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Could Iranian Protests Bring Religious Freedom For Christians?

January 4, 2018 Featured Today Comments Off on Could Iranian Protests Bring Religious Freedom For Christians?

By MICHELLE LA ROSA TEHERAN (CNA/EWTN News) — Ongoing protests in Iran could be a sign of hope for repressed religious minorities, if protesters demand that conscience rights be respected, said an Iranian-born journalist who converted to Catholicism in 2016. Although most of those protesting in the streets of Iran were born after the 1979 revolution that led to the current Islamist regime, “many of them are chanting nostalgic slogans about the pre-revolutionary era,” noted Sohrab Ahmari. “At the time Iran was no democracy,” he said, but the pre-revolution regime “was far less repressive and people retained many personal and social liberties, if not political ones.” Ahmari was born in Teheran. He has lived in the United States for two…Continue Reading

Remembering Edith Hamilton

January 3, 2018 Featured Today Comments Off on Remembering Edith Hamilton

By JUDE P. DOUGHERTY The first edition of Edith Hamilton’s The Echo of Greece appeared in 1957, the same year in which she was made an honorary citizen of Athens, at age ninety. The book reflected a lifetime of study that had found its first expression in two works published as The Greek Way (1930) and The Roman Way (1932). Given the low estate of higher learning in the United States, these works, taken together, are perhaps more relevant today than when they were first published. The Greek Way began with these words: “When the world is storm driven and the bad that happens and the worst that threatens are so urgent as to shut out everything else from view,…Continue Reading

The Legacy Of The French Revolution . . . Rousseau’s General Will And The Reign Of Terror

January 2, 2018 Featured Today Comments Off on The Legacy Of The French Revolution . . . Rousseau’s General Will And The Reign Of Terror

By ALBERTO PIEDRA (Dr. Piedra is an emeritus professor at the Institute of World Politics.) + + + Now at the initial stages of the twenty-first century it seems appropriate to consider without passion and with greater objectivity the revolutionary phenomenon that shook Europe in the eighteenth century. Under the banner of “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity,” traditional systems of government and social institutions were challenged and threatened with extinction. The first and foremost example is the case of France and the violent overthrow of the Bourbon dynasty. It is time for a reassessment of such events as the takeover of the Bastille and France’s Declaration of the Rights of Man in August 1789. They have been glorified to such an…Continue Reading

Also A Pro-Life Center’s 45th Anniversary . . . Bishop Begins A Weekend With Catholic Physicians

January 1, 2018 Featured Today Comments Off on Also A Pro-Life Center’s 45th Anniversary . . . Bishop Begins A Weekend With Catholic Physicians

By DEXTER DUGGAN PHOENIX — After his office day, Thomas Olmsted, bishop of the Diocese of Phoenix, came down to the first floor at diocesan headquarters here about 5:30 p.m. to hear individual Confessions by members of the Catholic Physicians Guild of Phoenix (CPG) in a conference room. These medical workers were holding an Advent Evening of Reflection on Friday, December 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, that began with private prayer at the diocesan center’s chapel, with Confessions down the hall for those desiring that sacrament. Like a physician’s, a bishop’s day may stretch into long hours. After speaking face-to-face with penitents, Olmsted crossed the downtown plaza separating the diocesan offices from nearby historic St. Mary’s Basilica, the…Continue Reading

The Limits Of Equality

December 31, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on The Limits Of Equality

By DONALD DeMARCO It should be sufficiently evident that not all human beings are equal in every way. Equality is a “Great Idea,” as philosopher Mortimer Adler notes, but it does not relate to every aspect of the human being. Nature has placed limits on it that cannot be denied without impunity. Human beings, as the Declaration of Independence states, are created equal. Consequent to this equality is equality under the law and other equalities that pertain to the dignity of man. People are equal in their humanity, but they differ markedly in natural endowment and in personal achievement. To stretch the notion of equality to the extent that it denies these two factors is unrealistic as well as unjust.…Continue Reading

