served as associate pastor and then pastor of St. Rita's Parish on the south side of Chicago. He was executive director of the Institute on Religious Life for 11 years, and is now associate pastor at St. John Cantius parish. He is the chaplain to Catholic Citizens of Illinois. The subject: "Teaching the Faith in the Modern World."
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A leading publisher of traditional Roman Catholic books has been acquired by Saint Benedict Press, LLC, a North Carolina-based publisher of Catholic Classics. Established in 1967, TAN Books and Publishers has published more than 600 books distinctive for their preservation of the traditional literature of the Roman Catholic Church. In recent years, TAN has struggled to survive financially and most recently has been operating under the protection of the United States Bankruptcy Court. Early last week, the assets of TAN were purchased by the owners of Saint Benedict Press. TAN Books and Publishers will remain an independent imprint within Saint Benedict Press, maintaining its brand identity and publishing direction under Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Brent Klaske, who will assume General Management duties. He will be based at TAN's Rockford, Illinois offices.
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We are about to witness many outrages against the dignity of life by politicians who have taken advantage of nominal Christians. For starters, we may expect removal of the present administration's ban on destructive embryonic research, and rejection of the Mexico City accords which restrained abortion and eugenics. Most immediately, the New York State legislature has proposed a bill removing the statute of limitations on lawsuits that would damage, and possibly bankrupt, Catholic and other private institutions. Since Cardinal Egan wrote his letter about this, the recent election gave both houses of the legislature to the party that favors this bill.
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The Annual Dinner of Catholic Citizens of Illinois will feature Raymond Arroyo of EWTN. Raymond Arroyo is an international recognized, award-winning journalist, producer, and bestselling author, seen each week in more than 100 million homes around the globe. As host and creator of EWTN's international news magazine, "The World Over Live", Arroyo has interrogated the leading figures of the day. Arroyo is the producer of the bestselling audio Bible, "The Word of Promise." He is executive producer of the "The Birth of Christ," the billboard topping "Christmas Cantata" that premiered on PBS during the 2007 Christmas season. The Catholic Citizens Dinner will be at Drury Lane, Oakbrook Terrace on Thursday, November 6. The event will begin at 6:00 p.m, dinner at 7:00 p.m. Tickets are $70.00 per person, $600.00 for tables of 10. To make reservations, call Maureen at 708-352-5834.
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The national headquarters of the Knights of Columbus has produced a K of C video on same-sex marriage and the threats posed to traditional marriage, families, and faith communities by governmental coercion of its acceptance. To view it, CLICK HERE
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The Catholic Church is often accused of complicity in a variety of moral evils, including the institution of slavery, the rise of the Nazi Party, and even the horror of the Holocaust itself. Historians differ on the degree of blame properly assigned to Catholics. But they all agree on one thing: These evils were the result of Church teaching being ignored by the laity and acquiescent bishops who should have said more and with a louder voice. Will historians a century from now look back on this election as the moment when Catholics in America fully embraced another intrinsic moral evil -- abortion -- directly contradicting their professed beliefs? Will historians say that, after 40 years of strong papal leadership opposing "the culture of death," American Catholics chose to turn a deaf ear? That the U.S. bishops said too little, and with too soft a voice?
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"The season is at hand in which it has been our long respected custom as a people to turn in praise and thanksgiving to Almighty God for His manifold mercies and blessings to us as a nation..."
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Your Guardian Angel is your companion and your friend. He is given to you at the first moment of existence and stays with you to the end. He inspires you with good and holy thoughts. He protects you from many dangers and accidents, and assists you in a thousand ways throughout your life. The Angels are most desirous to be our friends and they love us with all the intensity of their angelic natures. "He hath given His Angels charge over thee: to keep thee in all thy ways. In their hands they shall bear thee up lest thou dash thy foot against a stone" (Psalm 91). The Angels are pure spirits, mighty Princes of Heaven who stand before God. They are burning fires of love, filled with the plenitude of happiness. No two Angels are alike and there are too many to be numbered. All of them are indescribably beautiful. "Thousands and thousands ministered to Him and ten thousand times a hundred thousand stood before him" (Dan 7:10).
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The financial crisis sweeping the world economy proves the need for religion in politics, Vatican Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone said on Tuesday. "Politics needs religion," Cardinal Bertone said in a speech published by the Vatican mouthpiece L'Osservatore Romano. "When instead God is ignored, the ability to respect rights and recognise the common good begins to disappear." Bertone, the Vatican's top diplomat and Pope Benedict XVI's right-hand man, told a conference sponsored by the US-based Aspen Institute: "Where people look solely for short-term profit, identifying it with good, they end up erasing the benefit itself." The prelate said the "current financial crisis" and the "tragic outcomes of all political ideologies" were symptomatic of this lack.
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Of late I am increasingly frightened by something I see happening in our culture: it is the seeming superficial-ization of everything in American life to the point of absurdity and deception. The prime culprit of course is the ubiquitous mass media (especially 24-hour cable programming and the internet) and its constant dumbing down of the American consciousness to the lowest common denominator of the most tantalizing sound bites and images The other bad boy is the interminable chatter/commentary by clever cultural sharpshooters: it's so bad sometimes that it makes me wonder if we can actually pull ourselves out of our co-dependence upon charlatans. What makes my priest's heart so heavy is that I think our society is going down the path of deep spiritual degradation, and it doesn't look like this trend will be ending any time soon. Certainly not in an election season. Case in point: Oprah.
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Dietrich von Hildebrand describes the union of the body and soul below. This intimate union, he describes, is 'ruptured' at death. This topic will definitely be developed as we progress in the Anthropology Project toward the transcendent nature of the human person. Read below for a section of his writing from Jaws of Death: Gate of Heaven and comment. "In life our body and our soul, although each differs greatly from the other, partake of a unique marriage. It is precisely this intimate union which is ruptured in death as in no other way, not even in the prolonged loss of our consciousness. So long as we go on living, our loss of consciousness in no way signifies the extinction of our soul. We might be in a state of shock caused by damage to our circulatory system; we might be under the influence of a powerful narcotic during surgery; we might even be in a month-long coma. But in all these cases, our soul still remains bound to our body. As soon as we regain consciousness, we are once again conscious human beings. Even if the return to normalcy is slow, as in the case of certain comas, we yet are headed toward the full consciousness of our identity, a matter of basic significance to us as persons (Jaws of Death: Gate of Heaven)."
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"Biden's remark, which was aimed at Sarah Palin, is not only inaccurate, it exposes his Catholic Achilles' heel once again. No one in public life has ever taken a position against all stem-cell research; adult stem-cell research is not ethically problematic. What millions of Americans object to is embryonic stem-cell research, and that is because it is impossible to do this kind of research without destroying the embryo. Now it may come as news to Biden that the embryo represents nascent human life, though it is not clear whether this would matter to a man who agrees with NARAL 75 percent of the time."
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Dr. Diane Moczar, professor of history at Northern Virginia Community College, received her B.A. degree at San Francisco College for Women. Upon graduation she was awarded a Fulbright grant for research on a medieval college of the University of Paris, with a renewal of the grant the following year. She did research at the Vatican Library and the archives in Paris. She received her M.A.. from Columbia University and after completing course work for her doctorate on medieval history at Catholic University, she received her Ph.D from George Mason University. Her articles have been published in Triumph, National Review, Modern Age, The Latin Mass, Smithsonian and others. She also writes teaching material for history textbook publishers. She is the author of four books, the most recent being Islam at the Gates. The subject: "Can Muslims Be Converted".
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The red states and counties in the 2004 election sent a strong message that morality still matters in the heartland when they rejected John Kerry and the Democratic party. Apparently, however, it wasn't enough to teach the "evil" party (so labeled by columnist Joe Sobran) a lesson, Barrack Obama's vice presidential pick, Senator Joe Biden, confirms the pro-abortion extremism of the Democrats. Choosing a pro-abortion Catholic as a running mate, Obama sent a clear message not only to real Catholics, but evangelical Christians, fundamentalists, orthodox Jews, and all people whose moral compass points to true north: "There is no room for you in our party." The tent is filled to capacity with abortionists, gay activists, radical feminists, the Hollywood elite, pornographers, anti-Christian bigots, apostate Catholics, and moral relativists. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House and third in line for the presidency, is not only a pro-abortion Catholic, but one who spins the faith to match her "moral" convictions. The woman who says her parents didn't raise her to be speaker, but to be holy demonstrated her ignorance of Catholic teaching when she claimed the Church only condemned abortion in the last fifty years. Several bishops and Catholic members of Congress called her bluff. Is she ignorant, stupid, or a liar?
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Like many other citizens of this nation, I was shocked to learn that the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States of America would make the kind of statements that were made to Mr. Tom Brokaw of NBC-TV on Sunday, August 24, 2008. What the Speaker had to say about theologians and their positions regarding abortion was not only misinformed; it was also, and especially, utterly incredible in this day and age.
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Abraham Lincoln used to tell a story about a man who heated a piece of iron in the forge and made it into a horseshoe. He then changed his mind and decided to make something else of it. By this time, he had beaten the iron in so many different ways it wasn't much good for anything. Holding it up with his tongs, and looking at it in disgust, the blacksmith thrust it hissing into a vat of water and said: "Well, at least I can make a fizzle out it." [1) Enumerations that are listed in discrimination policies or various laws designed to protect an individual or a group's civil rights have traditionally been preserved for immutable characteristics or some other matter fundamental to human need. Standard categories have included color, race, gender, religion, national origin and disability. Thus far, the U.S. Supreme Court has been unwilling to extend full "suspect class" to "sexual orientation" - a status that would make it deserving of greater judicial scrutiny.
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In the decades to come, stories like this will be the American social narrative because Americans are not inculcating virtue in children. Are parents today raising children to be women and men of prudence, courage, justice, and self-control? Or are we raising the kinds of children who will be the self-focused, egotistic, and narcissistic, believe they are invincible and are morally accountable to no one? That is, "successful," but lacking integrity. Today's American family, with its high rate of divorce, abuse, relational brokenness, poor media content preferences, success worship, and materialism, grooms children to become the type of adults who will one day be on television publicly admitting to impropriety. In America, we get the leaders we deserve because they represent what we the people truly value.
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Christian art is a rational form of art - we think of Gothic art, great music, or the Baroque art right here - but this is the artistic expression of a much broader form of reason, in which the heart and reason come together. This is the point. This, I think, is in some way the proof of the truth of Christianity: the heart and reason come together, beauty and truth touch. And to the extent that we are able to live in the beauty of truth, so much more will faith again be able to be creative, in our own time as well, and to express itself in a convincing artistic form.
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Theologian John Courtney Murray was the primary motivator behind the Vatican II document, The Declaration on Religious Liberty. Murray and that document held that man had an inherent dignity that does not allow coercion in religious belief by public or private groups or institutions. Only religious actions detrimental to public order were to be subject to State regulation. Despite his insistence on human dignity and freedom in religious matters, Murray seems to accept the pre-Centesimus Annus Catholic view that the free economy, while a good thing in essence, is a dangerous entity requiring heavy governmental supervision. Various authors, some with approval, some with dismay, use this view to prove that Murray, and the older Catholic view as well, are Socialist. This paper argues that Murray, who admitted that he was not an economist and who used the views of another noneconomist, Adolph Berle, as his starting point, is inconsistent with his own views. This means that if Murray followed his own teaching on religious liberty, and if he was instructed in the discipline of economics in order to correct badly understood concepts, he would have accepted the free market without the qualifications he added.
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What made it possible for Western civilization to develop science and the social sciences in a way that no other civilization had ever done before? The answer, I am convinced, lies in a pervasive and deep-seated spirit of inquiry that was a natural consequence of the emphasis on reason that began in the Middle Ages. With the exception of revealed truths, reason was enthroned in medieval universities as the ultimate arbiter for most intellectual arguments and controversies. It was quite natural for scholars immersed in a university environment to employ reason to probe into subject areas that had not been explored before, as well as to discuss possibilities that had not previously been seriously entertained. The creation of the university, the commitment to reason and rational argument, and the overall spirit of inquiry that characterized medieval intellectual life amounted to "a gift from the Latin Middle Ages to the modern world...though it is a gift that may never be acknowledged.
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In the Pennsylvania primary, Barack Obama rolled up more than 90 percent of the African-American vote. Among Catholics, he lost by 40 points. The cool, liberal Harvard Law grad was not a good fit for the socially conservative ethnics of Altoona, Aliquippa and Johnstown. But if Barack had a problem with Catholics then, he has a far higher hurdle to surmount in the fall, with those millions of Catholics who still take their faith and moral code seriously. For not only is Barack the most pro-abortion member of the Senate, with his straight A+ report card from the National Abortion Rights Action League and Planned Parenthood. He supports the late-term procedure known as partial-birth abortion, where the baby's skull is stabbed with scissors in the birth canal and the brains are sucked out to end its life swiftly and ease passage of the corpse into the pan.
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For decades the Knights of Columbus has been a leading organization in the United States bringing lay Catholics together to combat declining cultural and moral standards in the United States. Catholic Citizens of Illinois applauds the recent statements by Supreme Knight Carl Anderson made at their national convention. Anderson said: "Imagine if this year millions of Catholic voters simply say 'no'- no to every candidate of every political party who supports abortion." He added, "It's time we stop accommodating pro-abortion politicians, and it's time we start demanding that they accommodate us. What candidate or political party can withstand the loss of millions of Catholic voters in this election or the next?"
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Over the centuries, a number of people have reported that Mary -- appearing to be very much alive, and not a ghost -- has visited them. Did a camera record those scenes? No. But the objective proof lies in the miracles that have occurred in connection with such visitations. Among the better known are those to an Indian in Mexico City, where she left a miraculous portrait of herself on his outer garment; to a nun in Paris, instructing her to promulgate the so-called Miraculous Medal; to a peasant girl at Lourdes, France, where she directed the digging of a fountain to provide healing waters; and to children at Fatima, Portugal, where she foretold the miraculous dancing of the sun witnessed by tens of thousands... In summary, we have no need of a written record because we have experiential proof that the Blessed Virgin Mary was indeed "assumed" body and soul into Heaven from her performance of her role as Queen of Heaven and Earth. Truly, there is reason for all generations to call her blessed -- and to call us blessed in her!
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In recent years what with acceptable fashion standards taking a major plunge (literally) into the realm of 'anything goes', young women are left to face conscious decisions in how they dress themselves, not realizing the weight that such decisions carry. Speaking to youth in Australia on July 18, Pope Benedict XVI mentioned modesty as he told of how becoming fully human means rejecting those voices that lead us into worshipping 'false gods.' "People sometimes treat others as objects to satisfy their own needs rather than as persons to be loved and cherished. How easy it is to be deceived by the many voices in our society that advocate a permissive approach to sexuality, without regard for modesty, self-respect or the moral values that bring quality to human relationships! This is worship of a false god. Instead of bringing life, it brings death."
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Please fast and pray for the upcoming election. This is a speech by Holy Father which he gave to the Europeans in 2006,where he talks about 3 non-negotiable beliefs of the Catholic Church, which fit perfectly for people contemplating who to vote for in this upcoming election. ""As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable..."
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In the course of my week I get many letters from all kinds of good people (and a few not-so-good ones...) who express their sentiments on how Human Life International impacts their lives; and every now and then I get a letter that literally causes me to shed tears of gratitude. This week was one of those weeks. I received a letter from a former priest who had signed the "protest document" just after Humanae vitae was released forty years ago last week, and it is one of the most touching testimonies that I have read in a long time. I would like to share the joy of this particular Humanae vitae conversion story with you in the hope that it will touch your heart as it did mine.
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Kansas Voter Guide published in 2008 is a good resource pointing out non-negotiables in moral and social policy. A much more clear and orthodox guide than the ambiguous release by USCCB.
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Letter Regarding ADC and ADR on Mundelein Seminary
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A correct conscience recognizes that there are some choices that always involve doing evil and which can never be done even as a means to a good end. These choices include elective abortion, euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide, the destruction of embryonic human beings in stem cell research, human cloning, and same-sex "marriage." Such acts are judged to be intrinsically evil, that is, evil in and of themselves, regardless of our motives or the circumstances. They constitute an attack against innocent human life, as well as marriage and family. Pope John Paul II warned that concern for the "right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination" (Christifideles Laici 38). CLICK HERE FOR FULL REPORT
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The CCI Summer Newsletter has been mailed out, however, there was a glitch in the computer addressing of the newsletter. You may have received your newsletter with another name but to your address. Don't worry, everyone will receive their newsletter and the problem will be corrected in time for the Fall newsletter. Sorry for the mistake!
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On the fortieth anniversary of Humanae Vitae, I have been asked to reflect on one event of that year, the doctrinal dissent among some priests and theologians in an American archdiocese on the occasion of its publication. It is not an easy or welcome task. But since it may help some followers of Jesus to live what Pope Paul VI called a more "disciplined" life (HV 21), I will explore that event. The summer of 1968 is a record of God's hottest hour. The memories are not forgotten; they are painful. They remain vivid like a tornado in the plains of Colorado. They inhabit the whirlwind where God's wrath dwells. In 1968, something terrible happened in the Church.
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Political columnist Robert Novak has been diagnosed with a brain tumor and is being treated in a Massachusetts hospital, the newspaper which syndicates his column said on Monday. "I will be suspending my journalistic work for an indefinite but, God willing, not too lengthy period," the 77-year-old writer said in the Chicago Sun-Times. It said the diagnosis was made on Sunday after he fell ill at a family gathering in Massachusetts and he was taken to Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston for treatment. In July 2003 Novak caused a stir when he blew the cover of a CIA officer, Valerie Plame, whose husband Joseph Wilson had criticized the Iraq war.
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One of the oldest copies of the Bible we have is the Codex Sinaiticus, a fourth century Greek manuscript. Among other things, this text contains the oldest complete copy of the New Testament, though about half of the Old Testament is missing. The manuscript was discovered by the German biblical scholar Konstantin von Tischendorf in 1844 at an ancient Egyptian monastery, Saint Catherine's Monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai. Since that time it has been divided among four different locations.
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The maxim says "If we ignore history, we are bound to repeat it." Some recent headlines suggest we can look at some recent history with the opportunity to avoid repeating it, but only if we rise up against the advocates of "comprehensive sex education" and condoms as the most reliable means to fight AIDS. The July 16th LifeSiteNews headline reads, "Britain's 'Culture of Promiscuity' sees nearly 400,000 new STD Cases." The British Health Protection Agency (HPA) recently reported 397,990 new cases of sexually transmitted diseases in Britain, the highest number since record-keeping began thirty years ago. In their report released July 2, the HPA found that half the cases of infection could be found in the 16 to 24 year age group, even though this group made up only 12% of the population.
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Former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt has made a pilgrimage to the Sanctuaries of Our Lady of Lourdes less than two weeks after she was freed from years in captivity. Betancourt was accompanied by her mother, sister and children. French TV showed the 46-year-old walking to the Marian grotto at the shrine in the French Pyrenees on July 12. Surrounded by police and pilgrims, she was greeted by Bishop Jacques Perrier of Tarbes and Lourdes... Betancourt, who noted the Lourdes pilgrimage would be her last public appearance until she recuperated, said she had made a rosary from buttons and old string during her captivity.
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CCI NOTES: Antonio Gramsci is the godfather of Italian Communism. Realizing that Christian culture could not be defeated by a system so obviously oppressive and inferior as Marxism, Gramsci recommended that Communists do whatever they could to gain control of the pillars of society and alter them from the inside out in order to covertly bring about global socialism. These pillars are education, the media, organized religion and government. Looking back over the last 75 years, it is easy to see Gramsci's fingerprints in the US State Dept of the 1940's and 1950's, which was infested with Communist agents and sympathizers. His presence is obvious the universities, newspapers, and even the US Congress of today. As for the Catholic Church, the destruction of the last 40 years since Vatican II as it relates to the Sacraments and the collapse of discipline is an "inside job" right out of Gramsci's playbook. CCI readers are encouraged to better understand Gramsci because of the success of his ideas: socialism and de-Christianization have seeped in and become dominant in Western nations without any shots being fired. Fixing this requires a better understanding of how it happened in the first place.
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Commentator and broadcaster Tony Snow announced that he had colon cancer in 2005. Following surgery and chemo-therapy, Snow joined the Bush administration in April 2006 as press secretary. Unfortunately, on March 23 Snow, 51, a husband and father of three, announced that the cancer had recurred, with tumors found in his abdomen-leading to surgery in April, followed by more chemotherapy. Snow went back to work in the White House Briefing Room on May 30, but resigned August 31. CT asked Snow what spiritual lessons he has been learning through the ordeal.
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Catholic News Agency is pleased to announce a new column named "Indispensable Economics," written by Dr. William Luckey. Each week, Dr. Luckey will explain the world of economics focusing on issues affecting Catholics in society today. Formerly the chairman of the Political Science and Economics Department at Chrsistendom College, Dr. Luckey also holds advanced degrees in Business, Economics, Political Philosophy and Systematic Theology. He was married in 1971 and became a Lay Dominican in 1974. (CCI Notes: Dr. Luckey is the real deal. His personal blog is at www.drwilliamluckey.com.)
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The following speech of Charlemagne to his subjects has the strong tones of a solemn testament to all Christendom, even though it was delivered in March 802 and the Emperor did not die until 814. The speech, sometimes referred to as a sermon, was delivered to the assembly of nobles gathered in Aix-la-Chapelle or Aachen. I share with the readers of the TIA website this magnificent testimony of Catholicism made by the man who was one of the most expressive symbols of medieval Europe. Here are Charlemagne's counsels to his subjects, which, in varying proportions, can apply to each one of us...
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Rev. Richard T. Simon, Pastor of St. Lambert's Parish, Skokie, received his B.A. Degree from Loyola University, majoring in classical Greek. He received a Master of Divinity and a Bachelor in Sacred Theology from the University of St. Mary of the Lake. He has taught classical Greek and Latin at St. Joseph's college, formerly Niles College, the archdiocesan seminary since 1982. Father Simon's lecture will be on "The Crisis in Catholic Education."
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Today (6/1/08) on Dane Placko's "Fox Chicago Sunday" public affairs program (with Fox anchor Byron Harlan sitting in for Fox political editor Jack Conaty), the always-entertaining Cliff Kelley, a radio talk show host on WVON ("V103"), and Dan Proft verbally jousted over the latest Obama campaign controversy: Father Michael Pfleger's incendiary, racially-charged sermon at Trinity United Church of Christ. For the video link, CLICK HERE
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No other vocation on this earth can compare with that of the priest, who daily acts in a visible way with visible things like bread and wine and water and oil but whose significant effect is spiritual and therefore invisible. It is a great honor to be called to be a priest, but it also involves a great responsibility. The priest should be aware of his great powers and dignity and at the same time thank God for his gifts and pray constantly to be worthy of his calling to be a minister of both the visible and the invisible.
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"The Rosary", the Pope added, "when it is prayed in an authentic manner - not mechanically and superficially, but profoundly - brings peace and reconciliation. It contains the healing power of the Most Holy Name of Jesus, invoked with faith and love at the heart of each Hail Mary". Benedict XVI then called on those present to ensure they remained united to Mary during these days leading up to Pentecost, "invoking a renewed effusion of the Holy Spirit for the Church". He also entrusted them with "the most urgent intentions" of his ministry: "the needs of the Church, the great problems of humanity, peace in the world, the unity of Christians, and dialogue between cultures", as well as the pastoral objectives of the diocese of Rome, and the "solidary development" of Italy.
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"Be not deceived: God is not mocked" (Gal. 6:7). Actually, intending to continue to offend God and still hope to be with Him in Paradise would be to mock God. "For what things a man shall sow, those also shall he reap" (Gal 6:8). Whoever sows good works, will reap rewards; whoever sows sins, will reap chastisements. In Job is written: "Their hope is the abomination of the soul" (Job 11:20). Yes, the hope of those who sin thinking that God forgives them is abominable before God. This very hope causes a chastisement to fall over their heads sooner, like the boldness of a slave who lacks respect for his lord, abusing his goodness."
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I suggest that the Church has the power to erase the effects of original sin by granting a general absolution to children below the age of reason who die unbaptized. The Pope could proclaim this annually on the Feast of the Holy Innocents. Doing so would allow the Church to retire the doctrine of Limbo, and solve a great pastoral problem. Given the four strong considerations set forth above, which were acknowledged by the Commission as favoring the true salvation of unbaptized children, this would be a win-win solution for everyone, without causing the denial of original sin or any other revealed truth.
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Worse, whenever we have the impulse to be sorry for sin we have a sign from God that He has not given up on us but that He still loves us, that He still wants us to be sorry for our sins, to do penance, and to amend our lives so we can live eternally with Him. Whenever my conscience makes me say to myself, "I wish I hadn't done that. I'm sorry that I did it. I want to make amends and be sorry for it and tell God," that is a grace from God. Priests who sit in the confessional hour after hour on Saturday and have to occupy themselves with spiritual reading because there are no penitents wonder, if indeed, God moves anyone to sorrow for sin. And worse, do people realize what is happening to them if they are never sorry for the wrongs they do?
