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Faith Leaders… Affirm The Beauty Of Being Created Male Or Female

December 24, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on Faith Leaders… Affirm The Beauty Of Being Created Male Or Female

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Following the USCCB General Assembly in November 2017, a group of ecumenical and interfaith partners gathered with bishops of the Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage to discuss gender ideology. As a result of this discussion, faith leaders on December 15 issued an open letter entitled Created Male and Female. Archbishop Charles Chaput, OFM Cap., of Philadelphia, chairman of the USCCB Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life, and Youth, Bishop James Conley of Lincoln, Neb., chairman of the Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage, Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, Ky., chairman of the Committee for Religious Liberty, and Bishop Joseph Bambera of Scranton, Pa., chairman of the Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs,…Continue Reading

Garlands In The Sky

December 23, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on Garlands In The Sky

By DEREK BECHER The winter winds blew early that year, bringing a record snowfall to Jubilee County. By November, the country roads were impassable, as frosty drifts gathered and grew along the roadsides, especially where the woods crept toward their shoulders. A week later, country residents had already assembled their horse-drawn wagons and sleighs for the first trips into town, which became less frequent because of the duration of the roundtrip excursion to Merry Vale. Winter had indeed arrived early, and with the thick blanket of snow that it had brought, it was there to stay. For Marie and her brother, Matthew, that first snowfall brought dreams of Christmas, as always. Before long, their town would be decorated with the…Continue Reading

Christmas Prayer

December 22, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on Christmas Prayer

By DEREK BECHER Dear Lord On this lovely, holy Eve, Be with me, I pray And guide me to understand your coming, And why it is we celebrate, especially now. Help me to look beyond the presents and their flowing ribbons; Open my heart and my eyes, and help me to see and feel The suffering that shakes our Earth. Many hunger, and are cold and lonely In this world of plenty; And many stray from your light, by evil and its ways. And the hustle and bustle, How I fear it’s replaced the real joy we should feel. That starry night so long ago So quietly, peacefully, you entered our world And through your love, your guidance, your sacrifice…Continue Reading

The Truce On Christmas

December 21, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on The Truce On Christmas

By SHAUN KENNEY December is always a magical month for children. For myself, I can’t help but grin just a bit as my Protestant friends discover a new love for statues of the Blessed Mother as they set up their manger scenes. I’ll take what I can get. Yet for all the decorations and presents, pageants and pomp, the Christmas season effectively denudes itself into just one day — and of that day, a mere 12 hours of torn wrapping paper, dry turkey, and watching the Dallas Cowboys play someone else. As a dutiful Washington Redskins fan with no hope of seeing a playoff? That’s an easy place to put my schadenfreude. Of course, I happen to be one of…Continue Reading

Fragment For Christmas

December 20, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on Fragment For Christmas

By DUNSTAN THOMPSON (Editor’s Note: Wanderer contributor Philip Trower submitted the poem below by Dunstan Thompson. Thompson [1918-1975] was an American poet. Trower is Thompson’s executor; all rights reserved.) + + + Dear Lord, and only ever faithful friend, For love of us rejected, tortured, torn — And we were there; who on the third day rose Again, and still looks after us; descend Into each wrecked unstable house; be born In us, a Child among Your former foes.

At Christmastime, Remember Our Service Members

December 19, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on At Christmastime, Remember Our Service Members

By JOANNE SADLER BUTLER What was Christmas like for an Army scout in Iraq a dozen years ago? The short answer: nothing. I’m sorry if this shocks you, but a scout’s focus must be completely on alert to his surroundings, or he will die. If thoughts of missing Christmas and family intrude, the scout might not hear that (literally) critical tiny rustle around the corner, and seconds later he’s finished. How do I know this? I have a friend, Ryan, a cradle Catholic, who was an Army scout in Iraq and awarded a Purple Heart. He suffered many wounds; was in and out of hospitals for years, but had the discipline to acquire a BS degree in business from Texas…Continue Reading

Historicity Of Jesus Christ Doubted Only By Anti-Religionists

December 18, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on Historicity Of Jesus Christ Doubted Only By Anti-Religionists

By DAVID NABHAN (Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in NEWSMAX December 5 and is reprinted here with the author’s permission. David Nabhan wrote Earthquake Prediction: Dawn of the New Seismology, published in 2017 by Skyhorse Publishing, New York.) + + + The media focuses regularly on curmudgeons whose claim to fame is sneering at the flag on Independence Day, pooh-poohing any reason for feast or celebration on Thanksgiving, and during Christmas season trotting out their yearly insult to 2.2 billion people worldwide. That there is a purely political impetus for these bizarre assaults on the foundational events of our culture seems clearly obvious. The thinly veiled questioning of the very historical existence of Jesus of Nazareth by elitist poseurs,…Continue Reading

Chaldean Priest . . . Sees Christmas As Time Of Rebirth On Nineveh Plain

December 17, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on Chaldean Priest . . . Sees Christmas As Time Of Rebirth On Nineveh Plain

KAREMLASH (AsiaNews) — Fr. Paul Thabit Mekko, a Chaldean priest from Mosul, recently celebrated the December 4 Feast of St. Barbara in Karemlash, on the plain of Nineveh, a village previously held for three years by the Islamic State group. Speaking to AsiaNews, the clergyman said people are waiting “for Christmas with joy, as if they had been let out of prison” after spending the last few years as “refugees in the reception centers in Erbil and Iraqi Kurdistan.” They hope that those who fled to other countries in the region or the West will return home and contribute “personally to the rebirth of our land.” “We organized a solemn feast to show that, however slowly and with difficulty, we…Continue Reading

Christmas Is Revolutionary

December 16, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on Christmas Is Revolutionary

By DONALD DeMARCO When people refuse to acknowledge bad things that come into their lives, we call it denial. By that we imply that the bad things are indeed real but it is the deniers who are being unrealistic. On the other hand, when people are confronted with exceedingly good things — things that are “too good to be true,” so to speak — they often find a way to reduce them to something trivial. The cynic, in this case, might call such people realistic while he dismisses the exceedingly good things that occur as unrealistic. So often, in the face of either great hardship or great good, people are less than realistic. The greatest good that was ever brought…Continue Reading

The Bell Tower Cherubs

December 15, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on The Bell Tower Cherubs

By DEREK BECHER Nighttime rolls along the land and dims the fields dark, It hushes sounds of wand’ring beasts, and warblings of the lark; Serenity and silence ends the hustle that was there, And now a starry stillness hangs in late December’s air. And soon, this night in Bethlehem, a scene will fast unfold, A Christmas wonder few have seen and fewer have been told: The Church of the Nativity will host a joyous rite, As little angels gather on this holiest of nights. The cherubim assemble to observe our Savior’s birth; This annual tradition brings a celebrated mirth! But first, before the merriment begins, each Yuletide, The angels seek a moment that they’ve never been denied. Atop the walls,…Continue Reading