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A Book Review… An In-Depth, Firsthand Analysis Of The Border Crisis

May 18, 2020 Featured Today Comments Off on A Book Review… An In-Depth, Firsthand Analysis Of The Border Crisis

  By JAMES BARESEL Crisis on the Border: An Eyewitness Account of Illegal Aliens, Violent Crime and Cartels by Matt Pinsker. Available at amazon.com in Kindle and hardcover editions. Some years ago an article in Houston Catholic Worker recounted the story of an attempt by two friends from Honduras to illegally enter the United States. One was murdered. The other succeeded only after being robbed at machete point, hiding from a drunken, drug-fueled shooting brawl and other near scrapes with danger. Though no explicit plea for a lax immigration policy, no direct attack on border control was included, the intended message was obvious, and obviously overlooked the obvious fact that lack of strict border control grants a wider range of…Continue Reading

Good Hope

May 17, 2020 Featured Today Comments Off on Good Hope

By DONALD DeMARCO Hope is prolific and perpetual. We hope our team wins, that there’s a good movie on TV tonight, that we get a good night’s sleep, and that tomorrow will bring a better day. Such hopes are easily and routinely made. However, they do not rise to the level of virtue. Hope becomes a virtue when things begin to appear hopeless, when, in the words of an old soap opera, our hopes “are dashed against the rocks of despair.” We observe the number of deaths mounting on a daily basis during the COVID-19 pandemic. And our hope for a return to normalcy seems unrealistic. Can hope remain hope when it is opposed by seemingly unrelenting forces? Can hope…Continue Reading

Coexistence With China Or Cold War II?

May 16, 2020 Featured Today Comments Off on Coexistence With China Or Cold War II?

By PATRICK J. BUCHANAN Under fire for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump, his campaign and his party are moving to lay blame for the 80,000 U.S. dead at the feet of the Communist Party of China and, by extension, its longtime general secretary, President Xi Jinping. “There is a significant amount of evidence” that the virus originated in a Wuhan lab, said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo the past week. Trump himself seemed to subscribe to the charge: “This is worse than Pearl Harbor. This is worse than the World Trade Center. There’s never been an attack like this….It could have been stopped in China. It should have been stopped right at the source.” There is…Continue Reading

Is Pope Francis Setting Up The Next Conclave?

May 15, 2020 Featured Today Comments Off on Is Pope Francis Setting Up The Next Conclave?

By ANDREA GAGLIARDUCCI At the end of the week of April 26, Pope Francis elevated cardinals Luis Antonio Tagle and Beniamino Stella to the Order of Cardinal Bishops — the highest rank of dignity within the College of Cardinals — putting them on par with the cardinals eligible for the office of Dean of the College. He also appointed Archbishop Ilson Montanari as vice camerlengo. These decisions could have an impact on the next conclave. Pope Francis, however, is not likely to set up the election of his Successor according to traditional criteria. Cardinal Tagle is widely considered to be among the papabili. Many observers saw Pope Francis’ decision to tap him for the top spot at the Congregation for…Continue Reading

In New Biography . . . Benedict XVI Laments Modern “Anti-Christian Creed”

May 14, 2020 Featured Today Comments Off on In New Biography . . . Benedict XVI Laments Modern “Anti-Christian Creed”

(CNA) — Modern society is formulating an “anti-Christian creed” and punishing those who resist it with “social excommunication,” Benedict XVI has said in a new biography, published in Germany May 4. In a wide-ranging interview at the end of the 1,184-page book, written by German author Peter Seewald, the Pope Emeritus said the greatest threat facing the Church was a “worldwide dictatorship of seemingly humanistic ideologies.” Benedict XVI, who resigned as Pope in 2013, made the comment in response to a question about what he had meant at his 2005 inauguration, when he urged Catholics to pray for him “that I may not flee for fear of the wolves.” He told Seewald that he was not referring to internal Church…Continue Reading

Christ’s Death And Our Own: A Matter Of Reverence

May 13, 2020 Featured Today Comments Off on Christ’s Death And Our Own: A Matter Of Reverence

By JAMES MONTI After our Lord died on the cross, it was not to be His apostles who would see to His proper burial. It was instead two strangers who would take charge of the situation, both of whom were from the very society of Israelite elders who had sought the death of Christ. Nicodemus, a Pharisee, first appears near the beginning of St. John’s Gospel, coming to speak with our Lord in the dead of night (John 3:1-21), only to disappear again into the night. We hear no more of him until late on Good Friday, when he arrives on the scene with an astonishing burden of one hundred pounds of aromatic myrrh mixed with aloes (John 19:39). His…Continue Reading

Don Bosco And Mary Help Of Christians

May 12, 2020 Featured Today Comments Off on Don Bosco And Mary Help Of Christians

By DONAL ANTHONY FOLEY The Feast of Mary Help of Christians falls on May 24, and although devotion to the Blessed Virgin under the title of “Help of Christians” or Auxilium Christianorum goes back to at least the 1600s, this particular feast was not officially established until the early nineteenth century. This title is also found in the Litany of Loreto, where it is probably a variation on an older invocation calling on our Lady as Advocata Christianorum or “Advocate of Christians.” The Church suffered a great deal during the French Revolution and its aftermath, and the situation reached a low point when Pope Pius VII, who reigned from 1800 to 1823, was imprisoned by Napoleon for three years from…Continue Reading

A Book Review . . . Filled With Timeless Material On Priestly Celibacy

May 11, 2020 Featured Today Comments Off on A Book Review . . . Filled With Timeless Material On Priestly Celibacy

By JAMES BARESEL From the Depths of Our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy, and the Crisis of the Catholic Church by Benedict XVI and Robert Cardinal Sarah. Ignatius Press: 2020; 152 pages. Available in hardback and as an eBook at ignatius.com. Few books receive as much pre-publication attention as did Benedict XVI’s and Cardinal Sarah’s defense of priestly celibacy From the Depths of Our Hearts. With the push to ordain married men centered on this past fall’s Amazon Synod ignored by a post-synodal exhortation promulgated prior to publication of the English-language edition of From the Depths of Our Hearts, few books are likely to have had such a superficial appearance of being old news by the time they were available to the…Continue Reading

What We Can Learn From The Current Pandemic

May 10, 2020 Featured Today Comments Off on What We Can Learn From The Current Pandemic

By DONALD DeMARCO It has been said that if you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans. The current pandemic has derailed everyone’s plans. The higher plans are in God’s good hands and not in the hands of any insurance company. We are not in control of our lives. This is a hard lesson to learn and can be difficult for many people to accept. In the final analysis, the plans that God has in mind, mysterious as they are, are for the best. Therefore, the current pandemic is a time to strengthen our faith in God. In what has been billed as the worst movie ever made, Plan 9 From Outer Space, one plan is replaced by…Continue Reading

How Long Can Biden Stay In His Basement?

May 9, 2020 Featured Today Comments Off on How Long Can Biden Stay In His Basement?

By PATRICK J. BUCHANAN Where Barack Obama achieved notoriety for “leading from behind,” Joe Biden, these last two months, has been leading from the basement. And, one must add, doing so quite successfully. Since his rout of Bernie Sanders on Super Tuesday, Biden has led President Donald Trump in every national poll and, lately, opened up a lead in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Florida. One poll has him tied with Trump in Texas. Last week, however, reality intruded. Biden was forced to defend himself against the lurid charge of ex-aide Tara Reade that, as a senator in 1993, he had groped and assaulted her inside the Capitol complex. Why did Biden go public? Because witnesses were coming forward to say…Continue Reading