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In Print And Onscreen . . . Honoring The Life Of A Solidarity Priest

October 1, 2018 Featured Today Comments Off on In Print And Onscreen . . . Honoring The Life Of A Solidarity Priest

By MICHAEL J. MILLER (Editor’s Note: Michael J. Miller translated Blessed Jerzy Popieluszko: Truth Versus Totalitarianism for Ignatius Press.) + + + It is difficult to write a good literary life of a saint. A dry recital of the facts captures neither character nor motives and makes as much of an impression as a plaster statue on a pedestal. Sanctity is a love story, but the Protagonist is invisible, known only indirectly through the effects of grace on a frail human being. Cinematic lives of saints are vivid but usually do not avoid the pitfalls of sentimentality and empty pageantry. Most biopics of holy men view them through the lens of contemporary preoccupations and quickly become dated. Even an outstanding…Continue Reading

Protestant Leaders Petition Beijing To Stop Persecuting Christians

September 30, 2018 Featured Today Comments Off on Protestant Leaders Petition Beijing To Stop Persecuting Christians

BEIJING (AsiaNews) — A mid-September petition signed by 297 Protestant Church leaders from 21 provinces and autonomous regions calls on the government to stop its “violent actions” against Christians and to accept the separation of state and Church. By signing such a statement, the clergymen are denouncing new religious regulations that have recently come into force and which have put greater pressure on Chinese churches, leading to acts of violence not seen in decades. The petition notes: “In September 2017, the State Council issued the new ‘Regulations on the Administration of Religious Affairs’ and began implementing these regulations in February 2018. Ever since then, Christian churches across China have suffered varying degrees of persecution, contempt, and misunderstanding from government departments…Continue Reading

Sacred Music: A Marriage Of Beauty To Reverence

September 29, 2018 Featured Today Comments Off on Sacred Music: A Marriage Of Beauty To Reverence

By JAMES MONTI Dietrich von Hildebrand (1889-1977) was wont to cite an observation from Plato’s Phaedrus: “The vision of the beautiful, as Plato says, causes the soul ‘to grow wings’ ” (Transformation in Christ, Manchester, NH, Sophia Institute Press, 1998, p. 231). In the context of the sacred liturgy, such a winged ascent to “the things that are above” (Col. 3:1) can only be made with reverence. Without reverence the soul cannot become airborne, without reverence it cannot ascend to what is above. In a recent conversation, Dr. Alice von Hildebrand proposed to me the following definition for sacred music: sacred music is “beauty married to reverence.” How is this so? To begin with, the beauty of a genuine work…Continue Reading

San Diego Catholic Says … Homeless Show More Interest In Evangelization Than The Better Off

September 28, 2018 Featured Today Comments Off on San Diego Catholic Says … Homeless Show More Interest In Evangelization Than The Better Off

By DEXTER DUGGAN SAN DIEGO – Homeless people are more open to recognizing their need for God than members of the general public are, a director of a Catholic street ministry of evangelization told The Wanderer as he took a break from his job as a patent attorney downtown. Steve Beuerle, 48, central San Diego Director of St. Paul Street Evangelization, said he can hand out more religious objects in a short time where the homeless congregate than at popular locations here where people don’t have such material want, such as a famous local park or a historic sailing ship that became a maritime museum on San Diego Bay. “I can distribute more Miraculous Medals and rosaries in 20 minutes…Continue Reading

Kavanaugh’s Foes “Hit Bottom, Still Digging”

September 27, 2018 Featured Today Comments Off on Kavanaugh’s Foes “Hit Bottom, Still Digging”

By JACK KENNY To put it kindly, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee may be auditioning for future employment, most likely with Barnum and Bailey. For once the public hearing on the freshly minted accusation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was scheduled, it was clear at once that we are in for another circus, reminiscent of the Anita Hill testimony against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas in 1991, at which point it seemed Washington politics couldn’t sink much lower. But it has. As committee chairman Chuck Grassley said, Senate Democrats now have “hit bottom and are still digging.” After the days-long hearings on the Kavanaugh nomination had been concluded, and only days before the scheduled committee vote, came the…Continue Reading

