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The Celebration Of Marriage

January 6, 2018 Our Catholic Faith Comments Off

By DON FIER In the salvific plan of God, the vast majority of people are called to the married state of life. At the same time, however, as we saw in last week’s column, “Matrimony is not an obligation for everyone, especially since God calls some men and women to follow the Lord Jesus in a life of virginity or celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven. . . . They become a sign of the absolute supremacy of Christ’s love and of the ardent expectation of his glorious return” (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 342). By renouncing the great good of married life, generous men and women who answer that special call and…Continue Reading

Catholic Replies

January 5, 2018 Our Catholic Faith Comments Off

Q. I know that the Devil has a lot of influence in the world today, and that he is capable of leading persons into sin, but can he read a person’s thoughts? — K.R., via e-mail. A. No, says the late Fr. Gabriel Amorth, chief exorcist in Rome for many years and author of several books based on his experiences combatting the Devil and his disciples. In his last book, An Exorcist Explains the Demonic, Fr. Amorth answered this question by saying, “Absolutely not.” He said that “only God — who is omniscient, who intimately possesses the secrets of created reality, that of men and angels, and that of uncreated reality, which is His own essence — knows in depth…Continue Reading

Vices Opposed To The Virtue Of Hope

January 5, 2018 Our Catholic Faith Comments Off

By DON FIER In beginning our deliberation on the theological virtue of hope in last week’s installment, it was noted that human hope pertains to a certain confidence directed toward what is expected, but not yet present. As portrayed by Christoph Cardinal Schönborn in the third volume of Living the Catechism of the Catholic Church, natural hope is “a human attitude without which there can be no human life: the sick person hopes for recovery; the lover, for the return of the beloved; those afflicted by war, for peace” (p. 49). His Eminence goes on to state that “someone who has no hope left at all — if that is even possible — cannot live, either” (ibid., p. 50). This…Continue Reading

The Lamb Of God

January 4, 2018 Our Catholic Faith Comments Off

By FR. ROBERT ALTIER Second Sunday Of Ordinary Time (YR B) Readings: 1 Samuel 3:3b-10, 19 1 Cor. 6:13c-15a, 17-20 John 1:35-42 Before addressing anything by way of a homily, I would like to focus first on an apologetics point. At the end of the Gospel reading today from St. John, we hear about Simon being brought to Jesus by his brother Andrew. When Simon meets the Lord, Jesus says “‘You are Simon, son of John; you will be called Cephas’ — which is translated Peter.” Many question Catholics about the passage from Matthew 16 where Jesus says “You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church….” They rightly point out that the word used there is…Continue Reading

Pray For The Conversion Of The “Nones”

January 3, 2018 Our Catholic Faith Comments Off

By FR. ROBERT ALTIER The Solemnity Of The Epiphany (YR B) Readings: Isaiah 60:1-6 Ephes. 3:2-3a, 5-6; Matt 2:1-12 Today we celebrate an event that is nothing short of miraculous. Of course, we can look at the Magi following the star, their arduous journey to Jerusalem, and their eventual finding of the Christ Child. All of this is certainly miraculous, especially the way God used the alignment of the stars and the Magi’s desire to discover some hidden wisdom in the natural movement of the heavenly bodies. Although these men were not clear in their understanding, I think it is true, nonetheless, to assume they were sincere in seeking the truth. It is also because of this desire for the…Continue Reading

A Leaven In The World . . . 2018: Year Of Marriage, Family And The Sanctity Of Life

January 1, 2018 Our Catholic Faith Comments Off

By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK Looking back in time can cause regret. We have all fallen short of God’s call to holiness as sinners in some ways. Doing so can also serve to reveal the Lord’s providential and loving hand at work in our lives. As Oscar Wilde wrote, “The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.” The passing of an old year into the history books is just such an occasion for us to choose to see the gift of the time which makes up the days of our lives through the perspective of faith. As I look back I say, to all of our…Continue Reading

The Sacraments Instituted By Christ… What Is “Confirmation”?

December 31, 2017 Our Catholic Faith Comments Off

By RAYMOND DE SOUZA, KM Part 9 To most Catholics today, the least known of all sacraments is Confirmation. According to a rather cynical friend, Confirmation is the sacrament the bishop confers on teenagers immediately before they drop out of church! It is a sad reality, but true: In a large number of parishes today, teenagers receive a rather superficial understanding of this sacrament, and move on with their lives without any clue about what the words “becoming a Soldier of Christ” mean at all. Not only teenagers. Adults, too. The lack of commitment to defend the faith on the part of so many adults today reveals their ignorance of the sacrament they received, and confirms our view that an…Continue Reading

Virginity And Celibacy For The Sake Of The Kingdom

December 30, 2017 Our Catholic Faith Comments Off

By DON FIER In last week’s column, as we considered St. Paul’s inspired words on the sacramentality of marriage in Eph. 5:21-33 (as explained by Pope St. John Paul II over a half-year period during the course of his general audiences on the “theology of the body”), it was immediately acknowledged that the Holy Father was tackling one of the most difficult subjects in the New Testament for modern culture. Candidly expressed, many people in our era consider the admonition “Wives, be subject to your husbands” (Eph. 5:22) to be offensive, the remnant of a male-dominated culture that existed during the apostolic era. One can even observe sensitivity to this verse in the liturgical expression of the Church. In wedding…Continue Reading

Catholic Replies

December 29, 2017 Our Catholic Faith Comments Off

Editor’s Note: What better way to start the new year than to pass on the insights of Fr. George Rutler, pastor of the Church of St. Michael in New York City, on the “moral madness” of the day. After noting that as a chaplain in a state mental hospital, he quickly learned that “sometimes it was easy to mistake a psychiatrist for one of the patients,” Fr. Rutler said: “Our society has employed cleverness to justify moral madness, rationalizing a radical overhaul of social order as ‘hope and change.’ George Orwell anticipated this in his ‘doublethink,’ which means holding two contradictory beliefs simultaneously and accepting both of them, so that, for instance, ignorance is strength, war is peace, freedom is…Continue Reading

The Decisive Battle

December 28, 2017 Our Catholic Faith Comments Off

BY FR. ROBERT ALTIER Holy Family (YR B) Readings: Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14 Col. 3:12-21 Luke 2:22-40 We celebrate today a feast that has become one of the most important in the Church’s liturgical calendar. The family has always been at the center of the Church and of society, but as Sr. Lucia Santos, the visionary from Fatima, told Cardinal Caffarra, the decisive battle will be over marriage and family, so this feast, and the proper understanding of the family, has taken on far greater importance. At the foundation of the family is the marriage of a man and a woman. Never, since our Lord came into this world, has this been challenged. There have always been sins against God’s order…Continue Reading

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