Our Lady Of Fatima . . . The Last Vision And The Consecration Of Russia

December 30, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on Our Lady Of Fatima . . . The Last Vision And The Consecration Of Russia

By FR. SEAN CONNOLLY (Editor’s Note: This is the eleventh in a series of articles on the one hundredth anniversary of our Lady’s apparitions at Fatima. Fr. Connolly is a priest of the Archdiocese of New York. Part eleven is devoted to recounting the life of Lucia dos Santos; because of its length, it is appearing in two separate issues of The Wanderer. The first installment of part eleven ran in the December 14 issue.) + + + During the July 13, 1917 apparition, our Lady promised the conversion of Russia to avoid future wars, persecutions of the Church, and the spread of Communism, if two conditions were fulfilled — the devotion of the Five First Saturdays which we have…Continue Reading

The Anthropologist who Hated Relativism: A Tribute to my Father

December 29, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on The Anthropologist who Hated Relativism: A Tribute to my Father

By ARTHUR HIPPLER My father Arthur Edwin Hippler (1935-2017) is known to longtime readers of The Wanderer, for which he wrote during the late 80s and early 90s. At that point in his life he had time to write, because he had retired from his position as a professor of anthropology at the University of Alaska, where he had worked since 1968. My father was a graduate of the University of California Berkeley during the 1960s — with everything which that implies. He was a civil rights activist, a labor union organizer, and leader in a number of leftwing causes. When he moved to Alaska, he founded the state chapter American Civil Liberties Union, and become its first president. And…Continue Reading

Christmas Is About Jesus, Otherwise It Is Fake

December 28, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on Christmas Is About Jesus, Otherwise It Is Fake

Pope Francis speaking about what Christmas is really about during the general audience December 27. Dear Brothers and Sisters, good morning! Today I would like to reflect with you on the meaning of the Lord Jesus’ Birth, which we are living these days in faith and in celebrations. The setting up of the crib and, above all the liturgy, with its biblical readings and its traditional songs, have made us relive “the today” in which “for us is born the Savior, the Lord Christ” (Luke 2:11). In our times, especially in Europe, we are witnessing a sort of “distortion” of Christmas: in the name of a false respect that isn’t Christian, which often hides the will to marginalize faith, every…Continue Reading

Liberty Counsel Predicts Ruling Won’t Stand . . . Judge Blocks Religious Exceptions To Obamacare

December 27, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on Liberty Counsel Predicts Ruling Won’t Stand . . . Judge Blocks Religious Exceptions To Obamacare

PHILADELPHIA — Obama-appointed Federal Judge Wendy Beetlestone temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s recent rules which exempt nonprofits that have religious objections to the Obamacare contraception and abortion drug and device mandate. “Courts do not have the authority to order the federal government to force religious nonprofits to provide free contraception and abortion drugs and devices,” said Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, on December 18. In the lawsuit, filed by the state of Pennsylvania, the judge said the Trump administration’s religious accommodation rules “would cause irreparable harm because tens of thousands of women would lose contraceptive coverage.” Seriously? The Trump administration announced in October that employers will now be exempt from the Obamacare requirement to provide insurance coverage…Continue Reading

The Christmas Letter: A Gift Of Love

December 25, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on The Christmas Letter: A Gift Of Love

By JEFF MINICK For sixteen years, I taught seminars in literature, composition, history, and Latin to homeschooling students in Asheville, N.C. Students attended one or more of these two-hour seminars every week, and then returned home with anywhere from four to seven hours of work, depending on the particular class in which they were enrolled. Our focus in the literature and composition seminars was the essay. The students wrote prodigiously, and I in turn graded prodigiously, sixty to eighty papers, journals, and reports every week. This labor-intensive approach was grueling for both students and teacher, but paid big benefits, annually creating a crew of fine young writers. Occasionally, we took a break from the essay, writing instead a short story…Continue Reading