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For the Summer 2007 CCI newsletter CLICK HERE. To add your name to the subscription list for the CCI quarterly newsletter, please send your tax deducatable donation of $25 to CCI, 106 Calendar Court, PMB 122, Lagrange, IL, 60525. Your donation allows us to continue to host our montly lunch forum, our award winning web site, and your quarterly newsletter.
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For the Summer 2007 CCI newsletter CLICK HERE. To add your name to the subscription list for the CCI quarterly newsletter, please send your tax deducatable donation of $25 to CCI, 106 Calendar Court, PMB 122, Lagrange, IL, 60525. Your donation allows us to continue to host our montly lunch forum, our award winning web site, and your quarterly newsletter.
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For the Spring 2007 Catholic Citizens newsletter CLICK HERE. To add your name to the subscription list for the CCI quarterly newsletter, please send your tax deducatable donation of $25 to CCI, 106 Calendar Court, PMB 122, Lagrange, IL, 60525. Your donation allows us to continue to host our montly lunch forum, our award winning web site, and your quarterly newsletter.
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If Europe and the Christian West are to survive as Christian and as Western in this new millennium, with any hope of repelling the Islamization of European culture, the reunification of Christians is necessary, so thinks international Catholic apologist and EWTN host, Mr. Raymond de Souza. De Souza, who defines himself as 'Brazilian by birth, Catholic by grace and Australian by choice,' has edited a new millennium edition of a historical book written by King Henry VIII titled, Defense of the Seven Sacraments. In light of current de-populating demographic trends in Europe, Defense of the Seven Sacraments takes on new relevance. Secularization, moral decay, de-population and the explosion of Islamic immigration to the continent are fueling the rapid de-Christianization of Europe.
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In less than three weeks, 3,000 Catholics returned to the Church in the Diocese of Phoenix due to the effort of a new lay apostolate, CatholicsComeHome.org. The program consists of a website and commercials aired on local television that effectively portray the truth and goodness of the Catholic Church. In an interview with CNA, Catholics Come Home, Inc. founder and president, Tom Peterson explained that the ads are designed to take people to the website, CatholicsComeHome.org, where they can find answers to questions about Church teachings, and also to put them into contact with their local parish to be led home, back to the Catholic Church. Prior to founding Catholics Come Home, Peterson worked in advertising until he attended a retreat that completely changed his life. It was then that he knew God was calling him to use his advertising talents for evangelization.
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Dr. Peter Kreeft is a professor of philosophy at Boston College. He is an orthodox Roman Catholic, who has written over 45 books, and who contributes regularly to various Christian publications. Dr. Kreeft is one of the most eloquent voices for the Faith in America. This summary of Dr. Kreeft's remarks was prepared on March 9, 2008, by Joseph A. Wemhoff, from memory and from extensive notes taken during the talk. Dr. Kreeft has his own website at www.peterkreeft.com. "Pope John Paul II fueled the idea by drawing the distinction between the "Culture of Life" and the "Culture of Death." The term "Culture War" is simply a euphemism for the conflict between Christ and the Antichrist, with the stakes being the fate of the universe."
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Much superstition, exaggeration, fakery, and sheer ignorance have accompanied the history of both purported miracles and suspected diabolic activity throughout the life of the Church. The harm to the faith and the harm to individuals can be great, a truism never more evident than today. Behind these false traditions, however, as Pascal well grasped, lay the real thing, the originals from which the Frenchman well knew the counterfeits drew their false legitimacy. In this and every age, going back to the Gospels themselves, we refer ultimately to the consistent record of the healing and freeing power of our Lord Himself, on body and soul, as manifested to the unbiased mind. My task here has been to provide some guidance in discerning the counterfeit, but also in acknowledging the very infrequent but legitimate cases of diabolic activity. Contrary to what secular opinion facilely asserts, an objective medical view can confidently conclude that assaults by the devil, like genuine miracles, are rare but quite real scientific facts, verifiable to all who are not afraid to confront the truth. CLICK HERE to go to the New Oxford Review website.
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In his Philadelphia address on race, Sen. Obama identified as a root cause of white resentment affirmative action -- the punishing of white working- and middle-class folks for sins they did not commit: "Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race," said Barack. "As far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything. ... So when they ... hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed ... resentment builds over time." On this issue, Barack seemed to have nailed it. But then he revealed the distorting lens through which he and his fellow liberals see the world. To them, black rage is grounded in real grievances, while white resentments are exaggerated and exploited.
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Here is something we should have learned. Big government and high taxation has been a curse on America and its society. Unfortunately, Republicans have, for the most part, failed to explain these concepts to the average citizen. Republicans are now looked upon as greedy, money-grubbers who seek lower taxation merely to line their pockets with cash. On the other hand, Democrats are seen as the champions of the dwindling middle class, the saviors of the downtrodden and the only hope for those who haven't obtained the American dream.
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When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus' body. 2Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb 3and they asked each other, "Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?" 4But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. 5As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.
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About 50 people crowded into the cathedral's quaint chapel for Saturday morning's Easter basket blessing. Families brought baskets full of traditional foods and sweets to be blessed by prayer and sprinkled with holy water by Bishop Daniel Jenky. Arrick's family brought the same homemade bread she did as a child and eggs her children were going to dye later in the day. The blessed food is then saved until the next day, when families can enjoy the meals without having to prepare them on the holy day.
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Bishop Fulton Sheen is one of the most prominent American bishops in recent times. He pioneered the use of mass media in spreading the Faith and his "Life is Worth Living" series was viewed by millions. Bishop Sheen was a gifted speaker and brought countless high-profile individuals into the Church. Although he did not react to the crisis in the Church in the aftermath of Vatican II in a way we would have liked, he certainly kept the Faith in those turbulent and confusing times. Some of his later works are tainted with modernist ideas, but the vast majority of his books are excellent. Angelus Press is building a large selection of the best (and most orthodox) works of Bishop Sheen. Here are the first nine fruits of this endeavor...
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Pastor Renee Brewster and her husband, Bishop Winston Brewster, are a very spiritual couple. But Pastor Renee had been looking for an excuse to avoid making potato salad. "I was hesitant about making the potato salad because Sister Frankie makes the potato salad in church," she told WOFL-TV News in Orlando, Fla. (Jan. 21), "and I said lord if it's not for me to make potato salad then send me a sign." She thought she got her sign right off the bat: "The first potato I split in half and put it to the side because it looked rotten." Taking a closer look at the split potato she saw the cross with Jesus in the middle. "It's remarkable. Even when I cut the good part off, the cross ended up being shaped like a tomb from long ago." (CCI NOTES: Imagine what you have missed this week, even after trying diligently to read all the stories we send you from CCI. To catch up, CLICK HERE.)
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Long ago St. Augustine, a convert from heresy, a truly repentant sinner and bishop of the Church, wrote a line that we have all heard some time in our Catholic lives: "Our hearts were made for you, O Lord, and they are restless until they rest in you." When you go out among the people of our culture of death you see how true that is. USA Today ran an article on the editorial page a few days ago talking about the younger generation which is spiritual but not religious. To practicing Christians this seems a disjunction that is a distinction without a difference. It is interesting that Pope Benedict XVI in his prior life as a student and university professor made a special study of the works of St. Augustine. In the Catholic Church there are really only three theologians. It is easy to remember them because their names all begin with "A": Augustine, Aquinas and Alphonsus - Augustine in the fifth century, Thomas Aquinas in the 13th, and St. Alphonsus Liguori in the period after the Protestant Rebellion.
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Even today it is possible to revisit the experiences of St. Augustine; above all this is thanks to the "Confessions," written in the praise of God and which is the basis of a more specific Western literary form -- the autobiography. That is, a personal expression of the knowledge of oneself. Anyone who gets close to this extraordinary and fascinating book, which is still read by many today, will soon realize that the conversion of St. Augustine was not sudden or completed quickly, but it is better described as a journey that remains a true example for each one of us. This journey culminated with his conversion and subsequent baptism, but was not concluded with the Easter vigil of 387, when the African rhetorician was baptized by Bishop Ambrose of Milan.
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The 2008 calendar presents a rare clash between St. Patrick's Day and Holy Week, with parade organizers across the country and in some Massachusetts communities yielding to the Catholic Church. Chicago and Philadelphia have pushed their parades up to March 9, a week ahead of the start of Holy Week, which begins on Palm Sunday and ends a week later with Easter celebrations. Organizers in Worcester and Holyoke also preferred not to hand Catholics a conflict, scheduling their parades for March 9 and March 29, respectively. But not so in Boston.
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Jean M. Twenge's Generation Me, a well-researched yet impressively concise book, is an investigation of changes in general attitudes and personalities between Baby Boomers and "Generation Me" people born after 1970. The work contains a staggering amount of data compiled from 1.3 million respondents to psychologists' questionnaires dating back to the 1950s. Where other social theorists would try to explain changes in the American culture through the years by examining popular trends, fads, and technological advances, Twenge analyzes very specific attitudes that have shifted radically between those who protested the Vietnam War and those who are too apathetic to protest the Iraq war.
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As word of the shootings spread across the campus, buildings and dorms were locked down. Within hours, parishioners at Christ the Teacher Parish, home to the university's Newman Center, brought cartons of sodas and chips to the parish in preparation for students who might come to pray or seek comfort. Of the estimated 25,000 students enrolled at Northern Illinois University, approximately, 9,000 are Catholic. DeKalb is located in the heart of the 11-county Diocese of Rockford, which stretches from suburban Chicago to the Mississippi River. Msgr. Glenn Nelson, pastor of the campus parish and vicar general and chancellor of the Rockford Diocese, was away from DeKalb on other diocesan duties when the news broke of the campus shooting.
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As our society continues to debate the obligation to defend innocent life in all of its stages, we can expect that there are those who will seek their vaunted 15 minutes of fame by terminating innocent life as tragically happened at NIU, at Virginia Tech and too many other scenes. We have to be aware of that. There is abroad in our culture, a moral relativism that is very dangerous and when we devalue any one human life, we lay open the terrible gateway to disvaluing all human life. These are things that we should bring to God in prayer in the days and weeks to come as well as our deep and heartfelt concern for all those in the Northern Illinois community who will be afflicted with this loss for some long time to come.
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As I wrote before, the Catholic life is a sacramental life, a life of grace, increasing, decreasing, lost and regained. It is a life, in short, of belief in the Gospel and constant repentance. The most visible outward sign of the Catholic in today's world are the ashes that mark our foreheads at the start of Lent each year. Many who never go to Church and some that do wear them almost proudly that day as some proof of their religiosity. (All across corporate America on Ash Wednesday, stunned co-workers must be asking the same thing that an incredulous Anthony Michael Hall asked the prettiest girl in school "the morning after" in The Breakfast Club: "You go to church?"). But the once a year Catholics have got it backwards. The ashes don't tell people how religious we are; they proclaim our sinfulness and our repentance, and we are reminded of as much when they are crossed on our foreheads by the words Repent and Believe in the Gospel.
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Often times science is portrayed as enlightened truth, which counters the primitivism of the Catholic Church. This is especially done by the activist scientist-atheists, who want to scientifically prove that God does not exist. They do not allow for other views, for another vision, despite the fact, that they do not have very persuasive arguments for their theories. These atheistic Neo-Darwinists state, for example, that the universe was formed due to the „Big Bang," i.e. the random great explosion or expansion of a dense mass of molecules, and that living beings were formed through a random evolution. If someone has another opinion, then in many scientific institutions they will not be able to find work or will be removed from their positions.
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Catholic Citizens of Illinois invites you to join us for a timely and informative discussion by Father Martin Heinz, Pastor of Our Lady of the Angels Parish in Aurora IL and former director of vocations for the Diocese of Rockford. CCI's monthly luncheon forums are held on the second Friday of every month, from 11:45 AM To 01:30 PM, at a new location, the Union League Club 65 W Jackson Blvd, Chicago, 60604 - (312) 427-7800. Ticket price includes for a full course meal, and are $30.00. Reservations required. Call Maureen at 708-352-5834. The public is welcome.
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Most Catholics, I daresay, know little about Dorothy Day (1897-1980) and the Catholic Worker movement and The Catholic Worker newspaper she and Peter Maurin (1877-1949) founded in 1933. The Catholic Worker is one of the authentic Catholic movements to have originated in the Church in this country, and we need not agree with every jot and tittle of Dorothy Day's thought to recognize that this movement is a solid expression of traditional Catholicism, rooted not in any political ideology but in the spirituality and thought of the Church.
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Liberalism and Progressivism spread that Catholic Charity always demands us not to reply to any offense our enemies make against us, no matter what. If we act otherwise, we would be disobedient to the precept of Our Lord who told us to "offer the other cheek." This groundless generalization of that wise precept does not fit with the traditional interpretation made by the ordinary Magisterium of the Church. Today we bring to our readers a text by the famous moralist Fr. Victor Catherein, SJ, (1845- 1931), which reflects well the teachings of the Church on this topic. He tells us that self-defense and the proper punishment of the aggressor are included in the interpretation of that precept.
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"The knight must show himself to the people of his area so that they will know that he is a recently invested knight, obliged to defend and maintain the elevated honor of Chivalry. Doing so, the chevalier will know how to restrain himself from carrying out any evil action, realizing the great shame that such would be inflicted on him by those who serve Chivalry. In this way, he will do all that he can to avoid transgressing the Order of Chivalry."
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It is clear that Jesus isn't merely recommending that we embrace certain values or engage in certain behaviors for the sake of a good life on this earth. We see in the parallel passage in Luke that the context is explicitly that of salvation (13:23-30). This whole Lucan passage is eschatological in tone, and the parallel to this extended discourse is picked up a few verses later in Matthew (7:21-23). We will examine this more closely below. Click HERE for the full story
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Catholic Citizens of Illinois invites you to join us for a timely and informative discussion by Dr. Kenneth Howell. CCI's monthly luncheon forums are held on the second Friday of every month, from 11:45 AM To 01:30 PM, at a new location, the Union League Club 65 W Jackson Blvd, Chicago, 60604 - (312) 427-7800. Ticket price includes for a full course meal, and are $30.00. Reservations required. Call Maureen at 708-352-5834. The public is welcome. Kenneth J. Howell, Senior Fellow of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, is Director of the John Henry Cardinal Newman Institute of Catholic Thought and Adjunct Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Illinois.
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For the Fall 2006 CCI newsletter CLICK HERE. To add your name to the subscription list for the CCI quarterly newsletter, please send your tax deducatable donation of $25 to CCI, 106 Calendar Court, PMB 122, Lagrange, IL, 60525. Your donation allows us to continue to host our montly lunch forum, our award winning web site, and your quarterly newsletter.
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"For if you can learn what the star was, and of what kind, and whether it were one of the common stars, or new and unlike the rest, and whether it was a star by nature or a star in appearance only, we shall easily know the other things also. Whence then will these points be manifest? From the very things that are written. Thus, that this star was not of the common sort, or rather not a star at all, as it seems at least to me, but some invisible power transformed into this appearance, is in the first place evident from its very course. For there is not, there is not any star that moves by this way, but whether it be the sun you mention, or the moon, or all the other stars, we see them going from east to west; but this was wafted from north to south; for so is Palestine situated with respect to Persia."
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It's long been a puzzle for Christian astronomers, and now a professor from the University of Notre Dame thinks he has it figured out - almost, anyway. His quest: discovering just what "the star in the East" was that led wise men to travel to Bethlehem 2,000 years ago. As a theoretical astrophysicist, Grant Mathews had hoped the answer would be spectacular - something like a supernova. But two years of research have led him to a more ordinary conclusion. The heavenly sign around the time of the birth of Jesus Christ was likely an unusual alignment of planets, the sun and the moon. Not a lot was written about the star in the Bible. In the Gospel of Matthew it says: "Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the East, and have come to worship him.
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The Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, has used his annual Christmas message to ask for hope and peace across Australia. In his message, CArdinal Pell also reminded people that religion should not be used as a reason or excuse for violence and warfare. "During the last couple of years, God has been attacked here and there in the English speaking world and believers have been accused of causing most of the wars and crimes in history," he said. "This is an exaggeration as the moral monsters of the 20th Century - Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot - were atheists."
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The medieval fidelity was the fidelity transformed into a daily, natural heroism, once again, an instinctive heroism. It was a fidelity docile to even the most difficult duty. It was a fidelity to the oath in face of anything - even the most despicable or hatred thing - that might happen to the man bound by that oath. Honor, therefore, elevated fidelity even to martyrdom., helped mere bravery become heroism, and taught disinterest to not fear misery. To truly understand this honor, we would need to analyze each line that History has left us about St. Louis IX. This would be the way to reconstruct the code of this honor, because the Holy King was the purest incarnation of honor. He had all the delicacies of this honor as well its full force and equity.
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Fr. Tom Euteneuer, president of Human Life International and an exorcist in the Diocese of Arlington, VA, was scheduled to speak Friday night at St. Agnes Church in Catonsville, MD. The talk, part of the ongoing Defend Life, Inc., lecture series, was 'An Evening with an Exorcist: The Demonic Abortion Connection' (see the end of this article for instructions on receiving a free copy of this talk on CD). Planners for the event expected 50 to 100 people to attend, which would have been a good showing for similar lecture events sponsored by Defend Life. But Fr. Carl Cummings, pastor of St. Agnes, and Jack Ames, Director of Defend Life, were stunned when more than 200 people streamed through the door into the Old School Hall, filling all of the extra chairs that were being quickly set up to handle the large crowd. With all 192 available chairs filled, people were left sitting on tables and standing in the back.
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An amendment that would have set up new federal law to apply penalties for politically incorrect 'thoughts' under a 'hate crimes' plan has been stripped from a defense spending authorization bill, delaying at least for now the application of such punishments. But an activist who has suffered because of the application of such a plan - at the state level - says Americans need to remain wary. The amendment was stripped yesterday from a $500 billion defense reauthorization plan that is expected soon to be forwarded to President Bush. According to the Congressional Quarterly, members of the Senate serving on a conference committee dropped their demand for the hate-crimes provision, 'paving the way for the conference report to be signed.'
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In the 13th century, Pope Gregory IX reprimanded certain theologians for crossing "the boundaries fixed by the Fathers" "These men," said the Holy Father, "led away by various and strange doctrines, turn the head into the tail and force the queen to serve the handmaid" (1). By this he meant that theology - the queen - should not serve human science - the servant. Until Vatican II, it was held throughout the Church that St. Thomas Aquinas, called the greatest of the Scholastics, was the prince of the theologians. After Vatican II, however, Scholasticism was discarded, precisely because it is our finest instrument for precise thought and careful definition (2). St. Thomas gives very good reasons for us to be in favor of death penalty.
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In her most recent essay, Mrs. Noonan makes the point that religion was not an issue in politics forty years ago. Mitt Romney's father campaigned for the presidency: his Mormonism was never a question. Richard Nixon's Quaker roots, Lyndon Johnson's Disciples of Christ upbringing, Nelson Rockefeller's Baptist background, none of this mattered. She admits that Kennedy's Catholicism was something of an issue, but argues that religion never became a real political issue until the rise of the evangelical movement made Jimmy Carter's evangelicalism a major campaign theme. She decries the fact that today we constantly delve into candidates' religious backgrounds, even as she admits that the question is relevant. But her analysis is uncharacteristic - it is hackneyed, done to death, old as Moses. As I was reading her essay, I found myself thinking, "I've read this before... not as well-written, but I've read it before." In fact, it is nothing more than the common complaint that religion is a private matter and has no substantive place in politics. Is that true?
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Thus came about the post-Conciliar "New Music," with its "anything goes" jettisoning of all musical and theological standards in the practice of Catholic Church music in America, including the heretofore unheard of use of Protestant hymns. "Much of Protestant hymnody," said the composer, "represents the antithesis of our Catholic doctrine and tradition, and is consequently alien to Catholicism. Many of these Protestant songs - - including those of the Lutheran, Presbyterian and Methodist sects - - are eminently singable, but they are not Roman Catholic, for they retain strong non- (if not anti-) Catholic associations. They, thus, are not Sacred music. They confuse and oftentimes antagonize our Catholic faithful. Moreover," continues the composer, "interest in the use of Protestant hymnody reflects a telling symptom of not only ignorance regarding our Catholic musical and historical background, but also a serious misunderstanding of the fundamental premise of Catholic evangelization."
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The Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, has argued in favour of maintaining discrimination against gay couples, saying it is wrong to equate the position with any sort of racial discrimination. Cardinal Pell's argument has the backing of a large Christian lobby group, which is flexing its muscle as the election draws nearer. After being accused of contempt of the New South Wales Parliament this year, Cardinal Pell knows all too well the perils of preaching to politicians.
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We see this happening unfortunately quite often nowadays. It is not a rare feature to see the emergence of ecclesiastics in responsible positions who are intrumentalised by the media and forces inimical to the Church, to make statements critical of the directions from the Roman Pontiff or from the dicastries that carry out his decisions. Others take the attitude of ignoring or disregarding such directions and so great harm in procured for the mission of the Church - especially through the sense of loss and confusion brought about by such attitudes on the faithful.
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Pius XI in accord with Leo XIII and their predecessors, held that no area of our lives, individually or collectively, can be separate from the Social Reign of Christ the King. This includes our business dealings. The Church has the right and competence to critique our economic order when it seeks first wealth and efficiency in priority to Christ's charity and justice. In the next installment we will see what some of these moral principles are, which need to inform a truly Catholic economic order and examine some practical issues in our economic system that need to be informed by the Social Reign of Christ the King.
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On October 12, the speaker at the Catholic Citizens Forum Luncheon will be Rev. Robert Barron. Fr. Barron is Professor of Systematic Theology and Chairman of that department at St. Mary of the Lake University. He received his M.A. from Catholic University of America, M.Div. from the University of St. Mary of the Lake University, and an S.T.D. from the Institute Catholique de Paris. He is the author of several books and his articles on theology and spiritual life have appeared in numerous journals. His book, Thomas Aquinas: Spiritual Master, received the Catholic Press Association First Prize in Spirituality. The subject of his talk will be "Beauty & Evangelization."
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Our friends at Tradition in Action recently reminded us that 'the hatred of the impious is the glory of the Catholic press.' Maybe this is why there has been such a tremendous decline in smarmy, peace-and-justice diocesan newspapers and periodicals that have lost their teeth. In view of the fact that conservative and orthodox websites get so much criticism, attacks and hatred from men of evil, it's ironic that things have changed so little since St. Pius X wrote to the General of the Society of Jesus, Fr. Francis Xavier Wernz, in 1914. The Jesuits were a very different organization then, but the words of Pius X demonstrate that you can judge your effectiveness by the indignation you inspire in your enemies. So if you are an effective AND faithful Catholic, you need to be making some waves, not coasting along.
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THE CLOCK IS TICKING AND MIDNIGHT IS APPROACHING. ILLUMINATED BY THE FALSE LIGHT OF AFFLUENCE AND EASE, SUCCESS AND POWER, WE BECAME BLIND TO THE DARKNESS, AND YET MIDNIGHT APPROACHES, WITH ALL OF THE CERTAINTY OF TIME ITSELF. HAVE WE LEARNED ANYTHING IN THE PAST SIX YEARS, OR ARE WE YET MORE BLIND, MORE DEAF, MORE STEEPED IN SIN? ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQNENCES. 911 WAS A WARNING SHOT FIRED OVER THE BOW OF A SICK SOCIETY. THE WARNING HAS GONE LARGELY UNHEEDED. THE CLOCK IS TICKING. MIDNIGHT IS APPROACHING. PRAYER IS NOW THE ONLY THING THAT WILL AVAIL CHANGE, SO PRAY MY DEAR FRIENDS, PRAY LIKE YOUR LIFE AND THE LIFE OF ALL YOU HOLD DEAR IS AT STAKE.
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The practice of spouses jointly celebrating the sacrament of confession recently garnered support from Catholic News Service veteran columnist Fr. John Deitzen. Provided that couples "approve and consider it helpful for their marriage", Deitzen holds that spouses may confess their sins in each other's presence and receive absolution. He notes only that each spouse would be bound by the seal of confession in regard to what he or she learned about the other. I believe, however, that there are formidable canonical and practical objections to joint sacramental confession, and I set them out for consideration. Deitzen's basic argument runs thus: there is no express canonical or liturgical prohibition against spouses confessing sacramentally in each other's presence, so "couple's confession" is licit. But even if, pro arguendo, no norm expressly prohibits joint confession, one may still ask, so what?
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Modernism consists essentially in affirming that the religious soul must draw from itself, from nothing but itself, the object and motive of its faith. It rejects all revelation imposed upon the conscience, and thus, as a necessary consequence, becomes the negation of the doctrinal authority of the Church established by Jesus Christ, and it denies, moreover, to the divinely constituted hierarchy the right to govern Christian society. The better to understand the significance of this fundamental error, let us recall the teaching of the Catechism on the constitution and mission of the Catholic Church...
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"But since the Modernists (as they are commonly and rightly called) employ a very clever artifice, namely, to present their doctrines without order and systematic arrangement into one whole, scattered and disjointed one from another, so as to appear to be in doubt and uncertainty, while they are in reality firm and steadfast, it will be of advantage, Venerable Brethren, to bring their teachings together here into one group, and to point out the connexion between them, and thus to pass to an examination of the sources of the errors, and to prescribe remedies for averting the evil."