Why We Mark October As The Month Of The Rosary

September 26, 2018 Featured Today Comments Off on Why We Mark October As The Month Of The Rosary

By DONAL ANTHONY FOLEY October is the month of the rosary, and of course October 13 is the anniversary day of the famous Miracle of the Sun on October 13, 1917, when at least 70,000 people who had gathered at the Cova da Iria in Fatima, at the place where our Lady appeared to the children, saw a tremendous miracle. Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903) wrote numerous encyclicals promoting the rosary, and encouraged the practice of saying it every day in October. He was particularly wary of the influence of Freemasonry, and believed that the best way to combat this was to get Catholics to pray the rosary. He also added the invocation “Queen of the Most Holy Rosary” to the…Continue Reading

Truth And Candor

September 25, 2018 Featured Today Comments Off on Truth And Candor

By DONALD DeMARCO Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, in his book, Strangers in a Strange Land: Living the Catholic Faith in a Post-Christian World, makes two most important points when he reminds all those who love life that “candor is not the enemy of love” and that “real hope begins in honesty.” Candor may disturb one’s complacency. It may seem rude and uninviting. Honesty, on the other hand, might be seen as a harbinger of the unacceptable. But more is at stake in the world today than avoiding candor and honesty while bowing to the power elite. The avenues of communication must be repaired so that people can work together and so that civilization may flourish. The virtuous natures of candor…Continue Reading

Staying Aboard The Barque In A Raging Sea

September 24, 2018 Featured Today Comments Off on Staying Aboard The Barque In A Raging Sea

By LAWRENCE P. GRAYSON “Suddenly a violent storm came up on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by waves; but He was asleep. They came and woke Him, saying, ‘Lord, save us! We are perishing!’ He said to them, ‘Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?’” (Matt. 8:24-26). The Barque of Peter is now being buffeted by revelations and allegations of clerical immorality and hierarchical cover-up. The mid-August report of the attorney general of Pennsylvania describing widespread sexual exploitation of seminarians and adolescent males by priests in that state, along with the accusations of the obscene behavior of Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, has been devastating. Many people in the Church, clergy as well as laity, have…Continue Reading

And What’s Next?… Why The Kavanaugh Confirmation Hearings Turned Into A Circus

September 23, 2018 Featured Today Comments Off on And What’s Next?… Why The Kavanaugh Confirmation Hearings Turned Into A Circus

By REY FLORES By the time you are reading this, it’s possible that the Senate Judiciary Committee will have already voted for Brett Kavanaugh and sent him on his way to full Senate approval, making him the newest member of the Supreme Court of the United States. However, given the way the first day of the hearings went, it’s impossible to predict what will happen with the rest of the process. In as long as I have followed politics, political hearings, State of the Union addresses, debates and hearings, I have never witnessed such clownish antics coming from the unhinged lunatic left. From the very start, it wasn’t the wild, rabid agitators in the back of the room who started…Continue Reading

Like Its Film Students… JP Catholic University Steps Out Into The Wild On Its Mission

September 22, 2018 Featured Today Comments Off on Like Its Film Students… JP Catholic University Steps Out Into The Wild On Its Mission

By DEXTER DUGGAN ESCONDIDO, Calif. — Discussing a few definitely different films as The Wanderer visited with him, Derry Connolly turned to the monitor at his desk and called them up instantly, from the 1993 Western Tombstone, directed by George Cosmatos, to Scout: A Star Wars Story, released by students at his own school last year. Connolly, president of John Paul the Great Catholic University here, has seen continuing advances in technology since this school opened in September 2006, after the Internet flourished and major gatekeepers in Los Angeles lost their control over access in the entertainment industry. Rather than having to win favor with one of six or seven big companies, outsiders could post their own works that quickly…Continue Reading