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Saint Louis IX, King of France, learned from his mother's knee to love God and to hate sin. His saintly mother, Blanche of Castile, knew that her son would have to learn to love God as He revealed Himself to men exclusively through the Catholic Church and that he would have to strive to grow in sanctity in order to win Heaven by ruling according to the mind of Christ the King and ever reliant upon Mary our Immaculata Queen. Blanche's ambitions for her son was not that he should rule many lands or win many battles for naturalistic reasons. Her ambitions for her son revolved around his winning souls for the Catholic Church and that he would win his own battle against the world, the flesh, and the devil in order to have the crown of eternal glory placed on his head after his earthly crown signifying his kingly rule was removed following his death.
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Our Lady was chosen by God from all eternity to be the Singular Vessel of Devotion through which He would enter human history and assume a perfect human nature with which to redeem us on the wood of the Holy Cross. The Second Person of the Blessed Trinity dwelt in Our Lady's virginal and immaculate womb for nine months after He had been conceived as Man by the power of the Holy Ghost at the Annunciation. Our Lady gave birth to her Divine Son painlessly in conditions of utter poverty and anonymity in Bethlehem, wrapping Him Him in swaddling clothes and placed Him in the manger, the feeding trough from which the animals who were stabled in that cave were fed.
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Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday lashed out against the "dragon" of materialism that has seized much of the world but said God was more powerful than the seemingly "invincible" trend. While celebrating the Feast of the Assumption marking the Virgin Mary's ascension into heaven, the pope invoked the "red dragon" of evil which figures in the New Testament. The pontiff said the "red dragon" had been embodied in "the great dictatorships of the past century: Nazism and Stalinism."
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The Roman Martyrology, the liturgical calendar of saints and blesseds updated according to the decrees of Vatican Council II and promulgated by John Paul II, shows that today the Church remembers and venerates... "... the approximately eight hundred martyrs of Otranto, in Puglia, pressured to renounce the faith after the crushing assault of the Ottoman soldiers. They were exhorted by blessed Antonio Primaldo, an elderly tailor, to persevere in Christ, and thus through decapitation they obtained the crown of martyrdom." The martyrdom of these eight hundred men took place in 1480, on August 14, the day of their liturgical commemoration. It was because of them that five centuries later, in 1980, John Paul II visited Otranto, the Italian city in which they were martyred.
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Once in a while a group of people get together and launch something that shows promise of being able to truly impact the public debate in a serious fashion. Salvo magazine seems to be such an effort, and it's off to a great start with its first two issues. They came out in Autumn 2006 and Spring 2007. Salvo bills its work as debunking the cultural myths that have undercut human dignity, all but destroyed the notions of virtue and morality, and slowly eroded our appetite for transcendence...and recovering the one worldview that actually works. The premier issue opens with this sentence from its Founder and Editorial Director Richard Moselle: "America is involved in a massive culture war, the intensity of which increases daily.... the division itself can be attributed to a pair of competing worldviews."
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Catholic Citizens of Illinois invites you to join us for a timely and informative discussion by Fr. Nicholas Federspiel, priest of the Diocese of Rockford, parochial vicar of St. Edwards Church in Rockford. The topic of Rev. Federspiel's talk will be "The Existence of Satan", and ow the evidence of Satan's influence on this world be examined and acted on. CCI's monthly luncheon forums are held on the second Friday of every month, from 11:45 AM To 01:30 PM, at a new location, the Union League Club 65 W Jackson Blvd, Chicago, 60604 - (312) 427-7800. Ticket price includes for a full course meal, and are $30.00. Reservations required. Call Maureen at 708-352-5834. The public is welcome.
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"...the recent statement of the Holy See says nothing about any individual's eternal salvation. The linkage of the Church's self-understanding about her visible gifts to conclusions about the invisible gift of an individual's salvation is a different question. Nor does the Church's teaching about her objective gifts draw any conclusions about an individual's subjective holiness. One can be baptized and still sin; one can be ordained and still betray the Lord. Nevertheless, both baptism and ordination remain sacramental means of holiness. What we as Catholics need most is a clear grasp of the Catholic faith..."
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Here's a cool website www.childrenoftheeucharist.org with songs, slide shows and other kid friendly items. Pope Benedict has given his Apostolic Blessing to all who participate in the Worldwide Children's Holy Hour. This is the 5th year for this worldwide holy hour and the 90th anniversary of Fatima. This is a neat site for children of all ages.
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I have been wondering - and seriously so and sadly so - are we on the verge of losing the culture War? Are we about to succumb to the Culture of Death on all fronts - life, love, family and even peace? Having squandered every opportunity in the last 50 years to have fostered and created a Catholic culture of life - even a Catholic party - we seem powerless. The most Catholic states in our country are also the most relentlessly pro-homosexual agenda and pro-abortion. The Republicans are falling all over themselves to give money to Rudy Guiliani. We cannot sell our farms fast enough and send out kids off to work in the casinos. Our home life is in tatters if it exists at all; and our Catholic Universities proudly celebrate and encourage all manner of perversion and non-reproductive sex.
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"The main thing to watch re this document (the "Response") is what it leaves out, e.g.,what Pope Pius XI said in MORTALIUM ANIMOS..." Also nowhere is there mentioned the necessity for conversion to the one true faith, i.e., "there is no sense of urgency for the conversion of non-Catholics." The false proposition is stated that Vatican II didn't change anything. How is this possible when the necessity for conversion to the Catholic Church in accord with Christ's admonition to His disciples at the end of Matthew's Gospel is glaringly missing in the Vatican II docs, i.e., it is not reinforced for salvation's sake? Nowadays, we're heretically told by curia officials ala Kasper that the Jews can still wait for the Messiah, and that the Old Testament has not been superceded by the New! "The principles of a false ecumenism are still there (in this doc)." "The word Church means the 'Kingdom of God on earth.' This is why the Catholic Church can only call itself the Church, not just for reasons of her apostolic succession, per the doc."
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Those who suppose this document denies the doctrine of original sin are wrong, but so are those who presume it teaches that all unbaptized infants who die are saved, as if this were a truth of revelation. It says there are good grounds for the hope that God offers them a way of salvation. This is an important distinction: we don't know, for there has been no revelation about this. We are only trying to assess what we don't know from what we do know. From what has been revealed, we judge it reasonable to hope that God will bring unbaptized infants to heaven. As to your question regarding baptism, the answer is no. In CCC 1257 it says, "We do not know of any means other than baptism that assures entry into eternal beatitude."
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While drafting the decree that would return the old Latin mass to Catholic altars around the world, Pope Benedict XVI rightly predicted that reaction to his directive would range from "joyful acceptance to harsh opposition." But what he did not anticipate was the reaction of pundits and not a few clerics who have tried to dismiss the decree as a curiosity--a nonevent that is likely to have little effect beyond a few "ultraconservative" throwbacks. David Gibson, the author of "The Coming Catholic Church," says that the announcement is "much ado about nothing," and French Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard says that he doesn't "see a tsunami coming." But there is much more at play here than satiating the liturgical appetites of a few traditionalists.
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In a brief document, the Vatican's doctrinal congregation reaffirmed that the Catholic Church is the one, true Church, even if elements of truth can be found in separated Churches and communities. Touching an ecumenical sore point, the document said some of the separated Christian communities, such as Protestant communities, should not properly be called "Churches" according to Catholic doctrine because of major differences over the ordained priesthood and the Eucharist. The Vatican released the text July 10. Titled "Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church," it was signed by U.S. Cardinal William J. Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and approved by Pope Benedict XVI before publication.
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The story of Saint Mary Magdalene being caught in the sin of adultery has many lessons for us weak vessels of clay. Chief among these lessons is the fact that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is willing to forgive even the most heinous of sins if the sinner is truly repentant and desires to reform his life. This is why we must approach Him with confidence in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance, having asked the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary beforehand to turn our hearts to the font of Divine Mercy that is the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.
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In April the whole country was shocked by the mass murder at the Virginia Institute of Technology. We all ask, "How can this happen?" For those whose faith is febrile, there is always the question: "How could God let this happen?" In reality, God did not kill anybody. It is the assassin who did this work. But then people are wont to ask: "Well, what can we say about the providence of God in the midst of such anguish, grief and suffering?" We who are believers need some answer, but that requires some thought. In the Book of Genesis, as God creates the universe, we read again and again, "God saw how good it was." Eventually, the first chapter ends with the words: "God looked at everything He had made, and He found it very good." Note, God did not say it was perfect - only "very good."
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Catholics don't just go to church on Sunday, like other Christians. They go to Mass. Christmas, New Years, weddings, funerals. It seems that we just can't seem to do anything important without this ceremony which some regard as a sacrifice and others as a fellowship meal and still others as "the real presence." So which is it-sacrifice, supper, or "real presence" and why the fixation upon it? Like most things in the New Testament, it is really impossible to understand this fully without some serious knowledge of what we now call the Old Testament. When I first read the account of Moses asking Pharaoh to "let my people go," I thought that Moses was using a God-sanction ruse when he told Pharaoh that the reason he wanted to take the people and their flocks out of Egypt was that they could offer a sacrifice to their God in the desert....
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In an age when the 'modern' Catholic suggest that we consider certain pro-abortion "Catholics" (aka heretics) as "brethren," it is opportune to remind readers of how a great saint, St. Bernard, advised a French Prelate to withdraw any support from Arnold of Brescia, a known heretic of his time. Below are excerpts from St. Bernard's letter.
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A new USA Today/Gallup Poll has found that two-thirds of Americans say creationism is definitely or probably true. The poll also found that by a margin of more than 2-to-1 more Americans believe creationism is "definitely true" as opposed to those who believe as strongly in evolution. Creationism is the idea that God created humans in their present form within the past 10,000 years in accordance with biblical accounts. The debate over creationism and evolution continues to evoke strong emotion across the country in school boards and various state legislatures. It has also become a point of interest in the presidential race, especially among the Republican candidates running.
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Catholic Citizens of Illinois invites you to join us for a timely and informative discussion by Dr. William E. Carroll, Aquinas Fellow in Theology and Science, Blackfriars, University of Oxford and a member of the Faculty of theology of the University of Oxford. The subject of his talk will be "Thomas Aquinas, Contemporary Cosmology and the Origin of the Universe." CCI's monthly luncheon forums are held on the second Friday of every month, from 11:45 AM To 01:30 PM, at a new location, the Union League Club 65 W Jackson Blvd, Chicago, 60604 - (312) 427-7800. Ticket price includes for a full course meal, and are $30.00. Reservations required. Call Maureen at 708-352-5834. The public is welcome.
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Among the teachings that distinguish the Catholic Church is her doctrine of the Mystical Body. The Catholic faith holds that the primary subject of salvation is not the individual but a society. The new life in Christ is a participation in the life of a people, the People of God. It comes through incorporation into the body of which Christ is the head and we are the members. Catholics are saved in the company of others, not apart from them. Salvation, therefore, is never a purely individualistic enterprise. It is not faith alone, nor even faith and hope, that saves; it is finally these "working through charity" that bring salvation. As a member of a body, a Catholic must strive not only for his own salvation but for the salvation of his brothers in Christ. Charity, which is twofold - love of God and of neighbor - demands an active engagement in helping others achieve the sanctification that prepares us for union with Christ in the eschatological wedding feast of the Lamb.
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Among all the many references to this wretched being in the Bible, the Book of Revelation is one of the best sources of knowledge about him and his plan to destroy God's children. He is described in Rev 12:9 as "a huge dragon, the ancient serpent, known as the devil or Satan, the seducer of the whole world." The devil's most serious indictment came from our Blessed Lord who called him, "a liar and the father of lies," and "a murderer from the beginning" (Jn 8:44). The New Testament refers to this origin of all wickedness nearly three hundred times to warn us of his presence and work. As we celebrate the feast of Pentecost with our Church, let us make a profound act of faith in the Holy Spirit, that, no matter how evil our times may be, God will never abandon to the power of evil those who call upon Him. Let us call upon the Holy Spirit to protect us and our loved ones and to renew the face of the earth!
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"Today our Lord Jesus Christ ascended into heaven; let our hearts ascend with him. Listen to the words of the Apostle: If you have risen with Christ, set your hearts on the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God; seek the things that are above, not the things that are on earth. For just as he remained with us even after his ascension, so we too are already in heaven with him, even though what is promised us has not yet been fulfilled in our bodies. Christ is now exalted above the heavens, but he still suffers on earth all the pain that we, the members of his body, have to bear. He showed this when he cried out from above: Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? and when he said: I was hungry and you gave me food. Why do we on earth not strive to find rest with him in heaven even now, through the faith, hope and love that unites us to him?
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Deploy the troops of your mental energy and spiritual resources on the field where the enemy really is, and do not let him divert your attention to what you shall eat, or what you shall put on, or how you shall pay the rent - for your heavenly Father knows that you have need of all these things. Great trials are harbingers of great graces to come, as we can see, for example, in the history of Joseph, son of Jacob, who was sold into slavery in Egypt. Or again, we see it in the life of the great St. Joseph. When he became aware that Mary, his virginal wife, was pregnant, he suffered intensely, yet God sent no angel until after he had been tried and tested. God's coming was at first a source of great pain, but afterwards a source of great and lasting peace. Let us pray to St. Joseph for a deeper understanding of the ways of divine Providence.
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There are certainly many very good and wholesome Catholic organizations which are engaged in the life and death culture war, and yet I would be a bit negligent if I did not call your attention to this one in particular. The Catholic Medical Association website is Cathmed.org and there one finds publications, issues and membership information. While designed especially for physicians as full members, others are encouraged to affiliate with the CMA and its work by seeking membership in related categories. If you are concerned about or interested in the battle for the moral integrity of the practice of medicine in our country you might want to look to the CMA. Good morality is good medicine and the promotion of authentically good medicine will ultimately be good for us all.
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"Our Lady is the archetype of all mothers. Sometimes, a child senses her maternal goodness symbolically through the ambience of a pious family. The affections of this family create an occasion for graces. The first experiences a child has with this affection lead him, though still young, to compare life within the family with that without. Thus, he affirms: 'There is nothing like the family!' He sees that the caresses and love he receives there exist nowhere else. All this affection can be summarized in one word: family. While the word family represents many people, there is another word that signifies just one person, who is the quintessence of the family: mother. A good mother is the epitome of love and affection, and consequently goodness and mercy.
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CCI's monthly luncheon forums are held on the second Friday of every month, from 11:45 AM To 01:30 PM, at a new location, the Union League Club 65 W Jackson Blvd, Chicago, 60604 - (312) 427-7800. Ticket price includes for a full course meal, and are $30.00. Reservations required. Call Maureen at 708-352-5834. The public is welcome. Fr. Milota has been providing speakers, conferences and series of lectures at his parish in Lombard in the new evangelization frequently referred to John Paul II. The parish has become the center of Catholic evangelization in the western suburbs and the Chicago area.
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In hopes of shedding some light on this controversial theological matter, Inside the Vatican's Andrew Rabel, an Australian Catholic writer, in late April conducted an exclusive interview with an International Theological Commission member, the American nun Sr. Sara Butler, a Missionary Servant of the Most Blessed Trinity (MSBT). She is one of two women appointed to the International Theological Commission by John Paul II in 2004, and presently teaches dogmatic theology at St. Joseph's Seminary in Dunwoodie, New York.
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The Depaul Conservative Alliance is sponsoring an appreciation dinner for local Catholic leaders featuring remarks by keynote speaker George Weigel. The festivities begin at 5:30 with dinner at 6pm at the CORTELYOU COMMONS, 2324 N. Freemont Street in Chicago. To reserve a seat for dinner, please call Nick Hahn at 773 687 5722 or nhahn3@msn.com. Dinner is $30. Please send a check to 2250 N. Sheffield Ave, Suite 317, Mailbox 209, Chicago, IL 60614. Final count must be submitted soon, so get your reservations in NOW!
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It should be clear from the above survey of relevant Catholic magisterial statements that those who now talk about Limbo as only ever having been a mere "hypothesis", rather than a doctrine, are giving a very misleading impression of the state of the question. They are implying by this that the pre-Vatican II Church traditionally held, or at least implicitly admitted, that an alternate 'hypothesis' for unbaptized infants was their attainment of eternal salvation - Heaven. Nothing could be further from the truth. Limbo for unbaptized infants was indeed a theological "hypothesis"; but the only approved alternate hypothesis was not Heaven, but very mild hellfire as well as exclusion from the beatific vision! In short, while Limbo as distinct from very mild hellfire was a 'hypothetical' destiny for unbaptized infants, their eternal exclusion from Heaven (with or without any 'pain of sense') - at least after the proclamation of the Gospel, and apart from the 'baptism of blood' of infants slaughtered out of hatred for Christ - this was traditional Catholic doctrine, not a mere hypothesis. No, it was never dogmatically defined. But the only question is whether the doctrine was infallible by virtue of the universal and ordinary magisterium, or merely "authentic".
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Catholics have a heavy burden. Ours is an historical religion. It has lasted from the time of Christ, who handed it over to St. Peter and the apostles, down to the present time. We have gone through all of the vicissitudes of time since the death of Christ, and we will go through more before his second coming. Some of those times have been very happy times. Some of them are very sad. Of course, as Jesus did in his life so we do in ours. We take the bad with the good and make of it what we can. As Jesus drew victory out of failure, so we too strive to serve him every day in every way that presents itself to us through our centennial and beyond.
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ONE of the princes of the Catholic Church took to his pulpit yesterday to rebuke the nay-sayers and assert that a religious revival was taking place among the nation's youth. Cardinal George Pell, Sydney's Archbishop, told a packed Easter mass at St Mary's Cathedral that Australia was not as irreligious as some believed. If India was the world's most religious society and Sweden the least, he argued, Australia was "somewhere in the middle, closer to Sweden, but not nearly as close as much public discussion would suggest".
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Races have been run, ribbons have been worn, and the multimillion-dollar business of breast cancer closed yet another successful October awareness month. While grocery and department stores stocked counters with anything pink, hoping to cash in on the breast-cancer craze, the Mayo Clinic quietly released a study. No hype, no fanfare, and absolutely no media coverage. Perhaps because the study reiterated the link between oral contraceptives and breast cancer. The research concluded that the risk for breast cancer is increased by 44 percent for women who take the Pill before conceiving their first child. It is such a significant risk that the main author of the investigation stated that women must be informed of it. In 2005 the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified the Pill as a "group one carcinogen," placing it in the company of such other deadly chemicals as mustard gas, asbestos, arsenic, and neutron radiation.
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This past winter, Chicago became stigmatized nationally as anti-Christian because it stopped the showing of a trailer for the movie The Nativity Story at a Christmas festival on Daley Plaza. Now the public and people of faith can commemorate Jesus' passion and death on the cross and celebrate his life and his resurrection. The city stated it would be "insensitive to the many people of different faiths" -- in disregard for citizens' First Amendment rights which guarantee private religious expression in a public forum like the Daley Plaza. Representatives of several Christian denominations will hold a press conference and display a 19-foot cross in Daley Plaza on Friday, April 6 at 10:00 am in preparation for a sunrise Resurrection service on Sunday, April 8 at 6:15 am. The erection of the cross and the service will take place on Daley Plaza located at 50 West Washington Street in Chicago.
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This past winter, Chicago became stigmatized nationally as anti-Christian because it stopped the showing of a trailer for the movie The Nativity Story at a Christmas festival on Daley Plaza. Now the public and people of faith can commemorate Jesus' passion and death on the cross and celebrate his life and his resurrection. The city stated it would be "insensitive to the many people of different faiths" -- in disregard for citizens' First Amendment rights which guarantee private religious expression in a public forum like the Daley Plaza. Representatives of several Christian denominations will hold a press conference and display a 19-foot cross in Daley Plaza on Friday, April 6 at 10:00 am in preparation for a sunrise Resurrection service on Sunday, April 8 at 6:15 am. The erection of the cross and the service will take place on Daley Plaza located at 50 West Washington Street in Chicago.
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CCI NOTES: Contemplating eternal damnation is not pleasant. Ignoring the subject entirely, however, has consequences. One of the greatest tragedies of the decline in religious education in the United States is the virtual ignorance Catholics have of fundementals of their faith. We will all be "particularly" judged at the end of our lives based on the conduct of our lives, and there are only three possibilites of eternal reward - Heaven, purgatory, or hell. As we approach Holy Week, it's wise to consider these are not vague and distant theories, but theological realities that in time, we all must face. In this case, an ounce of prevention could be equal to an eternity of cure...
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These are things we should think about as we celebrate Holy Week, and the Church guides us through them beautifully. I encourage all Catholics to participate in the Holy Week services. They are somewhat longer than the ordinary Sunday Mass and somewhat more involved, but they do represent an experience that is salutary, that is for our salvation. When we think about what our sins cost and how much God loves us, we are blessed with hopeful thoughts in a very dreary world.
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"Statistics show that Catholics are indistinguishable from the rest of society in terms of their behavior and their voting patterns. Yet, our Catholic Faith has much to contribute in terms of guidance and direction in the teachings of the Church on the moral issues of the day. It is our belief that there has been a failure of catechesis for the last 30 or 40 years and our Catholic people do not know their Faith. We are seeking to fill that void."
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Howard Center President Dr. Allan Carlson addressed a crowd of pro-family leaders in Chicago today regarding the World of Congress of Families to be held in Warsaw, May 11-13. The World Congress of Families (WCF) is a rallying center for the world's family systems grounded in religious faith. In response to a militant secular individualism found in parts of the 'post modern' West, the WCF fosters an international network of pro-family organizations, scholars, and political organizations that seek to restore the natural family as the fundamental social unit, the 'seedbed' of good citizenship. The Congress project affirms and builds a positive united front among the family-centered religious peoples of the globe.
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People often ask why there seems to be a reluctance on the part of priests to hear confessions today, even though it is the right of people to have confessors available at reasonable times. There seems to be a diminution in the amount of time devoted in each parish for confession. Part of the reason for this is that we have Saturday evening Masses which require other services of the priest during the time which used to be devoted to confession. But I think one of the reasons is that there is a general falling off of priestly piety. I do not think this is particularly true of our priests, but rather of priests generally across the country.
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Just for the record, Sean Hannity really is a dissenting Catholic and a public scandal to the Faith. He should be rebuked by his pastor or bishop, not by me, but since that has not been forthcoming in his decade or so of public dissent on radio and TV, somebody in authority had to say something. Hannity, as we know, is shameless on birth control, and judging from the interview, he hasn't even the vocabulary to rationally defend his position in the face of his Church's clear teaching. Hannity is also clearly pro-choice on abortion in cases of rape, incest and life of the mother, and he is really cozy with the likes of Rudy Giuliani whose love for abortion and everything gay is hardly a secret. It has even been revealed that Hannity's website, Hannity.com has a gay dating service that Sean knows about and apparently "has no problem with;" no different from his attitude in regard to birth control. So much for the "devout Catholic" Hannity. If that is devout, then Hugh Heffner is reverent.
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Historically, individualism began as a Protestant doctrine. Since it leads, by its very nature, to a thoughtless variety of atheism, it now may be called an atheist doctrine. When someone tries to explain a Christian practice like abstinence from meat on individualist, private grounds, it is not that person's misinformation that perturbs me. I worry rather that such a person is merely one sign of the malformation of an entire culture. When Catholics can no longer perceive themselves as part of God's Kingdom, as intrinsically bound up in the sacramental movements of the Church's life, it is only a matter of time before they can no longer confess any belief in the Trinity. And unfortunately, it is far easier to inculcate a belief than it is to help someone to see creation anew.
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...Catholic men and women in the media need to be truly Catholic or at least stop being hypocrites. We have enough pretenders to the title of Catholic in public life without being treated to superficial assessments of profound moral issues. Rules are important, but Lent is not about rule-breaking, it's about conversion of heart; and on the most important moral issues of our day, public Catholics like Hannity have no right to profess "another gospel," or the faith of millions - and indeed their own souls - are in serious jeopardy.
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CCI NOTES: The web abounds with cool websites that are great assets in fighting misrepresentation or misunderstanding of the Catholic Faith as it has been handed down by the early fathers of the church. STAYCATHOLIC.com is a goldmine of wisdom from Irenaeus, Tertullian St. John Chrysostom, Athanasius, Basil and many other great Catholic thinkers and martyrs upon whose shoulders the Faith was carried for centuries. If part of your Lenten routine includes more careful study of Church teachings, STAYCATHOLIC.com is a good place to start.
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As our correspondent points out, many practicing Catholics habitually omit the final "Amen" from the Our Father, and this fact is probably attributable to the new liturgical practice. That this "Amen" does form part of the Lord's Prayer in non-liturgical contexts is shown, for example, by its inclusion in the common prayers found in the new Compendium of the Catechism. Since it is highly unlikely that the liturgical text is going to change, the only solution is to pay attention when we pray the Our Father during the rosary and similar situations and form a habit of saying the "Amen." Catholic media, especially radio, can have a positive effect in this effort and should be politely encouraged to correct any oversights which have slipped in by force of habit.
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On 11 February 2007, when the Church keeps the liturgical memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes, the Fifteenth World Day of the Sick will be celebrated in Seoul, Korea. A number of meetings, conferences, pastoral gatherings and liturgical celebrations will take place with representatives of the Church in Korea, health care personnel, the sick and their families. Once again the Church turns her eyes to those who suffer and calls attention to the incurably ill, many of whom are dying from terminal diseases. They are found on every continent, particularly in places where poverty and hardship cause immense misery and grief. Conscious of these sufferings, I will be spiritually present at the World Day of the Sick, united with those meeting to discuss the plight of the incurably ill in our world and encouraging the efforts of Christian communities in their witness to the Lord's tenderness and mercy.
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At least three different Saint Valentines, all of them martyrs, are mentioned in the early martyrologies under date of 14 February. One is described as a priest at Rome, another as bishop of Interamna (modern Terni), and these two seem both to have suffered in the second half of the third century and to have been buried on the Flaminian Way, but at different distances from the city. In William of Malmesbury's time what was known to the ancients as the Flaminian Gate of Rome and is now the Porta del Popolo, was called the Gate of St. Valentine. The name seems to have been taken from a small church dedicated to the saint which was in the immediate neighborhood. Of both these St. Valentines some sort of Acta are preserved but they are of relatively late date and of no historical value. Of the third Saint Valentine, who suffered in Africa with a number of companions, nothing further is known.
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So important was Lent to both Eastern and Western Christians that they actually had a separate season to prepare for it. Thus, the day after Septuagesima Sunday, they would begin a period of voluntary fasting that would grow more severe as it approached the full and obligatory fast of Lent. The amount of food would be reduced, and the consumption of certain items, such as butter, milk, eggs, and cheese, would gradually be abandoned. Starting on the Thursday before Ash Wednesday, this self-imposed asceticism would culminate in abstinence from meat. Thus the name for this seven-day period before Ash Wednesday, is "Carnival," from the Latin carne levarium, meaning "removal of meat." Finally, within the week of Carnival, the last three days (the three days prior to Lent) would be reserved for going to confession This period was known as "Shrovetide," from the old English word "to shrive," or to have one's sins forgiven through absolution.
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It is not unusual today to hear from the pulpit or in the classroom, or to read in popular or learned articles and books, that Jesus Christ only gradually grew in the realization of His Sonship and His Messianic mission - that He was mistaken or ignorant about certain facts. This idea of the fallibility of Christ's knowledge, once confined to certain theological circles, has been popularized since the Second Vatican Council by numerous theologians. This new theology has ancient antecedents. The Arians, the Nestorians, and the Agnoetes, a monophystic sect of the sixth century, attributed ignorance to Christ. The sophisticated and nuanced form of this theological position differentiates the Divine consciousness from the human consciousness of Christ, holding that as Christ as God knows all things but as Man He was subject to positive ignorance and error.
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Few people realize the value of writing. It was St. Augustine who confessed, as he said, that he was "one of those who write because they have made some progress and who, by means of writing, make further progress" in the spiritual life (Letter 143). The proverbs of all nations praise the value of writing: "Writing makes an exact man," "Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well," and "Look into your heart and write." Except for the inspiration to write, we would not have the Sacred Scriptures. What is the Bible, except the inspired word of God in written form?
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Saddam Hussein was executed on Saturday morning in Iraq, by Iraq. Was that an execution of justice? Or was it, as a Vatican spokesman calls it, "tragic"? National Review Online asked a group of Catholic thinkers to weigh in.
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In Mary we praise that which places her above all others, that is, fruitfulness of offspring together with virginity. For never has it been known in this world that anyone was at the same time mother and virgin. And see of Whom she is mother. Where does your astonishment at this so wondrous dignity lead you? Is it not to this, that you may gaze in wonder yet never sufficiently revere? Is she not in your veneration, nay, in the esteem of Truth itself, raised above choirs of angels? Does not Mary address the Lord and God of all the angels as Son, saying: Son, why hast thou done so to us?
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As a traditional Catholic, an important question I have often asked myself is why do some Catholics turn away from their faith and turn to New Age spirituality? I have concluded that the answer can be found in one word-- PRIDE. The pride comes from the desire to be like God; the same temptation that took place with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The temptation that says: "You are equal to God. You are the Creator." These are some of the promises of the New Age Movement... In 2003 the Vatican released a major document entitled: "Jesus Christ, the Bearer of the Water of Life.(JCBWL)" I would recommend that not only Catholic Christians read this worthwhile document, but all Christians because new age philosophies have migrated in all cultures and in all walks of life.
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FATHER FESSIO: Pope Benedict is a man of principles who sees deeply into things, and he recognises that the Qur'an first of all is presented as the unmediated and uncreated word of God which cannot be changed, for which there's no magisterium to interpret it, and that therefore if you try and see what society will be, if it's going to be consistent with the Qur'an, then you end up with this principle of political life as you've enunciated, as you've said. And you cannot have a society based on that principle integrated into Western pluralism which is antithetical to that principle.
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Catholic Citizens of Illinois is a 501c3 non-profit dedicated to defending the Catholic faith in the public square. Please take a look at the "about us" section for more information. For 8 years, we have sponsored a monthly speakers forum in Chicago featuring the champions of the faith, authors, educators, movement leaders, and some of the most heroic clerics in the country. Your contribution not only keeps us going, it brings our award winning "Catholic Citizen" newsletter to you every quarter. Chock full of stories and reports you may have missed, this also includes our speaker schedule for the luncheons. To see a few samples of past newsletters, read more...
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When your Editor was a kid in the 1950s, at Christmas time, he always heard the refrain, "Let's Put Christ Back in Christmas." Back then, Christmas had become commercialized and consumerized, and it's gotten much worse since then. Now the "Season's Greetings" displays often go up in the stores before Halloween. But at least back then, virtually everyone said "Merry Christmas." But nowadays to say that to someone you don't know to be a rather serious Christian is risky. Now people say "Happy Holidays" instead.
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The advent of The Son of God in human flesh has changed the world, for those who believe. Because of His birth at Bethlehem, we now have access to the peace of God in a way never before available, through the sacrament of reconciliation. Because of His birth at Bethlehem, we now have the assurance of God's friendship, through the sacrament of the Eucharist in which we receive the same Jesus whom Mary brought forth on Christmas Day. Because of His birth at Bethlehem, we now have available the fullness of divine truth through the Church which the Son of Mary established to teach us what we must know to reach our eternal destiny. Because of His birth at Bethlehem we now can tap the resources of divine power which comes from Christ, to enable us to live up to the humanly impossible demands He places on those who are called by His name.
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The eco-pantheism preached by the Archdiocese of Brisbane in its Lenten Program 2003 is representative. According to a report in Australia's Fidelity magazine of June 2003, the 64-page program booklet is replete with glossy environmental images but contains no photos of saints, churches or Christian symbols, not even a cross. Scripture readings are wickedly twisted to accommodate the Green agenda e.g. God's command for Abraham to sacrifice a trapped goat instead of his son Isaac is perversely used to insist that God does not differentiate between "any living being - animal or human" since they are all equally "sacred." On page 22, parishioners are even asked to invoke the blessing of a feminist goddess: "Sophia-Christ, walk with us."
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Doctors at the Mayo Clinic removed approximately one-fourth of Bishop Thomas G. Doran's left lung during a four-hour surgery Thursday, Dec. 14. Two spots, one in each of the bishop's lungs, were discovered during his annual routine physical exam earlier this month. Doctors notified the bishop of the discovery and asked him to return to the clinic for additional testing on Tuesday, Dec. 12. Those tests revealed a benign condition in the right lung but suggested a malignancy in a tumor located in the left lung.
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For a long time now many people have written in this or a similar vein - that it is too bad that the Christmas season has become as much a celebration of exuberant consumerism as it is the celebration of the Incarnation. It strikes many as odd that the coming of Christ as a poor and humble child should somehow become an occasion for profligate consumption and, frequently, self-indulgence. We wonder why it has come to this, and so we resolve that next year it will be different. But it will not be different unless we, ourselves, become different...
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Many Romans venerated the sun, whose birthday was Dec. 25, or a virility god named Mithra with the same birthday. Also, the Romans observed a raucous celebration called Saturnalia Dec. 17-23. Thus, Dec. 25 offered a date with a good theological basis that also would counter several pagan holidays. Although we don't know the final steps, in 336 the church at Rome officially observed the "birth day of Christ" Dec. 25. This tradition spread. But what about Jan. 6? The church decided to use that day for Jesus' manifestation to the whole world, symbolized by the Magi.
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CCI NOTES: As Christmans approaches, the incredible gift and miracle of the Holy Eucharist is easy to miss among the hustle and bustle of the holiday. Father Hardon's article reminds us that the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist is just that, and that there is grave crisis in the Catholic Church as more and more "Catholics" adopt the sinful notion that Communion is "just a symbol." At the end of Father Hardon's article, we have included a summary of Biblical references prepared by John Salza, that provide unquestionable validation of the Catholic traditions regarding Christ's real presence in the Eucharist.
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A short, feisty woman with a rapid-fire presentation style, Susan Tassone of the Chicago Archdiocesan Office of Missions, presented an enthusiastic case for prayers aimed at gaining salvation for the souls left in a holding pattern in purgatory, awaiting entrance to heaven. During a monthly gathering of parents and religious education students Nov. 6 at St. Jude Parish in Joliet, Tassone, the founder of the Holy Souls Mass Apostolate, revealed the details of her zealous campaign to promote prayers that would enable suffering souls to skirt a lengthy stay in purgatory for the joys of heaven.
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Leo XIII composed the St Michael prayer after a horrifying vision of Satan running freely in the world. God probably showed him several clips from cable and network TV sit-coms and "dramas" that we see everyday. In addition to the short version of the prayer, there is a longer version that Leo composed presented below.
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Catholic Citizens has produced this 30-second radio ad and welcomes you to submit it to Catholic stations in your state as a "public service" message, or better yet, support your Catholic stations by assembling a group of your friends to pay for the ad to be broadcast. To download, move the cursor directly over the "click hear to listen" wording. 'Right click' on your mouse and highlight 'save target as' menu choice. A dialogue box will pop up and give you the opportunity to download the file to your hard drive. From that point, you can send it as an attachment. This is a high quality 'radio ready' recording (exact time, 29 seconds.) Don't leave your CATHOLIC FAITH behind when you vote in November!!
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Fr. Frank Hoffman, a priest for Opus Dei, has served as Chaplain of Northridge Preparatory School in suburban Chicago. His "Question & Answer" column appears in OSV's Catholic Answer. Ordained as a priest in 1992 by John Paul II, he holds a doctorate in Canon Law from the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross (Rome), a BA in History from Northwestern and an M.B.A. from Notre Dame. For over 25 years he has work with youth and in education since 1996. He is Fr. Rocky who answers e-mail questions on Relevant Radio. The subject: "The Real Opus Dei." Luncheons are at 12:00 noon at the Chicago Athletic Association, 12 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago. Tickets: $25.00. Reservations required. Call Maureen at 708-352-5834. The public is welcome.
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"Initially, there were only twelve apostles, largely shabby fishermen from Galilee, who were able, with the grace of God and under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to bring the light of Christ to 2000 and more years of human history. Why should we think we are any less capable, provided that we are people of prayer, dedication and devotion, of doing something similar in our time and place. Let it be our prayer that God will give us here and now, the ability to dare to be different, and to stand for Christ whatever the cost, and to convince our world that our Catholic faith is so beautiful that all people would wish it to be true, and then to inform our world in the most certain terms that it is true."
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At the basis of this attitude is a false idea of loyalty to the hierarchy. When the pope speaks ex cathedra on faith or morals, then unconditional acceptance and submission is required of every Catholic. But it is false to extend this loyalty to encyclicals in which new theses are proposed. This is not to deny that the magisterium of the Church extends much farther than the dogmas. If an encyclical deals with a question of faith or morals and is based on the tradition of the holy Church -- that is, expresses something which the Church has always taught -- then we should humbly accept its teaching. This is the case with the encyclical Humanae Vitae: although we do not have here the strict infallibility of a defined dogma, the content of the encyclical nevertheless belongs to that sphere of the Church's magisterium which we must accept as true.
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America needs God and His true religion to restore national morality, a pillar of our society. Washington knew that those who oppose religion undermine the national morality of this great country when he said, "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and citizens."
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Secular forces fear a unified Christian front, for they know that such a voting block, a block that cuts across racial and regional lines, would prove unstoppable. And the best thing is that this block is not only possible, but probable. How can we make this theory a reality? Christians must have a "come-to-Jesus meeting" with each other, purge politics from the sanctuary, recommit to biblical truth, and actively engage the world by the means provided by scripture. Only then will the city on a hill begin to shine once again. Vote your values, not your party, this November.
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The future for the Catholic Church was bleak because young Catholics had become confused about their faith, Archbishop of Sydney Cardinal George Pell has warned. In a speech he is due to give to Catholic educators today, Cardinal Pell partly blames comparative religion courses and "contemporary propaganda" for taking young Catholics "beyond tolerance and ecumenism and towards muddle". Cardinal Pell said "religious confusion" among young Catholics was worse than for other Christian youth.
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So let us continue to work and pray for the miraculous appointment of at least one 'British Bruskewitz', while never failing to recognise the present treacherous and filthy state of the Church as the mutilated body of Our Blessed Lord Himself. And let us resolve to endure this agony with Him and His Blessed Mother, persevering in faith to the last, as Father de Caussade S.J. exhorts in this apposite Marian reflection: Mary will witness the flight of the Apostles; but she will remain herself constant at the foot of the Cross. She will recognise her Son, no matter how disfigured He may be by spittle and wounds, for, contrariwise, His disfiguring wounds make Him the more adorable and lovable to His tender Mother; the more He is blasphemed, the greater will be her veneration.
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Why do the champions of evolution in the classroom, the people who insist there is no God and that we are just highly-evolved animals, oppose violence? How does that work? Doesn't the whole point of evolution revolve around the idea that violence not only cannot be removed from the world, but that any attempt to remove it would destroy the very process that created the rich biodiversity we are all told we must preserve? If we believe in evolution, if we love what it has created, then why oppose the process through which it creates?
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Let no one, says St. Bernard, think lightly of prayer: 'Let no one undervalue his prayer, for God does not undervalue it . . . he will give either what we ask, or what he knows to be better...' God gives to all the grace of prayer, in order that thereby they may obtain every help, and even more than they need, for keeping the divine law, and for persevering till death. If we are not saved, the whole fault will be ours; and we shall have our own failure to answer for, because we did not pray.
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Samuel Taylor Coleridge, is not as well known for his philosophical as for his poetic works. In one of the former, Essays on His Own Times, he writes: "In every state, not wholly barbarous, a philosophy, good or bad, there must be.... such as is the existing spirit of speculation [in other words, such as is the quality of this philosophy], during any given period, such will be the spirit and tone of the religion, legislation, and morals, nay, even of the fine arts, the manners, and the fashions. Nor is this the less true, because the great majority of men live like bats, but in twilight, and know and feel the philosophy of their age only by its reflections and refractions".
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It was reported a few years ago that the remains of Pope John XXIII were incorrupt, but there was a debate over whether this was a sign of sanctity or simply due to regular preservation methods. Could you please explain the significance of this further?
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ROMA, August 11, 2006 - All those who are expected to attend Benedict XVI's private seminar with his former theology students at Castel Gandolfo in early September will come with the necessary documents tucked away in their briefcases. Among the papers, an article published by "L'Osservatore Romano" on January 16, 2006, stands out. It is signed Fiorenzo Facchini, who is both priest and scientist, and teaches anthropology at the University of Bologna. He has written extensively on the question of evolution.
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BEND - In my column of two weeks ago, I commented on the response of young families and high school students to the invitation, at our summer camps, to enter into adoration of our Blessed Lord a bit more intensely. I was very pleasantly amazed then, and I continue to be affected by what I saw there. Those experiences and my subsequent reflection on them led me back to Pope John Paul II's encyclical, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, (The Church Draws Her Life from the Eucharist). While there are many sections of this 2003 encyclical that would be very good to explore and comment upon, I choose only one paragraph from section 61, which provides a global summary of the Holy Father's call to greater devotion to our Lord in the Eucharist.
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If there is a danger that believers face at present in regard to the Eucharist, it is to trivialise it. There was a time when it was not received so frequently, and fasting and confession had to precede it. Today virtually everyone approaches it. Let us understand one another. It is progress; it is normal that participation in Mass also implies Communion; that is why it exists. But all this entails a mortal risk.
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WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The U.S. bishops will be asked to approve a new translation of the Order of Mass when they meet in Los Angeles June 15-17. If the new translation is adopted as proposed and subsequently approved by the Vatican, Catholics will have to learn a number of changes in their Mass prayers and responses. Among the more obvious will be:-- Whenever the priest says "The Lord be with you," the people will respond, "And with your spirit." The current response is "And also with you." -- In the first form of the penitential rite, the people will confess that "I have sinned greatly ... through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault." In the current version, that part of the prayer is much shorter: "I have sinned through my own fault." -- The Nicene Creed will begin "I believe" instead of "We believe" -- a translation of the Latin text instead of the original Greek text. -- The Sanctus will start, "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God of hosts." The current version says, "Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might."
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VATICAN CITY, APRIL 14, 2006 (Zenit.org).- The Pontifical Household preacher warns that truth of Christ's passion and death is being subjected to media manipulation. In the presence of Benedict XVI in St. Peter's Basilica, the preacher, Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, in his Good Friday homily, quoted St. Paul.
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In the Church today the intellectual elite ('liberals') associate orthodoxy with religious fundamentalism, conservatism and right-wing Catholicism. It has been applied to Catholics as a 'put-down' implying that orthodox Catholics are ignorant, backward, rigid and self righteous with a very immature faith. But exactly what does it mean to be orthodox?
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The word "agony" said of Jesus in Gethsemane (Luke 22:44) must be understood in the original sense of struggle, more than in the present one of agony. The time comes when prayer becomes combat, effort, agony. I am not speaking, at this moment, of the struggle against distractions, namely, the struggle with ourselves. I am speaking of the struggle with God. This occurs when God asks us to do something that our nature is not ready to give him, and when
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SAINT PAUL - MINNEAPOLIS, March 8, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Rev. Robert Altier, the priest silenced by local Archbishop Harry J. Flynn for his opposition to a controversial sex education program for children from kindergarten up, has written to explain his position, as reported on the Catholic news site, Spirit Daily (see http://www.spiritdaily.com/churchgyrations.htm)
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When I was an altar boy in Boston during the Korean War, our parish offered three weekday morning Masses -- 5:30, 6:15, and 7:00 -- and attendance was quite high. Many attendees were praying for their sons at war, I'm sure. Perhaps half of these people, on average, received the Eucharist. Presumably those who didn't had either consumed food since midnight (the old Eucharistic fast) or were not in the "state of grace."Over a 25-year period, from 1972 to 1997, I watched the percentage of Catholics receiving the Eucharist at Sunday Mass increase markedly. I use the term "watch," because for all those years I was one of the few who remained in the pew. You see, I was a sinner unwilling to confess and relinquish certain types of sins. Knowing how Jesus railed against self-righteousness, I refused to receive the Eucharist sacrilegiously.
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"Let the children come to me..." Mk 10:13 Presidential speechwriter and best-selling author Peggy Noonan, recently published a book: JOHN PAUL THE GREAT: Remembering a Spiritual Father. In the book, she writes (p. 235): "We all want a spiritual father. Whatever the circumstances of your life or family, whatever strong fathers you have in your life, we all want a spiritual father. We want someone who will stand for what is difficult and right, what is impossible but true. We are human, and so we don't always want to live by the truth or be governed by it. But we are grateful when someone stands for it. And when he walks onto the balcony and you can see him and reach to him and know he is there-well, that is something."
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MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL, Minnesota, February 28, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Minneapolis/St. Paul diocese is the latest to incorporate a controversial child education program that many parents argue is too sexually explicit for their children. Talking about Touching, the program in question, is one recently approved by Archbishop Harry Flynn for parochial schools in the diocese, yet many parents don't want schools corrupting their pre-kindergarten to grade 8 kids with discussions about sexuality. The curriculum is part of a "safe environment" program aimed ostensibly at preventing the sexual abuse of children, mandated for all U.S. diocese' by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.
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February 22, 2006 marks the 75th Anniversary of the appearance of Jesus to St. Faustina. Everywhere you turn, people are talking about Divine Mercy! Hurricanes, Floods, Tsunamis, Global Warming, and Fires. Hardly an article can be written about any of these events without the thought of the Second Coming of Jesus and Divine chastisement.
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ROME, February 15, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Judges from Italy's highest court have thrown out a suit aimed at eliminating crucifixes from the country's public schools, arguing they are symbolic of the Christian values that underpin all principles held dear by secular society.
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ELEANOR HALL: The Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, has laughed off a complaint made about him to the Vatican, by a group of high-profile Australian Catholics. The group says Cardinal Pell's interpretation of Catholic doctrine is "inaccurate, misleading and not true to the Catholic tradition".And it has accused Cardinal Pell of denying the rights of Catholics to make moral judgements based on individual conscience. But George Pell has defended his teachings, and dismissed his critics, as Jean Kennedy reports.
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The Christian case for marriage is one of liberation and real human dignity. How we frame our thinking about a question helps to shape the answer we arrive at. The language of a discussion is a crucial part of the discussion itself. If we don't examine and challenge the vocabulary of a debate, we can count on losing it.
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We are faced with something of a mystery these days. On the one hand, our young people manifest an eagerness to know the things of the spirit. On the other hand, they seem to have more than a little difficulty in arriving at an appreciation of what makes up our ancient and ever new Catholic faith.
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Many people will remember that, before the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, at the end of every Mass the celebrant and the faithful knelt to recite a prayer to Mary and one to Michael the Archangel. This is a very beautiful prayer and brings great benefits to all those who pray it.
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I am the product of a "dumbed down" generation. During my "Catholic" instruction in the late 1960s, I can't recall having ever seen a monstrance, prayed a novena, heard Gregorian chant, taken part in a May crowning or prayed a benediction prayer. When Rome recently asked for churches to again start the "Forty Hours" devotion, I found myself asking people exactly what that entailed. So I struggle even in adulthood, reaching back like an orphaned child searching for her parental roots. At one time in history, the roots of traditional Catholic prayers and truths might have been easy to find. But that is no longer true. Sadly, one can no longer simply walk into any Catholic church and find all those universal things that are part of true Catholicism.
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Q: I know of priests who wear their cassock on Sunday but do not wear it in public. Why is this? Are there guidelines that priests have to wear a cassock in church but not outside? - J.G., Georgia A: The use of a cassock (or soutane), an ankle-length garment, worn by clerics and choristers, remains common in some parts of the world while in others it has almost disappeared or, as our reader points out, is reserved for liturgical functions.
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AN ITALIAN judge has ordered a priest to appear in court this month to prove that Jesus Christ existed. The case against Father Enrico Righi has been brought in the town of Viterbo, north of Rome, by Luigi Cascioli, a retired agronomist who once studied for the priesthood but later became a militant atheist.
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December marks the 40th anniversary of the close of the Second Vatican Council. So these final months of 2005 are a good time to reflect on the needs of the Church in today's world and our own commitment to Catholic discipleship.
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ROME (CNS) -- The Vatican has told communities of the Neocatechumenal Way to join their entire parish at least once a month for Mass and to phase out their practice of receiving Communion seated around a table. The instructions were contained in a Dec. 1 letter from Cardinal Francis Arinze, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, published in late December by an Italian newspaper and an Italian magazine.
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Far into the night, at the coldest time of the year, in a chilly grotto, more suitable for a flock of beasts than for humans, the promised Messiah - Jesus - the savior of mankind, comes into the world in the fullness of time. There are none who clamor around him: only an ox and an ass lending their warmth to the newborn infant; with a humble woman, and a poor and tired man, in adoration beside him.
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We are all familiar with the carol, "The Twelve Days of Christmas." We have all smiled indulgently at the extravagance of the lover who showered upon his beloved so many fantastic and inconvenient gifts. Every day of the Christmas season she received a new token of his love, each more fabulous than the last and increasingly numerous, until she was the proud possessor of twenty-three birds, some valuable jewelry, a varied assortment of musicians and entertainers, and eight milkmaids.
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Caricatures of Catholic belief have been a staple of American life since the Colonial period. Once upon a time, the cartoons were drawn and the caricatures were promoted by Protestant bigots. That's rarely the case anymore, except on the fringes of the religious fever swamps (and, to be sure, among certain devout secularists). In an odd historical twist, cartoon Catholicism and the crudest caricatures of Catholic belief are often promoted today by Catholic political leaders. Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino is a case in point.
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CHESTNUT HILL, Massachusetts, DEC. 16, 2005 (Zenit.org).- In an age of same-sex "marriages" and children having "two mommies," the meaning of fatherhood has become blurred for many. James Stenson, educator and author of parenting books, including "Father, the Family Protector" (Scepter), clearly sees men's irreplaceable and imperative role in their marriages and families. Stenson shared with ZENIT the different ways men are protectors, and how they uniquely contribute to the development of their sons and daughters.
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CALGARY, Alberta, Dec. 12, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Bishop Frederick Henry, of the Calgary Diocese, called upon Catholics to "push back" against the forces of secularism in our society, in an interview with Zenit news yesterday. In recent years, Henry has been an unusually outspoken public defender of Catholic principles in contrast to the very timid response by most Canadian religious leaders to on-going, serious attacks against traditional Christian culture and beliefs.
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The Catholic News Service News Briefs as I write this have the headline, "Bishops Debate Whether Vatican Document is Total Ban On Gays." It seems to me that the whole of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church has suffered an attack of dyslexia. See what you think.
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VATICAN CITY, DEC. 6, 2005 (Zenit.org).- The Second Vatican Council teaches that "the Church of Christ is the Catholic Church" and remains in her forever "in its fullness," notes a study published by L'Osservatore Romano. A long article in the Dec. 5-6 Italian edition of the Vatican's semiofficial newspaper clarifies interpretations that arose from that historic meeting of the world's bishops, which attenuate the identification between the Church of Christ and the Catholic Church.
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Fifty years ago C.S. Lewis published an ironic little essay called, "Xmas and Christmas: A Lost Chapter from Herodotus." In it, he reverses the letters of his home country, "Britain." Then he writes about the strange winter customs of a barbarian nation called Niatirb.
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The Blessed Mother has been seen since the first century but stepped up her apparitions in 1830 when she began to appear in a more majestic and direct fashion. She now came not just as the gentle matron but as the woman who saves her children by stepping on the head of the serpent.
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On November 26th Cardinal Francis George will join enthusiastic families at Daley Plaza to bless the Nativity Scene and oversee the placing of the child Jesus in the manger," said Jim Finnegan, co-chairman of the Nativity Scene Committee. The 11:00 ceremony marks the 20th anniversary of the placing of the Nativity Scene in downtown Chicago. "The Nativity Scene has been an annual tradition in Daley Plaza since l985 when a beautiful life size scene was first displayed," said Finnegan.
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The ongoing debate concerning the origin of the cosmos and the beginning of human life focuses on a number of explanations. For some the answer is in what is called "creationism." Here the assertion is made that in the beginning God created all that is, basically, as we know and experience reality today. Others find satisfaction in what is described as "evolution by natural selection." In this camp are some who use this hypothesis to assert that there is no such thing as creation or divine initiation of reality.
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The month of October brings to a close the Year of the Eucharist. The year officially ends with the Mass of the Synod of Bishops in Rome on Oct. 23. We were blessed throughout the year to have monthly articles on the Eucharist in New Earth. Hopefully our knowledge, understanding and love for the Eucharist have grown over the past year
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In broad strokes, the final set of propositions at the Synod of Bishops, set for a vote tomorrow, do not differ significantly from the first draft presented Oct. 18. Married priests are still defined as "a path not to follow," the ban on divorced and remarried Catholics receiving communion is confirmed, and the general ban on inter-communion with Protestants is reasserted.
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In 1993 Pope John Paul II wrote his beautiful and controversial encyclical on "The Splendour of Truth". There he spoke of a genuine crisis in the Catholic understanding of morality; not only dissent on particular points but differences which contested the very basis of Christian moral thinking, that there are moral truths.
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An area newspaper wrote an article entitled, "When God, Politics Mix" chronicling the visit to Rockford of the Honorable Roy Moore, formerly Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of Alabama. Judge Moore, you may recall, was removed from office because he refused to remove from the state courthouse a monument giving the protestant version of the Ten Commandments. The nonsensical manner in which the political government deals with the things of God is illustrated by the fact that while Justice Moore was removed from office for displaying a representation of a text of the Ten Commandments, the same text adorns the building in which the Supreme Court of the United States meets!
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"This article is a departure for me from the usual metered political rhetoric. There are a lot of liberal buzzwords being tossed around today: Tolerance, Diversity, Sensitivity, Homophobic and Political Correctness, to name a few. If you don't subscribe to the liberal redefinitions of these words, you're an outcast - or worse. So, being an outcast, let's examine a few of these in light of some of today's issues from a decidedly conservative viewpoint - my viewpoint."
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EVER since 1996, when Pope John Paul II said that evolution (a term he did not define) was "more than just a hypothesis," defenders of neo-Darwinian dogma have often invoked the supposed acceptance - or at least acquiescence - of the Roman Catholic Church when they defend their theory as somehow compatible with Christian faith. But this is not true...
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Devotion to the Holy Eucharist is a powerful means of avoiding Purgatory. A great doctor of the Church, Saint Anselm, declared that a single Mass offered for oneself during life may be worth more than a thousand celebrated for the same intention after death. Saint Leonard of Port Maurice supports this statement by saying that one Mass before death may be more profitable than many after it. We must remember that it depends upon the Will of God to what extent the fruits of the Mass are applied to any individual. But the merit of Masses that we have offered for ourselves during life will obtain for us a higher degree of glory in Heaven, since we have made the meritorious sacrifice of offering the stipend for the Mass. After death it is impossible for us to add to our merit.
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Some may say that God was giving Prime Minister Paul Martin a final warning just before he forced through his gay 'marriage' legislation, Bill C-38. On Saturday night Martin attended a Catholic Mass at St. Vincent de Paul parish in Niagara on the Lake. He was in the posh resort town for a meeting with Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the EU Council. Rev. Paul J. McDonald, the celebrant of the Saturday night Mass told LifeSiteNews.com that he did not know the Prime Minister was coming to the Mass nor did he even know Martin was at the Mass until after the service had concluded.
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Kansas senator to hold hearings on whether the Supreme Court's infamous 1973 abortion ruling may have been bad law after all. U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback believes a hearing he's holding Thursday on Capitol Hill could eventually lead to the overturning of the Supreme Court's infamous Roe v. Wade decision. Brownback, R-Kan., will convene the Senate Judiciary Committee's Constitution, Civil Rights and Property Rights subcommittee to examine the consequences of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, the other 1970s-era Supreme Court decision that helped give America abortion on demand.
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...it is no more possible to remove religion from the classroom than it is to remove religion from public discourse. If we would say "reality exists," we have injected religion into the classroom. If we say "reality is an illusion," we have avoided injecting religion into the classroom, but only by virtue of having denied the need for a classroom at all.
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Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput waved a red flag before an -international audience Thursday in Spain, accusing Europe of growing religious intolerance and abusing Christianity. "Europe has given the whole world the seeds of democracy," he told government ministers from 55 nations, according to a text of his speech. "Today's growing anti-religious and often anti-Christian spirit unDermines that witness." Chaput was among nine members of a State Department delegation led by New York Gov. George Pataki. The two-day conference, "Anti-Semitism and Other Forms of Intolerance," in Cordoba, Spain, was sponsored by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
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Even today, four decades later, the journalists who write about the Church are still influenced by this dualist format: progressives vs. conservatives. But in the meantime there has been a long pontificate, that of pope Karol Wojtyla, who could not be put in this box. Is a pope who contributes to the peaceful revolution that caused the collapse of the communist empire conservative or progressive? Is it conservative or progressive for a pope to contest the dominant mindset of the entire West with criticisms that are akin to the philosophies of, for example, the Frankfurter Jürgen Habermas?
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I remember when first coming to Japan in 1948, that I immediately felt at home with Japanese Catholics of a foreign tongue, more so even than among fellow Americans who did not share our faith. Members of the Mystical Body of Christ, being brothers and sisters and mothers of Jesus because they do the will of His heavenly Father, can recognize a family kinship in each other that is outside of this world. The Japanese culture is indeed rich and humane - we are all images of God even before Baptism and live most humanly when we cultivate the natural law articulated in the Ten Commandments - and their culture is quite open to the civilization of love. The people support Catholic kindergartens, schools and hospitals; 700 choirs melt their hearts singing Beethoven's Lied zu Freude of the Ninth Symphony at New Ywar's approach; appreciation of Bach and of Gregorian Chant elevates minds and hearts; tours to the Holy Land and to the Vatican are perennially popular; but the step from the national culture into Baptism that involves obedience to the Creator God is taken by few. We pray, we sow mustard seed, we mix ferment into the flour. Please help us and them with prayers.
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In order to give the cult of the Sacred Heart its full and perfect form, and to propagate it throughout the world, God Himself chose as instrument a humble nun of the Visitation order, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. Christ deigned to manifest to her, in many apparitions, the riches and the wishes of His Divine Heart. December 27, 1673, was the first apparition. He showed St. Margaret Mary that it was His great desire of being loved by men and of withdrawing them from the path of ruin into which Satan hurls such crowds of them. He wanted to introduce them into the sweet liberty of the rule of His love, which He wished to restore in the hearts of all those who should embrace this devotion.
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Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, now 77, was archbishop of Bologna from 1984 to 2003. A theologian and a great scholar of Saint Ambrose, he has assembled some of his writings which are not strictly theological in a volume recently published by Cantagalli. The title of the book: "Pinocchio, Peppone, l'Anticristo e altre divagazioni [Pinocchio, Peppone, the Antichrist, and other Meanderings]." The Antichrist referred to in the title is the one described by Russian philosopher and theologian Vladimir Sergeyevich Soloviev in the last book he wrote before his death in 1900: "The Three Dialogues and the Story of the Antichrist."
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...what has been lacking until now is the strength to elaborate the theme of Christian identity not only as a form of resistance, but also as a constructive project, redefining it in relation (and not only in opposition) to contemporary Europe's secularized, pluralistic culture. A courageous analysis that identifies political and cultural secularism as the characteristic that distinguishes Europe from the other regions of the world, a reflection on the Christian roots of secularism and on the ability of secularism to play a part in the integration of the different religious and cultural identities present in Europe could lead to conclusions capable of opening up perspectives different from those indicated by Ruini and Ratzinger.
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It must make the secular humanists grind their teeth at night. Mitch Albom wrote a recent best-seller entitled The Five People You Meet in Heaven. The protagonist in the novel dies and meets five different people in the afterlife; people who help him understand what his life was about. The success of the novel would be unremarkable, except for a couple of things. First, the book's plot is shot through with New Testament imagery. Second, the author is Jewish.
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By far the book's longest chapter is "The Church and Science." We have all heard a great deal about the Church's alleged hostility toward science. What most people fail to realize is that historians of science have spent the past half-century drastically revising this conventional wisdom, arguing that the Church's role in the development of Western science was far more salutary than previously thought. I am speaking not about Catholic apologists but about serious and important scholars of the history of science such as J.L. Heilbron, A.C. Crombie, David Lindberg, Edward Grant, and Thomas Goldstein.
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James Madison, in his letter remonstrating against religious assessments favored by George Washington, unqualifiedly proclaimed man's duty to God: "It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage, and such only, as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent both in order of time and degree of obligation to the claims of civil society. Before any man can be considered as a member of civil society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe....."
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In 1984, President Reagan said: "In the fourth century, a monk thought he heard God telling him to go to Rome...He followed a crowd into the Coliseum and saw the gladiators. He realized they were going to fight to the death. He cried out, 'In the Name of Christ, stop!'...made his way through the crowd and climbed the wall into the arena.... As he was pleading with the gladiators...one of them plunged his sword into his body...his last words were, 'In the Name of Christ, stop!'
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"As a lawyer myself, I believe that this executive order violates the First Amendment religious rights of the pharmacist under the United States Constitution and the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act. As a Bishop, I am dismayed that our secular society has reached the point that individuals are being required by law to violate their personal religious beliefs in order to accommodate the selfish demands of special interest groups. Mr. Governor, I mean no disrespect. I am not here to criticize or scold you. On the contrary, I respectfully plead with you, I beg of you, to rescind your executive order."
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Andrew Greeley's column on 'democratic' elections of popes is embarrassing nonsense. Popes were not elected democratically before the advent of the College of Cardinals as electors in 1059. The very worst period of the papacy was the period before 1050, in the late 800s and throughout the 900s, when popes were elected by whichever Roman clan was strongest (a sort of Roman mafia system). This is the era of murder and nepotism and intrigue unparalleled in papal history. The system of cardinal-electors was created as a reform to clean up that cesspool. The current electoral process has survived for 1000 years and has produced for centuries, including especially the last 100 years, a series of truly outstanding leaders superior to anything produced by even the western 'democracies' during the same era.
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Let these be our thoughts whenever the prevalence of error leads us to despond. When St. Peter's disciple, Ignatius, was brought before the Roman emperor, he called himself Theophorus; and when the emperor asked the feeble old man why he so called himself, Ignatius said it was because he carried Christ in his breast. He witnessed there was but One God, who made heaven, earth, and sea, and all that is in them, and One Lord Jesus Christ, His Only-begotten Son, "whose kingdom {294} (he added) be my portion!" The emperor asked, "His kingdom, say you, who was crucified under Pilate?" "His (answered the Saint) who crucified my sin in me, and who has put all the fraud and malice of Satan under the feet of those who carry Him in their hearts: as it is written, 'I dwell in them and walk in them.'"
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On Thursday, March 31, there will be a lecture, book signing, and reception with Fr. John Bartunek LC, author of "Inside the Passion." It will take place at the Drury Lane in Oak Brook, at 7 p.m. The price for admission is $25 per person and $60 per family. The price includes 1 copy of "Inside the Passion." You can reserve a seat by calling 815.985.5072. Check out more details at http://www.insidethepassion.com/.
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What better way to comprehend the true reality of the Passion of Christ than to compare the traditional Stations of the Cross - handed down to us by St. Francis and the Franciscans - than by comparing them with the scientific and medical Truths found in more than 600,000 hours of peer-reviewed research surrounding the Shroud of Turin.
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The case of Terri Schiavo is another episode in the ongoing war between the children of light and the children of darkness, a titanic cosmic struggle that dates back to the very beginning of time. So too is the unspeakable killing rampage in Minnesota where teen-aged Jeff Weise gunned down his grandfather and his wife and eight other victims at his high school. It is a struggle often referred to in the Essenic texts in the Dead Sea Scrolls as the war between light and darkness, described in the New Testament and attested to by scores of scholars and holy men and women since the time of Christ.
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When I was confirmed at age fifteen, I took St. John the Baptist as my confirmation saint. 'A voice crying out in the wilderness,' I thought, full of adolescent pride. By Lent of 2003 I was a little older and a little more humble-if only as a result of years of sin and failure to do much crying out... An excerpt from the new spiritual memoir, 'Swimming with Scapulars: True Confessions of a Young Catholic.'
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There seems to be a growing consensus around the globe that godlessness is in trouble. "Atheism as a theoretical position is in decline worldwide," Munich theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg told United Press International Tuesday. His Oxford colleague Alister McGrath agrees. Atheism's "future seems increasingly to lie in the private beliefs of individuals rather than in the great public domain it once regarded as its habitat," he wrote in the U.S. magazine, Christianity Today.
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The recent column on the way evolution takes over theological language created quite a furor. Not since I pointed out the problems with Islamic sharia have I seen such heated replies. The objections were interesting, if only because they so completely missed the point....
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Religion was never supposed to be separated from public affairs, and government needs God's help. The two cases heard strictly involved Ten Commandments displays, but a broad ruling could define the proper place of religion in public life - from use of religious music in a school concert to students' recitation of "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. The United States Supreme Court should admit that its ruling that government is prohibited from supporting religion generally was wrong, uphold the constitutionality of Ten Commandments displays on public property...and apologize to Mr. Moore.
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From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force. For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John came; and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come. Let anyone with ears listen! (Mt. 11:12-15}. What is taking the Kingdom by force, asks Chrysostom, (Sermon 40 on Matthew). "All who approach it with earnestness of mind," he responds.
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There are times when reality is just too belly-shaking hilarious. Take the recent case of Professor Reiner Protsch von Zieten, a distinguished German anthropologist from the University of Frankfort who was noted for his Cuban cigars, large gold watches and prediliction for Porsches. Trained at UCLA, he emigrated back to his homeland thirty years ago and quickly became a leading light in European anthropological circles. Recognized as an expert in radio-carbon dating, he established the ages for hundreds of specimens from Europe and Africa during the course of his career.
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A woman in Florida and a man in Rome have more in common than one might imagine. With Poland's release of Pope John Paul II's newest book, Memory and Identity, we see first-hand what the Pope felt minutes after the bullet pierced his flesh. He recalls the pain, the blood loss and the slow drift into unconsciousness, a coma so deep, with blood pressure so dangerously low that his attending physician recommended last rites be prayed.
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One of the great dangers of this century, and thus one of the great triumphs of Satan, has been the growing disbelief in the existence of Hell. For many, Hell has become a fable, a myth, an outdated holdover from "the Old Testament God of fire, brimstone and judgment." Urged on by false doctrines and a want to believe that there can be no such thing as eternal punishment for serious wrongs "when Jesus is a God of love and kindness," many have thrown Hell out the window - along with concern for sin. After all, if there is no Hell, then why need there be concern for sin?
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The First Amendment forbids Congress from making a law "respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The United States Supreme Court, in Everson v. Board of Education (1947), insisted that the First Amendment means that neither federal nor state governments "can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another." The drafters and ratifiers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights defined religion in terms of Judeo-Christian theism. Accordingly, the First Amendment was "God-centered." James Madison called religion "the duty we owe our Creator."
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The abounding health of body, mind and soul, the delight in activity, in walking and riding and, long continued, sailing, the love of friends, the eye for beauty in nature, the passionate interest... in the ways and habitats and affairs of men, and not least in their humbugs and pretences; all this pours into his writings from a full life outside, and much of it is the noble writing of grateful praise; it is Lauds. Finally, as for the relationship of Belloc's religion to his writing, it formed a seamless garment: His was a religion of positive affirmation, and few men have entered more fully and more articulately into life as a rich inheritance, of God's creation and God's plenty.
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"... a false notion of conscience has helped to carry many away from Catholic practice and indeed from Catholic faith. If there are two opposing versions of conscience, and there are, this is the obverse side to Newman's claim that true conscience helps us to recognize the One True God. A debased notion of conscience, a barely concealed enthusiasm for autonomy disguised as an appeal to the primacy of conscience, weakens our sense of obligation, damages our purity of heart, and makes it harder and harder to see God."
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If, unfortunately, and as a last resort, the Catholic politician pertinaciously 1) refuses to recant the right-to-murder heresy and 2) refuses to cease committing sacrilege by receiving Holy Communion concomitantly publicly supporting the right-to-murder heresy, then according to Canon Law, the Church must declare the offender to have been severed from her by Excommunication.
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U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia accepts a certificate Saturday from Mayor-President Kip Holden declaring Scalia Honorable Mayor-President of East Baton Rouge Parish. Scalia was the keynote speaker for the 100-year anniversary of the Knights of Columbus Baton Rouge Council 969. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said Saturday that people of faith should not fear being viewed by "educated circles" as "fools for Christ."
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"It was as if God had unleashed his anger on the people," said an eyewitness of the tsunami that devastated the coastlines of eleven countries in South Asia and even East Africa.This lively impression of God's wrath in action was precisely the point that most news reports and commentaries sought to downplay and even smother. The event supposedly was nothing but a combination of material causes which, by virtue of nature's inexorable laws, caused the seaquake and the huge tidal wave.
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Culture of Life Foundation and the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute are proud to announce a new news and commentary website on social policy. It is called TheFactIs.org and can be reached at www.thefactis.org.
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Fewer and fewer Catholics sincerely practice their faith. This lukewarm state has worldwide repercussions, and in a negative way affects international relations between the nations of the West and other less prosperous nations. The result is that the life and death struggles, and human rights of those living in oppressed and/or poor countries are increasingly being viewed with indifference by many so-called "Christians" who live in wealthier nations. Largely responsible for this negligence are the lukewarm bishops and priests who rob Church members of any type of real spirituality. More and more, with the blessing of the Vatican, has the Church in the West become a safe haven for a "den of thieves" (see Mark 11:17).
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Fr. Robert Sprott OFM will address CCI lunch forum and discuss "Lincoln, Douglas, Slavery and Abortion." Fr. Sprott is a member of the Franciscan order resident at St. Peters Roman Catholic Church in the heart of Chicago's business district. Join us at the Chicago Athletic Club (12 S. Michigan Ave.) for the best sermon/salmon combo in Chicago! $25 for a full course lunch, and fully Catholic forum. For reservations, call 708 352 5834 the Weds. before the lunch please. The public is welcome.
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Cardinal Karol Wojtyla became Pope John Paul II on October 1978. Having survived both Nazism and Communism in his native Poland. Not long after, Reverend Andrew M. Greeley, then a nationally syndicated columnist, wrote an article entitled "U.S. CATHOLICS: WILL THE POPE UNDERSTAND THEM?" for New York News Magazine's October 1979 issue entitled "JOHN PAUL II THE PEOPLE'S POPE." Reverend Greeley's focus was misplaced: U.S. Catholics, like all other Roman Catholics, need to understand Pope John Paul II, the Vicar of Christ on earth for all Roman Catholics.
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Every emerging Christian society links us to the history of the early Church, and carries with it the grace of new beginnings. So here we are, ready to begin working. For the time being, it is not yet sunrise; it is perhaps but the very early light of dawn slowly detaching itself from the night. But I perceive Felicity and Perpetua: the young patrician embracing the slave, and both walking together to the ordeal. And Saint Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, writing to the persecuted Christians of Rome: "You have the kingship of love." Is it possible to believe that these words are not also addressed to us?
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In sharp contrast to this monumental disaster came the news that 2000 Catholic pilgrims were in attendance at a Mass inside the Shrine of Our Lady of Good Health in * Vailankanni, India, and were miraculously saved from the devastation. The Shrine has a history of Divine intervention dating back to 1560. The entire town surrounding the shrine was completely in shambles, killing thousands - but the deadly waters did not enter the shrine, even though the Church was on the same elevation of nearby buildings that were destroyed.
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In the small town of Vailankanni, India, a ray of hope penetrated the dark and tragic events that claimed over one hundred thousand lives in southern Asia, as 2,000 pilgrims and a centuries-old shrine to Our Lady were miraculously saved from the devastation. The shrine which is dedicated to Our Lady of Good Health of Vailkanni, has an amazing and miraculous history dating back to 1560, when a young shepherd boy was asked to fetch some milk for his master. On the return trip, he stopped to rest at a tree near a pond.
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March of 2005 will mark our third anniversary on the web providing a weekly enewsletter to readers and a continual source of news, views and events directed to Illinois Catholics. We never expected to attract 25,000 visitors a month, who stay our our site for an average of 8 minutes! This is simply an enormously high statistic, and shows that our readers are finding valuable insights at our site. We'd like to continue our ministry in this area, and are asking for your help to keep the lights on. If you appreciate our service, can you donate $5 to ensure that it continues?
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If anything can be said of accusations against the Catholic Church in World War II it is that they are as predictable as they are monotonous. Far more interesting (and revealing) is the heroism of thousands of ordinary Catholics who suffered and died at the hands of Hitler's reign of terror. The martyrdom of St. Maximillian Kolbe, who was put to death at the Auschwitz concentration camp, is well known. But such courage was not unique, as the revealed in the remarkable history of Stanislawa Leszczynska. The following is an abridged version of a study by Polish historian Prof. Maciej Giertych which provides some inkling of the horrors which Polish Catholics, and other Catholics throughout Europe, underwent during the Second World War. Sadly, such accounts - though they are numerous - are generally disregarded by modern academia and the media.
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The Feast of the Epiphany occurs in the calendar of Tradition as it has from time immemorial, January 6. This is really the day on which we should be giving gifts to our family members and friends. The Church has long taught us that the Feast of the Epiphany symbolizes three distinct manifestations of Our Lord to the world. The first centers around the homage paid the Christ-child by the wise men from the East, the Magi. Our Lord's manifestation to them was His unfolding to the Gentile world, the world of unbelievers, that He was the true light of the world. While the Magi had been guided to pay homage to the newborn King of Kings by the star, it is Our Lord who is the light, as St. John the Evangelist tells us in his gospel, to guide us to our true home, Heaven.
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Despite public statements made by incomprehensibly embarrassed individuals called to task for their public proclamation of the truth, the Church and Her Bishops can only but eventually and officially support the core conclusions of the Response as applied to the civil forum: Adherence to the right-to-murder of the innocent is a gravely immoral act condemned by Divine Revelation. The Church has constantly proclaimed for two-thousand years what Pope John Paul II emphatically taught in his Encyclical Evangelium Vitae of 1995. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger officially qualified dissent or willful doubt from this teaching as heresy.
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During 2004, the issue of gay marriage permeated news headlines nationwide. When the Massachusetts Supreme Court decided to accept same sex marriages, traditional family values activists responded by setting into motion protests, petition drives and statewide referendum. Ultimately, political observers say, voters who hold to traditional family values re-elected George W. Bush.
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Allan Carlson, president of the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society, said that - for better or worse -- 2004 was a momentous year for faith and family. Among other developments, Carlson noted the following 12 items that had the greatest impact...
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More than 2,000 years ago, a child was born in Bethlehem who was destined to change the world. Biblical prophecy stated that Jesus would be the King of the Jews, but most of his followers would come from far away. "Magi from the east" appears in Matthew 2:1. They traveled to Judea seeking the King of the Jews. Little information is revealed about their identities, but we know they were his first Gentile worshippers.
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Archaeologists in Jerusalem have identified the remains of the Siloam Pool, where the Bible says Jesus miraculously cured a man's blindness, researchers said Thursday - underlining a stirring link between the works of Jesus and ancient Jewish rituals. The archaeologists are slowly digging out the pool, where water still runs, tucked away in what is now the Arab neighborhood of Silwan. It was used by Jews for ritual immersions for about 120 years until the year 70, when the Romans destroyed the Jewish Temple.
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Everyone knows we live in a world immersed in crisis and chaos. However, we seek solutions in vain if we forget the lesson offered by Christmas. In the stable at Bethlehem, amid the dark night, the salvation of the world dawned for all mankind. It is possible that at the exact moment of the Savior's birth, the proud Roman emperor sat in his palace pondering the bitter failure of his social reforms. Possibly a short distance away were those who frequented the frenzied orgies that stretched long into the night and whose activities were the obligatory talk of the gossipmongers of the time. Neither they nor the emperor had an idea of what was happening at Bethlehem at that very moment.
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From all of us at Catholic Citizens of Illinois, we thank you for sharing your time with us at Catholiccitizens.org. As we enter our third year on the web, we are grateful for our 25,000 per week visitors, our 500,000 "hits" a month, and the fact that our readers are finding us informative and faithful. God bless you in the New Year, and Glory to God in the Highest, peace on earth, and goodwill to all men. Christ, our savior, is born.
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As we come to the end of Advent we hear St. Paul describe himself as "a slave of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God" (Rom. 1:1). Remember that gospel means "good news" and apostle means "one who is sent to carry it," so Paul is aware that he has an important role to play. Then all the more so should we be struck by the fact that St. Paul called himself "a slave of Christ Jesus."
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fascinating incident the Bible describes near the beginning of Jesus' human life, several months prior. It is the Embryonic Jesus Story. Luke 1 tells about the first person besides Jesus' mother and earthly father who recognized He was extraordinary - Jesus' cousin John, while John was yet a fetus, and Jesus was but an embryo.
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We are glad to support Catholic artists like Steven and Nancy at Agnus Dei Presents (www.greatspiritualbattle.com), especially when we get nice letters from them. We gratefully acknowledge their work, and encourage our readers to visit their site. Steve and Nancy wrote recently:
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The shroud of turin was widely dismissed as a medieval forgery after radiocarbon tests in 1988 dated it to the 13th or 14th century. Now a growing body of evidence is calling for reassessment of the shroud, which is kept in Turin, Italy. The latest item comes from the London-based Journal of Optics, published by the Institute of Physics. Two scientists from the University of Padua, Giulio Fanti and Roberto Maggiolo, report in the journal's April edition the discovery of a heretofore-undetected reverse image on the shroud. They say the smaller, fainter image on the back of the cloth depicts just the face and hands. And it's a superficial image, adhering only to the outermost fibers, just like the image on the front. "It is extremely difficult to make a fake with these features," Fanti writes.
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Ever wonder about the origin of, and symbolism behind, the candy cane? I hadn't - until the other day. (I know this isn't exactly a pressing matter, but, hey, we are approaching the Christmas season.) In the bulletin of a Catholic church I attend, there was a section titled "Christmas Ornaments and their Meanings," with this about the candy cane...
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The Church has always taught - and I teach here - that we need to find our happiness and holiness in a commitment to the chastity lived out in marital love or the chastity of celibacy lived out either in the consecrated life or the life of a single lay person in the world. These are the two paths to happiness and eternal life. There are no others.
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The terrorist threat has led to an explosive conflict between the West and the Muslim world. But the reasons for the clash go deeper; they are found within each of these civilizations. In a consensus-defying book, an English philosopher explains how and why.
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A British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion of atheism for more than a half-century has changed his mind. He now believes in God - more or less - based on scientific evidence, and says so on a video released Thursday. At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature, Flew said in a telephone interview from England.
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"Muslims need ... a new Enlightenment, a movement away from brutality." This remark came from a friend of mine as we were discussing the problem of faith in the public square. My friend is by his own description, "a militantly agnostic Jew", a philosophy professor who loves to debate anything that comes to hand. His remark was in response to a discussion of Islamic law. While I acknowledge Muslims are to be admired for their rigorous prayer life, their marvelous emphasis on almsgiving and their belief in Jesus' virgin birth and consequent great respect for the Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus, the Islamic system of law is another matter. Sharia is brutal and cannot be permitted to exist.
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I am not opposed to private revelations. But I am opposed to false revelations; I am opposed to dubious revelations; I am opposed to disapproved revelations; I am opposed to obsession with private revelations. I am opposed to all these things precisely because I do believe in genuine private revelations and their role in the life of the Church. The abundance of alleged messages and revelations in the past forty years makes ever more necessary the traditional caution and discernment of spirits.
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Christmas is the time to remember and dream of special times with special people, for planning and hoping for a better year to come, and for sharing thoughts and feelings. During the holidays people's hearts and minds are more receptive to and open with feelings and expressions of love. It is what we call the 'spirit of Christmas'.
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If it is not possible to take any of these steps at the USCCB, but only to continue to produce such documents as "Always Our Children" and this latest offering on The Passion of the Christ, then we at CAI are forced to inquire as to the current usefulness and purpose of the USCCB. CAI believes that The Passion of the Christ is a masterful work of art, and we are grateful to Mr. Gibson for willingly carrying the crosses associated with its production, including the inaccurate, unfortunate and unkind words thrown at him by those who should be most deeply grateful.
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The hoped-for results by Blessed Pius IX are the removal and dissipation of all difficulties and errors so that the Catholic Church may flourish under the patronage of the most Blessed Virgin, and that she may reign everywhere and enjoy genuine peace, tranquility and liberty. Also, the Blessed Virgin will obtain pardon for the sinner, health for the sick, strength of heart for the weak, consolation for the afflicted, help for those in danger; that she will remove spiritual blindness from all who are in error so that they may return to the path of truth and justice, so that there may be one flock and one shepherd. We've yet to see these results, so we must employ the means ever more diligently.
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In 1931, a Czech mathematician named Kurt Godel demonstrated that any logical system as advanced as arithmetic is built on foundational premises which can neither be proved true nor false within the system. That is, every logical system as advanced as addition and subtraction is a faith-based system. The impact of Godel's observations have yet to be felt in blue-state America.
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The mind of man was created by God to give us the means by which to try to understand nature and aid us in our approach to Him. Catholics do not have to fear it. That is why systematic, speculative theology which uses the mind to understand and explain the teachings of the Catholic Faith is a necessity and a blessing. But Catholics have nothing to fear from enriching their knowledge of the scriptural, patristic, archeological, exegetical, and general historical realm--of positive theology--either. For it is from such a realm that the food for speculation began. It is through regular contact with this realm that the systematic theologian reconfirms his conviction that he is not merely speculating in thin air, and gains a better understanding of how to become a great apologist.
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On Dec. 8, 2004, the 150th anniversary of Pope Pius IX's solemn proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, Bishop Thomas Doran of the Diocese of Rockford, Ill. will consecrate his diocese to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. In doing so, Bishop Doran joins Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I., archbishop of Chicago, who in August announced that he will consecrate his archdiocese to Mary on the same day.
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The fourth Thursday of this month marks the annual celebration of Thanksgiving Day in the United States. The day conjures up images of families gathering to share a bountiful dinner of turkey and all the trimmings while somewhere in the home a television is tuned to a professional football game. Let me add another image here - although I know it is not an alien image for most of you. Let me conjure up the image of the family around the table, heads bowed and hands folded, our thoughts and our words focused on the considerable blessings God has given us to enjoy and to share.
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At a Mass attended by hundreds of lawyers and judges in St. Daniel the Prophet Church in Wheaton on Sunday, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia gave a speech on faith and the legal profession, saying that "we are fools for Christ's sake. We must pray for the courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated world." The event, reports Monday's Chicago Tribune, was organized by the St. Thomas More Society of DuPage County, a society dedicated to promoting the ideals of Saint Thomas More, a lawyer beheaded by King Henry VIII for refusing to transfer his allegiance from the Pope to the king. On Sunday Scalia became the first recipient of the Award of St. Thomas More.
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Several dozen volunteers gathered on a rainy Saturday morning to erect a Nativity display at the Daley Plaza in downtown Chicago on Nov. 27. Several local TV channels carried the story, and went as far as to mention that this is the "only" public nativity scene in the entire downtown area! How sad...
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Ratzinger spoke from the midst of Greek and Roman statues. Above his head was a grandiose fresco depicting the battle of Lepanto in 1571, waged successfully against the Ottoman forces with the protection of the Madonna of the Rosary, to whom a feast was afterward dedicated. Before politics and its interests, on the agenda of Ratzinger, Ruini, and, moving higher, of John Paul II, there is the urgency of a great battle about man and for the sake of man. A battle to be waged together with all men of good will. And the philosophers and sybils are welcome at the side of Jesus and the apostles. This is another ancient tradition of the Christian interpretation of history. Just read the "De Civitate Dei" of St. Augustine.
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Starting today (11/8/04), 27 counties in Illinois are allowing federal workers to select a Catholic-based insurance plan that does not cover abortion, contraceptives or fertility treatment. Run by the Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis, OSF HealthPlans is being touted as an example of the faith-based initiatives favored by President Bush. Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said the plan was an "inappropriate" use of federal funds, one that "is blatantly designed to foster one religion's point of view."
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Visitors to this site have been accustomed to daily updates for several years. What you may not be aware of is that maintenance of this site is done entirely by volunteers. Over the past few weeks, demands of home and work by those volunteers made updating the site impossible. But we're back, and pleased to have received the "Triple Excellence Gold Award: for excellence in Fidelity, Resources, & Usability" from Catholic web reviewer CatholicCulture.org.
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It is time to speak out against this version of "tolerance" that amounts to intolerance of faith, morality, religion, and traditional values. Failure to elect candidates that respect moral and religious values when enacting laws will surely lead to serious erosion of our freedoms of religion and speech. The evidence of this threat is clear from other nations.
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"Holy Father, the majority of bishops and clergy are misleading their people either by their silence, or by speaking openly in favor of John Kerry. If you do not speak out before the Election 2004, there is a great possibility that John Kerry will be elected president of the most powerful nation on earth and, consequently, abortion and homosexuality will take a world-wide quantum leap. The polls indicate a majority of Catholics will vote for Kerry rather than the Protestant President Bush who supports the Catholic Church's Gospel of Life... Please, Holy Father, help us..."
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Words are cheap. Actions matter. If we believe in the sanctity of life from conception to natural death, we need to prove that by our actions, including our political choices. Anything less leads to the corruption of our integrity. Patriotism, which is a virtue for people of all faiths, requires that we fight, ethically and nonviolently, for what we believe. Claiming that "we don't want to impose our beliefs on society" is not merely politically convenient; it is morally incoherent and irresponsible.
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Fr. Edmund McCaffrey will be the guest speaker at the Catholic Citizens Lunch forum. His topic is "Whatever Happened to Courage in the Church." Rev. Edmund McCaffrey, former Abbot Ordinary of Belmont Abbey and retired pastor of Holy Family Parish in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, is the co-founder of the Institute on Religous Life (click here.)
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I sincerely hope that in publicly denying any "official" or formal emanation of the text from the Vatican, which had never been claimed, that certain individuals not risk their salvation by denying the material, infallibly official, and sub gravi binding core conclusions of the Response. "Utilius scandalum nasci permittitur, quam veritas relinquatur," Pope St. Gregory the Great once said. "Better for scandal to be permitted to be born, than for the Truth to be forsaken."
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Rev. Myron Effing probably never imagined as a boy growing up in the Midwest that he would become a priest, much less the leader of an apostolate to the Russian people. Rev. Effing was in Chicago this weekend, and appeared at St. Thomas More parish on the Southwest side to explain the many challenges facing Catholics in Russia, and asking for the support of American Catholics in bringing the Faith to the Russian people.
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Kathy Valente knows candidates are courting voters with weighty issues such as Iraq and health care. But Valente, 51, a hairdresser and conservative political activist, wants Illinois candidates to make their views known on another hot-button issue: a ban on gay marriage. She and activists from more than a dozen conservative organizations plan to stage 14 rallies, starting Saturday, over seven days in 14 Illinois cities to resurrect the issue before the Nov. 2 election. They plan to ask candidates what they, if elected, would do to defend against gay marriages.
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"The principles of respect and non-discrimination cannot be invoked to support recognition of homosexual unions. The denial of social and legal status of marriage to forms of cohabitation that are not and cannot be marital is not opposed to justice; on the contrary, justice requires it. Society owes its continued survival to the family, founded on marriage. The common good requires that laws recognize, promote and protect marriage as the basis of the family, the primary unit of society."
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St. Augustine Institute launches web site with courses in Catholic studies. "We intend for this site to become a very useful tool to use in your quest for knowledge of Traditional Catholic Philosophy, Catholic History, Devotions and many more subjects covered in our Syllabus, our audio courses in the online store or through the study circles which we hope to encourage all over the world. This site has been long in the planning and construction stages and we are grateful to everyone who has worked to get it this far. This is only the beginnings of all we plan to offer you. Already, you will find a fully functional online store with our entire inventory of lectures on any number of Catholic topics available to you on audio or video tapes as well as some wonderful Catholic book titles. Soon to come is a home schooling section for registering study circles and students via email."
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The Crusaders were not unprovoked aggressors, greedy marauders or medieval colonialists, as portrayed in some history books. In fact, Thomas Madden, chair of St. Louis University's history department and author of "A Concise History of the Crusades," contests that the Crusaders were a defensive force that did not profit from their ventures by earthly riches or land.
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A certain depression has taken hold of Catholics today, caused by the clerical scandals of the past few years plus the overwhelming incompetency of so many bishops to deal with the problems or even to recognize a problem. These things verify what Pope Paul VI said, that the smoke of Satan was in the church, and the church was undergoing a Good Friday. We worry about the church we love; we hear the media criticize her. We are confused. No disciple is greater than his master, thus the church must endure the passion of her Christ and bear the jewels of His sacred wounds in order to be triumphant.
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The truth is, there is no inherent conflict between religion and science. Indeed, the fundamental reality is that Christian theology was essential for the rise of science--a fact little appreciated outside the ranks of academic specialists.
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Montmagny's foresight, diligence, personal courage, zeal for the propagation of the Catholic faith, and the reputation he forged among the Indians, had been crucial to the survival of the French colonies in Canada. Indeed, even after his departure in 1647, his successors continued to be called "Onontio," a testament to the personal impact Montmagny had upon the Indians. In his ten plus years as governor of New France, he had shown himself to be a model Catholic executive, who guarded well those under his protection while greatly respecting the law and giving noteworthy attention to the spreading of the Gospel. Indeed, Charles Huault de Montmagny is an excellent exemplar of a Catholic office-holder and member of "the Church militant."
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One thing should be clear: the Liturgy must not be a terrain for experimenting with theological hypotheses. Too rapidly, in these last decades, the ideas of experts have entered into liturgical practice, often also by-passing ecclesiastical authority, through the channel of commissions which have been able to diffuse at an international level their "consensus of the moment," and practically turn it into laws for liturgical activity. The Liturgy derives its greatness from what it is, not from what we make of it. Our participation is, of course, necessary, but as a means of inserting ourselves humbly into the spirit of the Liturgy, and of serving Him Who is the true subject of the Liturgy: Jesus Christ. The Liturgy is not an expression of the consciousness of a community which, in any case, is diffuse and changing. It is revelation received in faith ind prayer, and its measure is consequently the faith of the Church, in which revelation is received.
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"Frances Kissling, who accuses us of 'selective interpretation of Catholic doctrine,' is steaming mad over our voter's guide. She knows how effective it is. She knows what it will do when 4.8 million people read it in USA Today. And she knows that if she's going to 'protect abortion rights,' she has to keep Catholics confused about what the Church teaches on abortion."
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What began as a small online CCD operation has exploded into a global phenomenon, spanning 50+ countries and 6 continents practically overnight. Started by a small group of catechists and priests, the CatechismClass.com online religious e-education program has infiltrated Catholic homes and institutions around the world, including large archdioceses, missions in Africa, prisons in Georgia, outreaches in Malaysia, the Catholic families in India, frontier parish churches, ordinary CCD programs, and even Catholic schools. All this from what was supposed to be an individual family program designed to help parents teach their children the Faith.
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What would Archbishop Flynn do if pro-abortion Senator Ted Kennedy or Senator John Kerry came up to him for the Eucharist, and just weeks before Archbishop Burke, Archbishop Donohue, Bishop Vasa, Bishop Baker, Bishop Jugis and Bishop Bruskewitz had all denied Kerry the Eucharist, as they said they would do? Would Archbishop Flynn remain 'divided' from these six fellow Bishops and 'do his own thing?' Would he want to obey Divine Law and remain 'united' with these six fellow members of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), a conference to which he belongs?
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Faithful Catholics, not purposely, confuse the teaching 'proportionate reason' as being against the teachings supporting 'Life.' On the opposite side of the aisle, unfaithful Catholics bamboozle this teaching as carte blanche to do evil for an evil gain. The teaching of 'proportionate reason' is not about Republicans vs. Democrats, it is about life vs. abortion; it is about evil vs. good. It is about 'limiting the harm.'
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This past summer I had a pleasant dinner with a senior British churchman who happened to be visiting Cracow while I was teaching there. His Grace was, in many respects, an Anglican prelate straight from central casting: handsome, charming, urbane, impeccably attired, emotions under control, disclaimers always preceded by a "perhaps," etc., etc. Earlier in the day, he had gone to Wadowice, the Pope's birthplace, and was clearly moved to have seen the roots from which a great Christian witness had sprung.
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(Spiderman creator Steven) Ditko explained his philosophy of art in a narrative on a 1987 video titled "The Masters of Comic Book Art," hosted by author Harlan Ellison. In his introduction, Ellison dismissed Ditko's plea that heroes in art and literature be measured by the moral courage shown in objective good vs. evil choices. The artist now seems prophetic for saying in the show that if we glorify the anti-hero in art, then anti-life and violence will come into our culture.
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Most of what Mr. Ehlen said was on the mark; he did, however, err when he said that Catholics must not attend non-Catholic weddings and funerals ("Catholics may not attend non-Catholic weddings, funerals, baptisms, worship services, prayer meetings, etc. "). What he should have written was: Catholics may not attend non-Catholic baptisms, worship services, prayer meetings, etc. and Catholics may attend non-Catholic wedding and funerals, provided the Catholics are merely observers and are not participants.
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Many Catholics were at a loss to understand the Cardinal's statement. "Has Ratzinger lost his mind?" some wondered. "Isn't he departing from sound Catholic theology?" Others, including well-known dissidents, pounced on the statement as vindication for their cause and wrote newspaper columns trumpeting it as proof that in the Vatican's view it is okay to vote for pro-abortion politicians as long as you don't share their pro-abortion view. In other words, a voter can be "personally opposed but..."
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In the latter half of the past century, devout Catholics throughout the world have been slowly and carefully taught a new faith different from what had been practiced for centuries. Dogmatic truths are not only no longer taught, they are no longer believed. Devotion to Mary, praying the Rosary, marrying within the Catholic Faith, the strict avoidance of contraception, the relative absence of divorce and abhorrence of marrying a divorcee were all understood and practiced by Catholics. The average Catholic not only knew their Faith, they lived it.
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"Missionaries in the future will increasingly see that their apostolate among the Moslems will be successful in the measure that they preach Our Lady of Fatima. Because the Moslems have a devotion to Mary, our missionaries should be satisfied merely to expand and to develop that devotion with the full realization that Our Blessed Lady will carry the Moslems the rest of the way to her Divine Son." Fulton Sheen
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We all hear in our catechetical years of deathbed conversions and of people who are brought back to the faith by some signal act of kindness. I am sure that in the mercy of God those things happen. In fact, as a priest for nearly 43 years I have seen it happen many times. But we must remember always the disturbing thought that these are acts of God's mercy. They are not acts of God's justice.
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We all hear in our catechetical years of deathbed conversions and of people who are brought back to the faith by some signal act of kindness. I am sure that in the mercy of God those things happen. In fact, as a priest for nearly 43 years I have seen it happen many times. But we must remember always the disturbing thought that these are acts of God's mercy. They are not acts of God's justice.
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The natural-law tradition maintains that the foundational principles of morality are "the same for all, both as to rectitude and as to knowledge"--in other words, they are not only right for everyone, but at some level known to everyone. If this is true, then the task of debate about morality is not so much teaching people what they have no clue about, but bringing to the surface the latent moral knowledge or suppressed moral knowledge that they have already. There is an art to this; people often have strong motives not to allow that knowledge to come to the surface, and they may feel defensive. One has to get past evasions and self-deceptions, and it is more difficult to do this in the public square than in private conversation. Even so, certain basic moral knowledge is "down there," and our public statements can make contact with it. When this is done well, the defensiveness of the listeners is disarmed, and they reflect, "Of course. I never thought of that before, but somehow I knew it all along."
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So long as we continue our attachment to evil, forgiveness is impossible; it is as simple as the law, which says that living in the deep recesses of a cave makes sunlight unavailable to us. Pardon is not automatic - to receive it, we have to make ourselves pardonable. The proof of our sorrow over having offended is our readiness to root out the vice that caused the offence. The man who holds a violent grudge against his neighbour and who confesses it in the Sacrament of Penance cannot be forgiven unless he forgives his enemy.
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If the timeless concept of civilization has virtually disappeared, it is not because it is no longer viable. There is no greater need for an "Incarnational" ordering of society than today. But, as with the early Church surrounded by hostile pagan powers, the vision of Romanitas may pass into eclipse only to be brought back, perhaps even more resilient and vital than before, by the restoration of true Christian life.
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Today "back-to-school" is a path we all have to take periodically. I remember as a college student hearing and blowing off the statement by a very good teacher that every time we learn a language we take on a new personality. Later I learned that this is true, and delightfully so. If you do not speak a foreign language, consider learning one. Enroll in a class or buy one of those programs offered at book stores. We can all profit from a little knowledge of Italian, but there is a whole potpourri of languages which would expand our horizons and brighten our outlook by revealing how other people view the world. We might find that they view it in colors different from our own.
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Suicide or killing oneself is the evil of despair and the loss of hope. In contrast, self-sacrifice for someone else is a sign of hope, and an act of generosity and love. The two opposing actions, killing versus self-sacrificing, produce opposing results - despair versus hope, fear versus trust, indifference versus love.
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No other Vatican memorandum has caused so much controversy in recent times as has that written by the head of the Vatican's second most important dicastery of the Roman Curia. Moreover, one Cardinal and one Catholic priest are at the forefront of this controversy, namely Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., and retired sociologist Father Andrew M. Greeley, Ph.D.
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No other Vatican memorandum has caused so much controversy in recent times as has that written by the head of the Vatican's second most important dicastery of the Roman Curia. Moreover, one Cardinal and one Catholic priest are at the forefront of this controversy, namely Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., and retired sociologist Father Andrew M. Greeley, Ph.D.
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Mark Belnick has his freedom back. In mid-July, two years after his indictment, Belnick, the former general counsel for Tyco International, was acquitted on 14 counts of felony and misdemeanor financial misconduct. A former devout Jew, Belnick converted to the Catholic Church in 2000. He currently serves on the Board of Governors of Thomas Aquinas College. He spoke recently with Register staff writer Tim Drake from his home in Park City, Utah about his conversion and his acquittal.
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As confused and horrified spectators of the tragic collapse of the Church in the West in recent decades, orthodox Catholics justifiably want to identify those responsible for this disaster and punish them. We often look to the decisions of this or that modern conclave, pope, or interest group, or to any of a wide variety of conspiracy theories for what are, indeed, often partial explanations of a seemingly inexplicable nightmare. Nevertheless, our efforts to place the blame where it belongs are often crippled from the outset by our lack of historical knowledge. The Second Vatican Council and the post-conciliar era have a complex historical background, one which begins with the problems emerging from the Council of Trent (1545-1563)...
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"Why We Must Restore Christian Civilization: The Solution for a World" was the central theme for this summer's fourth annual Universite d'ete held in Gaming, Austria. Sponsored by the Tradition Family Property (TFP) organizations in France and Austria, the summer conference also drew participants from Poland, Brazil, Germany, Switzerland, the United States, Argentina, Spain and several other nations. Honored guests included Bishop Juan Rodolfo Laise, Bishop Emeritus of San Luis (Argentina), Prince Bertrand Orleans-Braganza and Prince Paul Oldenberg... At the closing banquet, representatives of the national delegations were invited to give their impressions. The often fiery testimonials made evident the abundant graces and blessings all had received.
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"Modernist revolutionaries have long purged the halls of Catholic academia of orthodox intellectuals and taken control of local and national media instruments. The resultant ecclesiastical tyranny - no less real for being bloodless - is manifested in smug diocesan and national weeklies spewing out the official liberal line on RCIA, ALPHA, RENEW, the latest Synod, programme, process etc. etc., without the least fear of serious contestation, orthodox 'letters to the editor' notwithstanding."
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Could it be that the scandal in the Church and the crisis in our society really are harbingers, not of the end of the Church because the Church divinely established goes on forever, but of our American way of life? Our nation was built on compromise. The Constitution of the United States is a bundle of compromises. Perhaps that compromising spirit has entered willy-nilly into the moral sphere. Perhaps the society is so compromised that we cannot tell good from evil. If so, what will the result be? Almost certainly people who do not recognize the difference between good and evil cannot be expected to do the one and avoid the other.
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Dr. Eugene Diamond of the Catholic Medical Association will be our guest at the August 13 Catholic Citizens lunch forum. Dr. Diamond will discuss the ethical challenges facing Catholic medical professionals. Join us at the Chicago Athletic Club (12 S. Michigan Ave.) for the best sermon/salmon combo in Chicago! $20 for a full course lunch, and fully Catholic forum. For reservations, call 708 352 5834 the Weds. before the lunch please. The public is welcome.
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It's hard to miss Rev. Marcos Gonzalez, who wears a black cassock every day, a garment most priests tossed out decades ago. But it's not just his clothes that bespeak an older, more traditional era of his Roman Catholic Church. When some priests spoke in favor of optional celibacy at a Los Angeles priest assembly last year--a position supported by many American Catholics today--Gonzalez booed. In premarital counseling, he tells couples to remain chaste until marriage. Gonzalez also believes artificial birth control and homosexual sex are sins and opposes ordination of women.
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The Knights of Columbus ended a convention in Dallas on Thursday with resolutions supporting a constitutional amendment to outlaw gay marriage and denouncing Catholic politicians who support abortion rights. But the world's largest Catholic laymen's organization said it would not expel those politicians from its membership or take a stance on whether they should be given Holy Communion.
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Recently, Archbishop Raymond L. Burke, Bishop, D. D., J.C.L., of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, 'the new John Fisher for our times,' granted this writer and Catholic Online an exclusive interview. You may remember that on January 8, 2004, Burke, then Bishop of the La Crosse diocese, promulgated a 'canonical notification' based on Canon Law 915. In other words, Bishop Burke, a doctor of canon law, imposed sacramental disciplines or regulations concerning the unworthy reception of the Holy Eucharist.
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The blow fell just before Easter 1962, in a city attuned to the solemn rhythms of traditional Catholicism. On Monday of Holy Week, Archbishop Joseph Francis Rummel announced the excommunication of three Catholic public figures for loudly condemning his decision to integrate the archdiocese's Catholic schools. Until they repented, Rummel declared, Leander Perez, Jackson Ricau and Una Gaillot were outside the church. New Orleans knew them well as furious public warriors against integration. But without a change of heart, Rummel said, they could not receive the Eucharist, the center of Catholic life, nor would they be buried in the embrace of their church.
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I really appreciate the Knights of Columbus. This strong organization believes in families and faith, and compassion for those in need. And "I'm honored you'd invite me to the 122nd Convocation of this great organization. I appreciate Carl Anderson, and his leadership. I've gotten to know Carl because, you see, he's more than just an introducer of Presidents. He's a person who works with Presidents -- at least this President. And I'm proud to have his help."
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Modern feminism's fight for power and gender equality is undermining the traditional concept of family and creating a climate where gay marriages are seen as acceptable, the Vatican said Saturday. In a 37-page document "On the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World," the Vatican said women should be respected and have equal rights in the workplace, but differences between the sexes must be recognized and exalted.
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"I think the problem really lies with those Catholic politicians, who claim to be Catholic in the public forum, and who publicly violates externally the precepts of the church and dare the Vatican to do something about it. Senator Kerry, for instance, and not just Senator Kerry but other Catholic politicians, have been going very recently into churches, into the pews, with camera crews trailing them, really trying to see whether or not the church will do something about it. That's very grave."
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All of the statements, which Bishop Vasa has incorporated in the 'Affirmation of Personal Faith', are taken from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Bishop Vasa explains: "They represent the authentic and authoritative teaching of the Catholic Church and acceptance of these tenets is expected of every Catholic. While it is sufficient for me to 'presume' that Catholics who attend Mass and receive communion adhere to these teachings (unless the contrary is clearly evident) such a presumption is not sufficient for those whom I commission to teach and act in some official capacity."
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I recently read an essay that disturbed me considerably. It was written by the chair of the theology department at the University of Notre Dame, John C. Cavadini. Entitled "Ignorant Catholics," it appeared in Commonweal. If Cavadini is correct, and I have no reason to think that he is not, then I have been living in some kind of ivory tower. He starts his essay, which Commonweal highlighted with the subtitle, 'The alarming void in religious education,' with the following: "Perhaps the religious illiteracy of so many otherwise well-educated young Catholics is too familiar to bear mentioning again. One has come to expect that even at elite Catholic colleges and universities, entering students will not know what is meant by 'the Immaculate Conception' - hardly anyone knows that anymore..."
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The debate over the reception of Holy Communion by Catholic politicians who persistently support permissive abortion laws continues. This debate is an opportunity for authentic Catholic reform, in our sacramental practice and our public witness. To help further that reform, let me take four crucial questions and suggest answers that track with the long-established teaching and discipline of the Church.
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Although many fans predicted Mel Gibson's blockbuster, The Passion of the Christ, would have an intense and long-lasting spiritual impact, a Christian researcher's survey has revealed that the movie-going public has a short memory and an easily re-directed attention span. Gibson's controversial picture astonished the filmmaking industry by becoming the eighth highest-grossing domestic film of all time. However, the results of a recent national survey conducted by The Barna Research Group (BRG) suggest that what some thought would be a life-transforming and culture-changing influence may have been, after all, just a really popular movie.
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Catholic Writers Online, an online support network for Catholics interested in communicating with like-minded writers, launched its new website and discussion list in February, 2004. Nearly 150 writers from around the United States and Canada have already joined; the CWO membership includes both published and novice writers specializing in fiction, non-fiction, journalism, poetry, and screenwriting. CWO presently offers, in addition to a free subscription to its online mailing list, a free monthly e-mail newsletter. The Write Stuff, published by National Catholic Register reporter Tim Drake and edited by award-winning author Kathryn Lively, who can be contacted at info@catholicwritersonline.com, details current calls for submission and news within the Catholic/Christian publishing industry as well as items of interest in the secular publishing industry.
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Join us on July 9 for author Joseph Pearce's highly acclaimed new biography of of C.S. Lewis. For a very modest price of $20, we serve up a full course lunch and fully Catholic forum. Parking is available right across the street at Grant Park North Garage. For reservations, call 708 352 5834 by the Weds. evening prior to the second Friday. The public is welcome. CCI monthly luncheons are at noon on the second Friday of every month in downtown Chicago at the Chicago Athletic Assoc, 12 S. Michigan Ave.
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Spring 2004 Catholic Citizens Newsletter
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Unless forced by necessity to do otherwise, Catholics ought to prefer to associate with Catholics, a course which will be very conducive to the safeguarding of their faith. As presidents of societies thus formed among themselves, it will be well to appoint either priests or upright laymen of weight and character, guided by whose counsels they should endeavor peacefully to adopt and carry into effect such measures as may seem most advantageous to their interests, keeping in view the rules laid down by Us in Our Encyclical, Rerum Novaram. Let them, however, never allow this to escape their memory: that whilst it is proper and desirable to assert and secure the rights of the many, yet this is not to be done by a violation of duty.
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This is the date on which Saint Peter, the Rock upon which the Church was founded by Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, was crucified upside down on Vatican Hill in the year 67 A.D., thus commencing the 256 year period of episodic persecution against the true Church by the authorities of the secular Roman Empire. Each of the first twenty-nine Successors of Saint Peter were martyred as the forces of secularism and Roman imperialism sought to crush out the infant Church in the manner that King Herod the Great sought to crush out the infant Jesus shortly after His Nativity in Bethlehem. Try as evil rulers have during the past two millennia, however, the Church founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope, remains as a Sign of Contradiction in the midst of a world today that is eerily similar to that in which Saints Peter and Paul lived and gave up their lives to bear witness to the true Faith.
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The hour is late indeed. Can it be imagined that the hand of the heavenly Father "who chastises every son He loves" (Cf. Jdt 8:27, Prv 3:12, Sir 30:1) will be held back indefinitely? We are poised on the edge of a precipice; a definitive moment in history has come. If the morally toxic wasteland that used to be the greatest nation on the face of the earth isn't accorded "moral superfund" status soon, then will not the wake-up call that was 911 pale into insignificance at the moral day of reckoning that is inexorably coming? Even if one doesn't care to believe that God punishes, He surely corrects out of love, and often He uses the blunt instrument of our enemies to do so.
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Rev. Anthony Brankin is an articulate and committed Tridentine priest who is also a gifted artist. After two decades at St. Thomas More on Chicago's southwest side, Father Brankin was "offered" the opportunity to relocate to a liberal parish in the Chicago suburbs, which he declined. By the grace of God, my boys and my family were able to attend Father Brankin's Masses over the last few years, and enjoyed his incredibly moving and inspiring sermons. He was truly loved by his parish, and will be missed by all of us. This farewell sermon was interupted on several occassions when Father Brankin's emotions got the best of him, something rare for him, but understandable given the circumstances.
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John Paul II says that Catholic educational and charitable works must be "Catholic in their own understanding and Catholic in their identity." The Pope emphasized this today in an address to U.S. bishops from the northwestern ecclesiastical provinces of Portland, Seattle and Anchorage, at the close of their five-yearly visit to Rome. The educational and charitable institutions of the Church "exist for only one reason: to proclaim the Gospel," the Holy Father said.
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For a bishop or any pastor to exclude someone from Communion is always a source of great sorrow. The sorrow is caused by the care that a pastor naturally has for a soul who rejects the teaching of Christ and his church. What would be profoundly more sorrowful would be the failure of a bishop to call a soul to conversion, the failure to protect the flock from scandal and the failure to safeguard the worthy reception of Communion.
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Our Lord expects us to confess our faith publicly: "He that shall deny me before men, I will also deny him before my Father who is in heaven" (Matt. 10:33). "He that shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him the Son of man shall be ashamed, when he shall come in his majesty and that of his Father and of the holy angels" (Luke 9:26). As Archbishop Chaput of Denver stated, in any situation Catholics must "act like it-without caveats, all the way, all the time, with all our heart."
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This "alternative trinity" of evil, blindness and madness at work in a local community can be matched at a national and international level on a near weekly basis. In February 2003, for instance, the Australian Federal Court turned the very notion of being on its head. In upholding the validity of a marriage between a transexual man and his wife, the court held the question of whether a person is a man or woman is to be determined at the date of marriage, not birth. Essentially worse than even the legalisation of abortion, it is hard to imagine a more satanically inspired judgement.
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... the sin of omission can be an unpardonable offence. The lack of faith underlying these sins of omission in respect of the ministry of exorcism is often manifested in clerical fears about demonic retribution, summed up in the response of one Italian bishop, who spluttered: "I do not appoint exorcists and do not practice exorcisms because I am afraid. If the devil becomes my enemy, what am I to do?" Such clerics probably have in mind the sufferings of Saint John Vianney among others...
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Too many have forgotten that the infallible dogma of the Church on salvation includes four final things - Death, Heaven, Hell and Purgatory. To placate Protestants, the doctrine of the Church Suffering has been abandoned. So have those poor souls stranded in that place which so many deny exists. Therefore, the Church Militant has let down the Communion of Saints. No wonder so few prayers are answered lately!
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The reactions to my recent pastoral letter on the duties of Catholic politicians and voters were overwhelming in many more ways than one. I was edified by the many messages of support for what I wrote. I was distressed by those who misread and misrepresented what I wrote. I was deeply saddened by those who said that they understood very well what the Church teaches, but had chosen to disregard it. And there were those who raised thoughtful questions regarding the Church's teaching on capital punishment and war. I will deal with these issues in my next column. For now I think it is important to clarify some misunderstandings and erroneous conclusions that have been drawn from my letter.
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Powerful groups will continue to target the Eucharist until all diocesan bishops enforce Canon Law c. 915 consistently in every diocese, as did two bishops, canon lawyer Archbishop Raymond L. Burke, D.D., J.C.D.,[15] and Bishop Fabian W. Bruskewitz, D.D., S.T.D.[16] Inconsistency among the conference of bishops regarding this important law exhibits a weakening of the office of the bishop. A Bishop, as 'Priest, Prophet, and King,' is to govern and correct without regard for socially acceptable opinions and prevailing political popularities.
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On the Feast of the Ascension of the Lord I read an article in my local newspaper, the Virginian Pilot, entitled "Catholic Church officials should Not Use the Altar as a Battlefield." The article was written by a Catholic attorney who did not understand the theological teaching of her own Church concerning the reception of the Sacrament we call the Eucharist. Oh, the article read as though she did, citing sources from the rich tradition that is Catholic Christian theology. However, as lawyers can do so well, she cited them in a manner that was completely incorrect. She did not agree with the teaching of her own Church and sought to change it by using a public forum to articulate her own agenda and make it sound "learned".
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Not all women seek the passive, feminized male of feminist ideology. Some of us consider child-rearing the most rewarding activity of our lives, and we are happy to be dependent on a husband who enables us to stay home and enjoy all the delights of a domestic life. We seek a man who believes that there are real differences between men seek a man who does not expect his wife to be a clone of himself. We seek a man who does not think that the best he can do for a woman is to guarantee her unlimited access to abortion, to assure her the right to fight and die in combat, and to create for her a society that expects its children to be raised by someone other than their mother. When a critical mass of the kind of man we seek appears, feminism will begin to die, and the traditional family will cease to be in peril.
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Several U.S. bishops have recently voiced their opposition and ersatz reasoning why no one should be denied the Eucharist according to Code of Canon Law n. 915. Those in the pews are perplexed. Which bishop is correct? Why would some bishops teach that the laws are binding and other bishops teach that they are not? Quizzically, people are asking ten questions...
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Here is the address John Paul II delivered on Saturday to the U.S. bishops of the ecclesiastical provinces of San Antonio and Oklahoma City at the conclusion of their five-yearly visit to Rome. "Here is the address John Paul II delivered on Saturday to the U.S. bishops of the ecclesiastical provinces of San Antonio and Oklahoma City at the conclusion of their five-yearly visit to Rome."
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The church's apostolicity is clear regarding the bishop's indisputable pastoral obligation for the care of souls, particularly weak souls, and most notably in protecting sacrilege of the Eucharist: "Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord...for any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself."
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Michael J. Sheridan, the heroic Bishop of Colorado Springs who wrote a pastoral letter noting that not only anti-life and anti-family politicians but also the Catholics who vote for them commit a grave sin and thus may not receive communion until they repent, was grilled by CNN Friday. CNN's Anderson Cooper asked Bishop Sheridan: "I talked to a lot of Catholics today who are frankly kind of stunned by what you're doing and they said that what you seem to be doing is turning the sacraments into a weapon. Is that what they were meant (to be)?" After the Bishop remained firm in his resolve, Cooper asked: "You picked though certain topics, I mean gay marriage, euthanasia, stem cell research, the pope speaks against the war in Iraq, why these subjects?"
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In the absence of criticism or meaningful rebuke from American Bishops or the Pope himself, one could argue that the voice of American Catholicism is surely not from Rome... It sits in the governing seats of villages, townships, statehouses, and the Congress speaking tolerant, reproductive rights nonsense as if they are the words of Christ Himself. So go the anti-Popes and the demented pro-abortion Catholic politicians, souls who languish in error and sin with only a meager few Bishops who dare to stand up and call scandal by it's name.
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In the midst of timidity, waffling and head in the sand leadership in the nearly 200 hundred Catholic dioceses in the US, our friends at Episcopal Spine Alert have created a great site that highlights intestinal fortitute from chanceries standing up to heresy and Catholics-in-name-only (or CINO's, pronounced 'CHEE-nose') ESA this week lauded Archbishop John Vlazny of Portland, OR, for suggesting, as St. Paul did to the Romans, that sinners are bad enough, but those who support and encourage sinners in their sin (e.g. pro-abortion Catholic voters who elect pro-abortion Catholic politicians) are equally bad, if not worse. Inspired by Catholic blog-meister Mark Shea, this site acknowleges brave Bishops, whose numbers are growing!
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The explosion of the preventable scandals involving sodomite priests which have rocked our beloved Church in recent years evidently has weakened the faith of some Catholics. And this is to say nothing of the scandal of the abandonment of the authentic patrimony of the Catholic Faith and her traditional liturgy under the regime of novelty of the past forty to forty-six years. Indeed, it is not an exaggeration to state the the preventable scandals involving sodomite priests, at least some of whom were recruited into the priesthood and protected by sodomite bishops and sodomite chancery factotums, is an expression of the corruption of the Faith that has been enshrined in the Church's liturgy and the very humanistic, if not secularist, language that is used to describe the worsening of problems in the world that have their proximate origin in the Social Reign of Christ the King and of Mary our Immaculate Queen.
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We have to make sure that we are following the right shepherd. We have a Good Shepherd, and none of us is going to be able to stand before the Lord and say, "But Father said it was okay. The bishop didn't do anything about it, so it must have been okay." The Lord will look at you and say, "I'll deal with that priest or that bishop when they get here. You, on the other hand, knew better, and I'm going to hold you responsible for what you knew." We know the truth. It is written in our hearts and on our minds; we are without excuse. It would be easy to look around and say, "But look at all the other Catholics who aren't doing what they're supposed to do!" God will deal with them, but each one of us will have to stand individually before the Lord, Who is our Shepherd, for judgment. He will look at each one of us and say, "You knew. You knew Me. You knew what truth I preached." The question is - Did we choose to listen to His voice and follow Him? Or did we choose to listen to someone else's voice and follow them because it was easier, more convenient, more politically correct, more fun, whatever it might be?
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To return to faith in the Supreme Being of God is, at the same time, to come face to face with the real existence of Satan and of evil. Modern psychology, as the mistress of the analytical physical sciences, destroys this absolute distinction and embraces a continuum between good and evil, light and darkness, truth and untruth. It is this grey fog which has nearly destroyed Catholicism in the US and many other countries. To rediscover God as Supreme Being is, on the other hand, to recover the fortitude which is integral to true Catholicism and the Church Militant. In simple language, it restores the ability to discern evil and the guts to fight it. We do not now have a healthy priesthood or Church; the enemy is within; and the faithful priest or seminarian if he is to remain true to his God must do what few in the past have had the courage to do: wage war within the very Fraternity of Christ.
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In a four-page homily delivered Sunday and posted on the diocesan website, Bishop Aquila said, "In the light of the last few days and all of the media coverage regarding John Kerry's unambiguous support of abortion rights, his personal opposition to abortion, and his insistence on the separation of his Catholic faith from his professional life, I, as a successor of the apostles, cannot remain silent. I, as an apostle, must speak with the apostles and obey God rather than man and present to you the teaching of the Church on the proper relationship between our faith and professional life." Read Bishop Aquila's full homily online
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The Illinois Leader, at www.illinoisleader.com, has emerged as one of the most popular internet destinations for vital news and and events on the radar screens of Christian Americans. The are anchored by a staff of editorial writers that bring to light the hypocrisy of the liberal establishment and articulating the underpinnings of our Christian nation. Below is a press release from Illinois Leader. If you haven't visited them yet, you are missing out.
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Fight inequities and absurdities. Beware, young man, of parents and pastors who want to "mother" you. Avoid the secure; Fear over-protection; and happily accept the masculine task of the patriarch, the prophet, the warrior and wild man. Get to a place, young warrior, where pain is not a big deal, where you embrace resistance. And by your example, you will encourage others to resist self-doubt, squeamishness, indecision and the impulse to surrender and withdraw into the warm, wet womb of Wussville.
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The Acton Institute's website (www.acton.org) is a treasury of classical scholarship, including this essay we found that "attempts to lay out the understanding of property ownership found in the writings of Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas. The reason for focusing on the thought of these two authors is, in part, that much of the contemporary discussion of Church teaching and the economy omits mention of these most prominent figures in the tradition. An additional reason for considering their work is that they both engage the argument laid out by Aristotle on property, thus bridging the distance between classical and Christian thought. The importance of this question can be seen when one assesses how contemporary policy makers might employ these principles in a largely secular social order." Enjoy!
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"Wherever one looks in the modern world, one finds massive confusion about the nature of freedom. For example, Catholics say you can smoke cigarettes, if you want to, that's your choice," began Mr. Crocker. "Secular liberals say, no, smoking is bad. On the other hand, secular liberals say, you can kill a baby if you want to, that's your choice, because that baby is dependent upon you; you have power over it so use it and kill that baby if it's inconvenient."
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Father Benedict Groeschel, co-founder of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, has been known to joke about his death. In fact, he often quips that he looks forward to it. "The mean age of our community is about 32," Father Groeschel told the Register last year. "When I pass on it will be about 29." Since he was hit by a car Jan. 11, members of his religious community and admirers worldwide have been praying that Father Groeschel's passing won't be anytime soon.
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More was a great citizen, a great friend, a great father and a great husband who was born in the heart of London, in a family that had been active for generations in every aspect of civic life... St. Thomas More's exceptional statesmanship and human elegance were rooted in generations of a devout Catholic family immersed in London's long tradition of self-government... As Pope John Paul II put it in his proclamation of 2000, St. Thomas More "demonstrated in a singular way the value of a moral conscience which is 'the witness of God himself, whose voice and judgment penetrate the depths of man's soul.'"
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One would think that those updating Catholics who have pushed for decades now for "relevant" and "meaningful" liturgies - everything from folk Masses to puppet Masses to church murals picturing Christ as a Third World guerrilla - would have been willing to find room to "indulge" the cultural identity of the mainstream American male when they considered the question of girls serving Mass. That they bristled at this notion instead suggests a zealotry informed more by feminist ideology than by the best interests of the Church.
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"If the world feels it is foreign to Christianity, Christianity does not feel foreign to the world," the Pope said today before praying the Angelus with 20,000 pilgrims gathered in St. Peter's Square... Speaking from his library window, John Paul II said: "The mission of Christianity in the midst of humanity is a mission of friendship, understanding, encouragement, promotion, uplifting. That is, a mission of salvation."
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Former Baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent, in a New York Times op-ed piece, published on New Year's Day, writes of Pete Rose, "Pardon me while I rise to urge some caution. Ever since St. Augustine set the bar pretty high, there has been a certain style to confessional tomes. Now we have a mea culpa by Mr. Rose and no saint is he. Augustine, having lived it up, saw the light and wrote with a sense of guilt and regret. He even anguished over having stolen a pear. Early reports are that Mr. Rose confronts his past with very little remorse. Between him and Augustine, there is little doubt whose book will live longer."
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Best selling author Michael Rose will be our guest at the Jan 9 CCI lunch forum to discuss his new book, PRIEST. Rose is the author the best selling book GOODBYE, GOOD MEN, which detailed the corruption within some the leading American Catholic seminaries, and the disaster this has caused the church. His lecture on this topic in November of 2002 was filmed by CSPAN and rebroadcast in January of 2003. $20 for a full course lunch, and fully Catholic forum. For reservations, call 708 352 5834 by Thursday evening. The public is welcome. CCI monthly luncheons are at noon on the second Friday of every month in downtown Chicago at the Chicago Athletic Assoc, 12 S. Michigan Ave.
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Intercession is the way the church conducts spiritual warfare. As this nation moves into an important election year, what victories are won will be dependent, more than ever, on the spiritual battles intercessors engage in. This series constitutes a summary of key points on the topic of spiritual warfare from the book BORN FOR BATTLE, by R. Arthur Mathews, a missionary who was with China Inland Mission (now Overseas Missionary Fellowship) and published the essay below in 2001.
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What's in a name? Included here is a discussion of the Most Holy Name of Jesus by Br. Thompson, the litany itself, and the Catholic Encyclopedia discussion. "An old and popular form of prayer in honour of the Name of Jesus. The author is not known. Probably Binterim is correct in ascribing it to the celebrated preachers of the Holy Name, Saints Bernardine of Siena and John Capistran, at the beginning of the fifteenth century. At the request of the Carmelites, Pope Sixtus V (1585-90) granted an indulgence of 300 days for its recitation."
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"...it is important to know that we do not say that Jesus is a human person, which He is not. We confess that Jesus is One Divine Person, the Son of God, who has taken to Himself a created human body and soul. He is one Person with two natures, one divine and the other human. His human nature is a created human soul animating a created human body. He is not two Persons, one Divine, and another human. All that Jesus does, He does as God even while living in His human body which is animated by a human soul. It is wonderful to know that we learn how God sees and thinks when we see how Jesus thinks and acts in the Gospel story."
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Although it is not a Christmas tradition, perhaps it would be wise for us to each take just a moment to reflect on Chesterton's dictum that the only difference between a dog and man is that a dog is never ungrateful. When people ask what should be our prevailing sentiment at Christmastime, I always tell them that it should be gratitude. By that I don't mean the gratitude that brings us to elicit, over and over, the maxim that "it is better to give than to receive." Nor am I speaking of the gratitude that we should have at Christmastime for those who remember us with entertainment or gifts or personal service.
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On behalf of the directors of Catholic Citizens of Illinois, we wish you a Merry Christmas holiday, and blessed New Year. In the past 12 months, through your support we have grown to a paid subscriber base of well over a thousand individuals, and our e-newsletter includes over 1,200 recipients. During the month of November, over 275,000 "hits" were registered by catholiccitizens.org, which is visited by over 10,000 individuals a week. Thanks to all of you who have supported our efforts to bring the voice of authentic Catholicism to the public square, and thanks be to God, for giving us the grace and strength to witness to His greatness, His love, and His everlasting glory.
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There's a song at this time of year that promises "I'll Be Home for Christmas," and there are many folks who use the festive season to go home to their church's Christmas services because - well just because it's "home." A Catholic pastor believes his parish family is incomplete without those folks all year long, so he and an active parishioner will inaugurate "Catholics Returning Home," a ministry of compassion and reconciliation authored by Sally Mews. The Rev. Eugene Nowak, pastor of St. Hubert Catholic Church in Hoffman Estates, and Gene Farrell worked together to formulate the welcome home package, which aims at Catholics who aren't practicing their faith.
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Three years ago I mentioned to a Catholic friend that I was starting to work on a book critiquing the Left Behind novels. I explained that it would thoroughly examine premillennial dispensationalism, the unique apocalyptic belief system presented, in fictional format, within those books. Premillennial dispensationalism teaches that the “Rapture” and the Second Coming are two events separated by a time of tribulation and that there will be a future millennial reign of Christ on earth. “Why?” she asked, obviously bewildered. “No one really takes that stuff seriously.”
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One of my favorite pastimes in the last few years has been writing letters to the editor, or, as I like to call them, love letters to the libertine left. I say "libertine left" because a majority of my letters are written to and printed in secular newspapers - newspapers that, with a few notable exceptions, are riddled with decadent journalists. And not a few of those same newspapers' readers are also of the decadent mindset. Faithful Catholics know this all too well.
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SCRANTON, Pennsylvania, DEC. 17, 2003 (Zenit.org).- An expert in Church history greatly admires those who "thought their way to the truth" in the 19th century, but insists that modern day converts are even more remarkable. Father Charles Connor recognizes that people who feel called to become Catholics today must chose to embrace a Church that is attacked by secularism even as it recovers from post-Second Vatican Council turmoil. The author of "Classic Catholic Converts" (Ignatius) and host of an EWTN series on the topic, Father Connor shared with ZENIT what challenges the new faithful have faced and what gifts they have brought to the Church in recent centuries.
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On Saturday November 29th, at 11 AM, a group of volunteers will converge on Daley Plaza to assemble a life sized Nativity scene that has been delighting workers, holiday shoppers and families in downtown Chicago since 1985. Three years ago, this scene made a scene of its own, when Godless vandals made off with baby Jesus. The statue was found and returned a few days later. Join the "God Squad" nativity assembly corp., and the Santa Maria del Popolo Catholic Church choir for a truly special event. Included here also are links to a history of the Chicago Nativity scene and a legal brief that protects it.
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Many who profess to know Christ struggle with a true understanding of spiritual warfare. They either see a demon behind every bush or relegate this whole subject to a superstition of the Middle Ages. The truth of the matter is clearly laid out in Ephesians, Chapter 6. The beauty of Scripture is that it reveals to us things that we would otherwise have no way of knowing through our five physical senses. This is why God gave us His word. If we could discover this on our own, there would be no need for the Bible. Let´s take a look at this difficult subject.
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The former Executive Director of the Catholic Conference of Illinois and the Colorado Catholic Conference, Doug Delaney, has received the Pro Ecclaeia et Pontiface award directly from Pope John Paul II. This award was formally presented to Mr. Delaney recently by Francis Cardinal George and the Bishops of Illinois for outstanding service to the Church and Pontiff.
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Faithful Catholics know that the first step toward heaven is a personal and loving relationship with Jesus Christ. "Morality should be inspired by an encounter with Jesus Christ, and not by a series of indications: It is an encounter of love," said the Cardinal Ratzinger, the Prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in a congress on John Paul II's encyclical "Veritatis Splendor."
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We have much to be grateful for this year. Since launching this website in mid-2002, we end the year averaging 200,000+ hits a month (275,000 in November alone!) and tens of thousands of visitors. We appreciate your support and the hundreds of encouraging letters we have received this year. Next Sunday is the first of Advent, which signals the start of the Catholic 'new year.' So as this year ends, it is with gratitude and thanksgiving to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ that I rededicate my efforts to serve Him in the coming year. For your enjoyment, below is George Washington's national address proclaiming Thanksgiving as a national holiday. Karl Maurer, Web-editor, www.catholiccitizens.org, Vice President and Treasurer, Catholic Citizens of Illinois.
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"...the Christian creed offers "the world's true story," not some "alternative view," or "Christian opinion" or truth for this or that individual, but truth for everyone. Nowhere else, he writes, "is such an alternative vision of the world and of humanity so clearly stated." Against liberal theologians, Johnson insists Jesus' divinity was not a later belief the creeds tacked onto Christianity but an element in people's earliest attempts to comprehend Jesus. He also says the creeds explain the teachings in the New Testament rather than adding anything to them.
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We can pray, too, for the courage and persistence to continue to look for political leaders with the gifts of mind and heart that incline them to be virtuous people. We have accepted the bad idea that public and private life are separate, and this I think is pernicious. A man or a woman who cannot live a good life before God and man privately must not be regarded as capable of public service. Jesus said, "By their fruits you shall know them." People who have failed to live up to the obligations they freely accepted in their family life cannot be expected to succeed in guiding and directing their communities or our national life.
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According to a new study, 76% of Americans believe in Heaven and 71% in Hell. (1) Of course, there are eclectic views of what such places are. For example, 39% described Hell as a "state of eternal separation from God's presence;" 32% called it "an actual place of torment and suffering," and 13% hold it is merely a "symbol" of some "bad outcome after death." There was a variety of opinions about Heaven also, reflecting the individualism inherent in the basically Protestant U.S. culture, which confers a supposed "right" for each individual to define the truth as he sees it. (1) The poll was taken by the Oxnard-based Barna Research Group, an independent marketing research firm, which interviewed 1,000 adults nationwide during September, 2003.
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"Will this fiery process of purification hurt? Yes, as St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3: the soul in purgatory suffers and will enter heaven, "only as though passing through fire." Perhaps the most important lesson we can learn from these facts is that we can avoid purgatory altogether, or at least an extended stay there, by offering to the Lord our daily trials and pains. These sufferings are purgatorial in themselves, if they are offered to God with a loving and contrite heart. In this way, our suffering is purified and elevated. It becomes a participation in the redemptive sufferings of Christ (cf. Col. 1:24)."
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"Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus has an ancient history. At the beginning of devotion to the Sacred Heart we find references of the Fathers of the Church to the Sacred Wound of the Side of Jesus. In time devotion to this Sacred Wound led to devotion to the Sacred Heart. From this Sacred Wound, with the Blood and Water, the Church and the Sacraments were born. The Blood symbolized the Holy Eucharist and the Water symbolized Baptism. As St. Ambrose (d.397) stated: "The Water cleanses us, the Blood redeems us." This was also the teaching of St. John Chrysostom (d.407)."
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CCI NOTES: Joseph Pearce is Writer in Residence at Ave Maria University in Ypsilanti, Michigan, and author of Tolkien: Man and Myth (Ignatius Press). Mr. Pearce has been our guest at the CCI lunch forum, and his article below is an excellent summary of how Catholic themes animate the Ring trilogy of Tolkein, which has received considerable attention throught the recent movies.
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"Amid the storms through which She passes today, She [the Church] could proudly and tranquilly say: 'Alios ego vidi ventos; alias prospexi animo procellas' ('I have already seen other winds, I have weathered other storms'). The Church has fought in other lands, against adversaries from among other peoples, and she will undoubted continue to face problems and enemies quite different from those of today until the end of time." Bishop Juan Rodolpho Laise quoted these words of the TFP founder, Professor Plinio Corr'a de Oliveira at the beginning of his talk, "A Capuchin Bishop Reflects on the Crisis in the Church." It set the tone for an evening of conversation and thought at the American TFP Washington Bureau October 15.
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"Dan Brown's blockbuster novel, The DaVinci Code, will certainly outsell N.T. Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God by a factor of 10,000:1, and probably more. Quite unintentionally, though, Dr. Wright's book is the perfect response to the anti-Christian slander that underwrites The DaVinci Code - the charge that the early Christians deliberately lied about Jesus, his friendships, and his fate in order to keep women subjugated. Really."
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George Weigel, one of America's leading commentators on religion and public policy, was given the 2003 Catholic Citizens of Illinois St. Thomas More Award for outstanding Catholic citizenship. Previous recipients of this award include Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly and the author of Goodbye Good Men, Michael S. Rose. Mr. Weigel attended the group's awards banquet on September 12, joining Congressman Henry Hyde and Catholic leaders from Illinois and across the country. In his stimulating address, Mr. Weigel focused on two themes: firstly, that democracy ungrounded in moral truth is deficient and doomed, and secondly, that the moral arguments of Catholics are not sectarian, political opinions, but articulate the very foundations of human liberty and freedom, thus forming the basis of a morally and intellectually coherent public worldview that defends life from conception to natural death.
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Franciscan theologians in the 1200's, in contemplating voluntary poverty, contributed mightily to the development of contractual arrangements to manage business risks, according to the research of historian of medieval economics, Giacomo Todeschini, of the University of Trieste. "The latest discovery by medieval historians is that even games of chance, in the analysis of the Franciscan theologians, were for the good" notes Sandro Magister in Italian magazine L'esspresso. "This cleared the way for the modern economic concepts of risk" long before the Protestant merchants and traders who had previously been seen as the 'founders' of the capitalist system.
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Mary Ann Glendon, Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard University, will speak in Chicago on November 2, at 9am at Catholic Festival of Faith at Navy Pier. In an article published by ADVENT2000 this year, she wrote, "Father Richard Neuhaus says that the crisis is threefold: fidelity, fidelity and fidelity. But, perhaps because I'm a teacher, it seems to me that the problem is not so much fidelity as it is formation, formation and formation (formation of our theologians, formation of our religious educators, and thus formation of parents)." Ms. Glendon also noted "the upsurge around the world of lay associations, formation programs and ecclesial movements that think and feel with the Church," which captures the spirit of Catholic Citizens of Illinois.
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Come meet George Weigel: Columnist, leading Catholic author, and defender of the Catholic Faith! "I think that we are heading into a period in which the Catholic understanding of the inalienable dignity and value of every human life is going to be profoundly challenged. It was challenged in the 20th century by political systems. It will be challenged in the 21st century by the biotechnology revolution. This struggle will be even more difficult because, whereas with Nazism and communism one was confronted with unmitigated evils, the biotech revolution is a complex mixture of good and potential evil or catastrophe."
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Today, September 8, is the celebration of the birthday of the Virgin Mary, the Immaculate Conception. In 1531, Our Lady appeared to St. Juan Diago-Guadalupe and said, "Listen and let it penetrate your heart, my dear little son. Do not fear any illness or vexation, anxiety or pain. Am I not here who am your Mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not your fountain of life? Are you not in the folds of my mantle? In the crossing of my arms? Is there anything else you need?"
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The secret of happiness and optimism lies in doing good for the love of God, says John Paul II. The Pope delivered this message to the 9,000 pilgrims at today's general audience, dedicated to a meditation on Psalm 91(92), a hymn in praise of God the creator. The Holy Father illustrated his message with words from St. Augustine: "Whatever you do, do it with joy. Then you do good and you do it well. If, instead, you act with sadness, even if through it you do good, it is not you who do it."
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CCI readers will note that CTA devotee Robert McClory is out with a new essay lamenting the the gulf between revolutionary 'reformers' of Catholicism at Common Ground, and the stone age traditionalists who cling to - gasp! - the traditional teachings and liturgies of the 2,000 year old Catholic Faith. Bernardin's contribution to the 'modern' Catholic lexicon include 'seamless garment' and 'common ground' Catholicism. As Cardinal Law said when CG was introduced, truth and dissent from truth have no reason to dialogue on church matters. Dale Vree chimes in with more fashion tips for the dissenters from the June 2003 issue of New Oxford Review.
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Pius X, without much argument, was one of the most faithful and dedicated pontiffs the world has ever known. For his faithfulness, God allowed him to see where the trends of his own day were headed -- into the era of modernism, liberal theology and pseudo-intellectualism, of which evolution was one of the leading movements. Pius X... made frequent condemnation of the "evolution" of Catholic doctrine and practice that modernists were seeking to force onto the Catholic populace. Due to the influences from the social dialectic of Hegel and the biological theory of evolution espoused by Lyell and Darwin, many liberal Catholic theologians insisted that the Church must also evolve." Not so, said Pius X, and here's why...
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The USCCB said today, "Bishop Wilton D. Gregory, President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), welcomed the Vatican document entitled "Considerations regarding proposals to give legal recognition to unions between homosexual persons." He urged Catholics and all persons of good will to give the document serious and thoughtful attention." Gregory joins Illinois Bishops Lucas, George and Paprocki who have spoken out in the last week against phony Catholic politicians who support gay marriage and abortion.
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Allan Carlson is one of the most respected authors and lecturers on issues dealing with the family. These comments are adapted from an address by him to The World Family Policy Forum, held July 16-18, 2001, in Provo, Utah. United Nations ambassadors and national delegation members from 52 nations were present."I want to engage in a small fantasy. I will assume that I have been asked by the nations of the world to draft a new and more appropriate Charter of Rights for children. It is to be called What Children Really Need, and it is to reflect the freshest and most compelling New Research on this question. After much consideration, I have settled on Ten Articles, and I am now here to announce them to you."
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"With all due respect to Rome and the Holy Father, changes cannot be made in our pagan culture until changes are made within the ranks of our Catholic Church. A house divided against itself cannot stand. The Catholic Faith can longer survive with an internal revolution, whereby the mutineer dissenters are allowed free reign to subvert and mislead the faithful by timid bishops cowering in fear over how they will be portrayed in their local papers or down at the local Masonic lodge."
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CCI Editors Note: CCI Member Mike Donnelly thinks the Bishops are shorting themselves. Opposition to the sinful acts of homosexuality and other sins against sexual morality are not a 'Catholic thing' but a violation of the natural order as expressed in Natural Law. A society that rejects the natural order of things can't survive. An organization that bases it's arguments on societal norms on anything less than the Natural Law is fighting with one arm tied behind their back. It's time the Catholic Bishops come out swinging, with both arms: Catholic dogma and the Natural Law.
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In a book-length interview, Father Marcial Maciel speaks to a wide public audience about how he founded the Legionaries of Christ and the Regnum Christi Movement. In "Christ Is My Life" (Sophia Institute Press), Father Maciel also addresses key issues for the future, including globalization, Internet and the world after the Sept. 11 attacks.
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Mother Assumpta Long, founder of both the Sisters of Mary of the Eucharist and Spiritus Sanctus Schools, will speak at the CCI Luncheon Forum on July 11, 2003 at the Chicago Athletic Club in Chicago at 10 S. Michigan. The public is welcome. Join us for the best sermon/salmon combo in Chicago! Lunch is $20. For reservations call Maureen at 708-352-5834.
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Author Michael S. Rose writes to Inside the Vatican magazine: "Your June-July 2003 issue included a letter to the editor entitled "Enraged" and signed "Michael Rose." Unfortunately, many people--including some at Inside the Vatican--have mistaken me for the author of this letter, which is anti-Papal in content and woefully intemperate in tone. The letter does not express my views in the least; nor is the letter written in a manner even remotely consistent with my style. To be sure, I am not the author of the letter."
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"This is a win for kids, librarians, library patrons and tax-payers," said Jan LaRue, chief counsel at Concerned Women for America, responding to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to hold the Children's Internet Protection Act constitutional. "The Court soundly rejected the inane idea that the First Amendment requires tax-payers to provide access to illegal porn in a library," said LaRue, who co-authored an amicus brief in the Supreme Court in support of the CIPA.
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Una Voce America director Fred Haehnel recently sat down with Ken Jones, vice president of Una Voce St. Charles, to discuss his new book, Index of Leading Catholic Indicators: The Church since Vatican II. Mr. Jones is an attorney and legal publisher in St. Louis. His translation from the French of Cardinal Hoyos’ letter to Bishop Bernard Fellay of the Society of St. Pius X was published in the August-September 2002 issue of Inside the Vatican.
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Bishop Francis Kane was ordained last month in Chicago, and writes, "As a bishop, I have gained a new appreciation for the Church in this local community. I have learned so many things in such a short period of time. I would like to share just three short reflections as someone who has seen both sides now as a pastor and as an auxiliary bishop.:
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John Paul II thanked the Franciscan Friars Minor for their missionary service to the Church and invited them to "a more incisive apostolic action in today's world," in his message to their general chapter. Religious, superiors and representatives of the order are meeting until June 21 in the Portiuncula of Assisi, where St. Francis himself gathered his religious in chapter. The friars are focusing on the topic "Fraternity in Mission."
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Lent has been over for quite a while now. We are at the tail end of the Easter season, 50 days of rejoicing in the resurrection until Pentecost Sunday (that's next Sunday, June 8). The days of fasting are a memory; there's no more need to forego that Big Mac on Friday. Or is there?
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"I find it puzzling and disturbing that anyone would feel licensed to attack a film of sincere faith before it has even been released," Archbishop Chaput writes. "When the overtly provocative 'The Last Temptation of Christ' was released 15 years ago, movie critics piously lectured Catholics to be open-minded and tolerant. Surely that advice should apply equally for everyone."
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C Preston Noel III, 46, has devoted his adult life to a Catholic-based cultural organization dedicated to what they call the core values of Christian civilization: Tradition, Family and Property. The organization, which started in Brazil in 1960 and came to the United States in 1974, makes its voice heard through street protests, postcard and e-mail campaigns and a sister lobbying organization in Washington. It counts about 100 full-time volunteers and several thousand donors. Noel, who was raised in St. Louis, works as Chicago coordinator and as a lobbyist and publication editor in Washington.
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"In present times, the Church throughout the Roman Rite is experiencing an undeniable and very often reported loss of Faith in the divinity of Jesus Christ and His Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament. Part of the reason, I submit, for this loss is that Catholics do not have a regular opportunity to adore Jesus in the Eucharist by this simple act of genuflection. Indeed, if Catholics do not kneel to receive Our Lord at Communion, when will they ever kneel before Him? We greet relatives, spouses and in some countries even friends with a kiss; will we not greet Our God with an adoring kneel?"
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"The Holy Father writes of the Eucharist as a sacrifice, as communion with Christ and one another, as a preparation for the end of the world and a foretaste of heaven, as the link to the apostolic church and to the church universal through the successors of the apostles, the bishops. Emphasizing only one or two of these dimensions of the mystery and forgetting the others reduces the Eucharist to something less than the gift Christ gave to his Church."
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Frank Sheed, the English Catholic writer, put it nicely long ago: "We are not baptized into the hierarchy; do not receive the Cardinals sacramentally; will not spend an eternity in the beatific vision of the pope. Christ is the point. I, myself, admire the present pope, but even if I criticised him as harshly as some do, even if his successor proved to be as bad as some of those who have gone before, even if I find the church, as I have to live with it, a pain in the neck, I should still say that nothing that a pope (or a priest) could do or say would make me wish to leave the church, although I might well wish that they would leave."
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In any walk of life, ethical conduct extends beyond just following the rules and codes that govern one's profession or job, the chief justice of the Illinois Supreme Court told a Catholic university audience. "Codes of conduct and professional rules of responsibility provide, at best, minimum standards -- the do's and don'ts of the profession and the professional," Chief Justice Mary Ann McMorrow said in an address to about 200 people at Lewis University in Romeoville.
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"Vatican II released a wave of confusion unprecedented in Church history. Even though some of the ideas and philosophies that contributed so greatly to the crisis existed in the Church long beforehand, the Council provided a legitimate basis to which liberals and dissidents could appeal for support. This has been further exasperated by statements made by members of the Church hierarchy that either go beyond or further "develop" the teachings represented by Vatican II, as well as the scarcity of corrections issued to those who adopt even the most extreme interpretations or distortions of conciliar documents."
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Pope John Paul II issued a rare papal encyclical Thursday, urging Roman Catholics to refrain from taking "communion" in any other Christian church. In the 19-page English translation of the encyclical, or letter, titled "Ecclesia de Eucharistia," the pope said his aim was to preserve the Eucharistic celebration from what he called "abuses."
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"TOM DASCHLE may no longer call himself a Catholic. The Senate minority leader and the highest ranking Democrat in Washington has been sent a letter by his home diocese of Sioux Falls, sources in South Dakota have told The Weekly Standard, directing him to remove from his congressional biography and campaign documents all references to his standing as a member of the Catholic Church." We at CCI applaud Bishops like Carlson and Weigand of Sacramento, and pray that more will stand up to CINO-pols (Catholic in name only politicians, pronounced, 'CHEE-no-pols') not just in America, but world-wide. Correction of the corrupted relationship between church and state will not occur until imposters are identified as such, in public, by Catholic clerics.
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Rev. Anthony Bus, CR, Pastor of St. Stanislaus Kostka in Chicago, will address the CCI Luncheon with an examination of Mary as the Mother of the Roman Catholic Church, and Mary as the Herald of the Catholic restoration that so many faithful Roman Catholics pray and work for. The public is welcome to the best sermon/salmon combo in Chicago! Lunch is ONLY $20; for reservations call 708-352-5834.
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"It says a great deal about the state of conservative thought in America that any of this (pro-war) nonsense could actually be confused with genuine conservatism. To the contrary, this kind of messianic ideology, whereby there exists some moral obligation to spread democracy and to "free" the various unfree peoples of the world, is precisely what the great conservative Edmund Burke meant when he spoke of the "armed doctrines" of the French Revolution."
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"It is appropriate to take special note during this season of the penitential rite, which normally comes at the beginning of Mass. Once the entrance procession has ended and all are in their places - people, priest, deacon and other ministers - we pause momentarily to recall our sins. We must approach this holy and living sacrifice with humility."
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St. Patrick's heroic life in the service of the Catholic faith is an amazing story. Apostle of Ireland, born at Kilpatrick, near Dumbarton, in Scotland, in the year 387; died at Saul, Downpatrick, Ireland, 17 March, 493.
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Raymond Arroyo the anchor for EWTN's "The World Over" news magazine show was granted an exclusive interview with Mel Gibson on the set of "The Passion." The interview first aired last Friday and was previewed in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece by Arroyo. Check it out at...
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In spite of his long and successful career, Gibson isn't treating The Passion like just another movie; it is the fruit of his unique spiritual experience - it's his baby...
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In his speech last night geared toward the University Catholic community, Roman Catholic theologian George Weigel said there is no reason to blame the recent sexual misconduct of Catholic priests on the vow of celibacy each takes at his ordination.
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"Even our own Church teaches that religious authorities do not have the last word in applying the principles of the Just War Theory. Public authorities have that right and duty — unless by “the last word” you mean the right to vote those authorities out of office if we do not accede to their judgment. In that case, “the last word” belongs equally to all of us."
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A good and holy priest, Father Charles Fiore of Madison, Wisconsin, just passed away this evening. Father Fiore was a close confidant of Rev. Malichi Martin (RIP) and Father Kunz (RIP). We have reprinted a letter Fiore sent to Our Sunday Visitor defending Martin, and will have more information in the next day or so. May the perpetual light shine upon you Charles Fiori, we're right behind you...
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As a young Priest, Father Mac adopted a quote from St. Vincent de Paul as his motto: "When you no longer burn with love," said St. Vincent, "others around you will die of the cold." Father Mac's heart has burned like a beacon for over a century in Chicago, and thanks to this inspiring and entertaining biography, his faith, hope and charity will not be forgotten.
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"As I contemplate these two priceless endowments to our Catholic faith here in America, I am moved to express my gratitude. First, I want to acknowledge the contributions of all who have chosen the consecrated life, those who have gone before and those still in our midst. The health of our Catholic schools is just one star among many in the saintly crowns that are rightfully yours."
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Tom Roeser delivered this speech at a recent Catholic Citizens luncheon forum in honor of Monsignor Ignatius McDermott, who is the subject of Tom's new book, "Father Mac" (available at Amazon.com, all proceeds go to the Haymarket Center for Alcohol Addiction Treatment that Father Mac founded.)
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For those of us who haven't mastered Aramaic but enjoy films with subtitles, we're out of luck. There won't be any subtitles. Whether this is a stroke of genius or an attempt to commit career suicide, it's an eye-opening example of a major Hollywood star defying Hollywood logic.
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The desacralizing secularism that dominates our society is not limited to disfiguring the celebrations of the Birth of Our Lord. It persecutes Christmas even down to the august echoes which prolong it in the feasts that follow: New Year's Day and the Epiphany.
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"As the Vatican innovators dance their dance with the neo-Catholic establishment, the attention of the faithful is systematically diverted from the salient fact that the chaotic state of the postconciliar Church has originated almost entirely from acts and omissions of the Vatican apparatus, including the conciliar Popes themselves. A perfect example of the two-step in action is the recent denunciation of Cardinal George in a certain neo-Catholic newspaper-let's call it "The Wanderer"-because the Cardinal partook of an Indian "purification" ceremony in Toronto during World Youth Day 2002."
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