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A Book Review .. Virtuous Or Charitable Friendships Dispel Loneliness

September 24, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on A Book Review .. Virtuous Or Charitable Friendships Dispel Loneliness

By MITCHELL KALPAKGIAN The Catholic Guide to Loneliness, by Kevin Vost, Psy.D. (Sophia Institute Press: Manchester, NH, 2017), 161 pp. $16.95. Available through www.Sophia institute.com or 1-800-888-9344. This timely book addresses a universal problem that all persons suffer at some point in their life but one that has become a matter of grave concern for social scientists in this century. While “It is not good for man to be alone” as God declared in Genesis when He instituted marriage, man at various stages in the course of a lifetime needs to prevent, overcome, and alleviate the burden of loneliness that oppresses the human spirit and robs life of its joy. However, as many recent studies have shown, the problem has…Continue Reading

Poetic Insight

September 23, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on Poetic Insight

By JUDE P. DOUGHERTY “Poet — lawyer — planter, and former soldier” is the description Walker Percy gives to his uncle, William Alexander Percy, the author of Lanterns on the Levee, reprinted by the Louisiana State University Press in 2011, from a 1973 edition. William Percy’s book is worth revisiting not simply for its observations and down-home wisdom, but because it attests once again to the value of poetic witness from antiquity to the present. What would life be like without Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Browning, and T.S. Eliot? Poetic witness comes in degrees of veracity but in its depths it is revelatory in ways that eludes the pedestrian prose of historians, biographers, and philosophers. Like the metaphysician, the poet’s object…Continue Reading

A Book Review … Reflections On Our Lady’s Message Of Fatima

September 22, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on A Book Review … Reflections On Our Lady’s Message Of Fatima

By DONAL ANTHONY FOLEY Fatima and the Triumph of Mary: Reflections on the Fatima Message, by Fr. Andrew Apostoli, CFR, (World Apostolate of Fatima, 2016); 228 pages, $17.95 available via:http://giftshop.wafusa.org/browse.cfm/4,2578.html. Fatima and the Triumph of Mary is a compilation of articles by Fr. Andrew Apostoli which originally appeared in the World Apostolate of Fatima USA publication, SOUL magazine. It has a foreword from the Bishop of Bridgeport, Connecticut, Most Rev. Frank J. Caggiano. The book is divided up into 8 chapters, covering topics ranging from reflections on Our Lady’s words at Fatima, through the lives of the seers of Fatima, to topics such as the Rosary, suffering, prayer, and the Five First Saturdays devotion, with a final chapter on St.…Continue Reading

A Book Review… Dispelling The False Images Of God

September 21, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on A Book Review… Dispelling The False Images Of God

By MITCHELL KALPAKGIAN The Light Shines on in the Darkness: Transforming Suffering through Faith, by Fr. Robert Spitzer, SJ, Ph.D. (Ignatius Press: San Francisco, 2017), 543 pp. $19.95. Available from www.ignatius.com or 1-800-651-1531. For anyone who struggles to make sense of human suffering or to reconcile the unconditional love of God with the weight of sorrow that burdens human lives, Fr. Spitzer’s book justifies the ways of God to man with exceptionally lucid, cogent, and comprehensive reasons that put man’s mind, heart, and soul to rest. Placing the weight of the argument on the image of God as the merciful, compassionate Father in the Parables of the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan, Spitzer explores in depth this theme throughout…Continue Reading

Who Were The Colombian Martyrs Beatified By Pope Francis?

September 20, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on Who Were The Colombian Martyrs Beatified By Pope Francis?

By ELISE HARRIS ROME, Italy (CNA/EWTN News) — During his six-day visit to Colombia, Pope Francis beatified martyrs Bishop Jesus Emilio Jaramillo Monsalve and Fr. Pedro Maria Ramirez Ramos, who provide testimony as the country heals from decades of conflict. Bishop Jaramillo was killed by Colombian Marxist guerrilla forces in 1989, while Fr. Ramirez was murdered at the start of the Colombian Civil War in 1948. The two were recognized as martyrs by the Vatican earlier this year. Given the nature of their deaths, the two can be seen as belonging to a new wave of “modern martyrs” Pope Francis has often referred to, killed by oppressive regimes of their time such as Nazism, Communism, and other brutal dictatorships. Born…Continue Reading

20 State Attorneys General Lauded… For Opposing Pro-Abortion Judge Orrick’s Gag Order Against CMP

September 19, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on 20 State Attorneys General Lauded… For Opposing Pro-Abortion Judge Orrick’s Gag Order Against CMP

By DEXTER DUGGAN PHOENIX — “It is definitely very encouraging, and it’s great news” that 20 state attorneys general filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court to oppose the gag order against videos by pro-life investigators, an official with one of the law firms representing David Daleiden and the California-based Center for Medical Progress (CMP) told The Wanderer. This pro-life citizen journalism exposing traffic in baby organs has been under withering attack by San Francisco pro-abortion federal Judge William Orrick III, nominated by previous President Barack Obama, a pro-abortion radical. Orrick had bundled donations for Obama. In July 2015 The Federalist website reported that Orrick was “a major donor to and bundler for President Obama’s presidential campaign. He…Continue Reading

Preparing To Enter Into The Awesome Mystery Of The Mass

September 18, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on Preparing To Enter Into The Awesome Mystery Of The Mass

By JAMES MONTI For every Catholic, there can be no more important event in one’s spiritual life than Holy Mass. For in the mystery of the Holy Eucharist we encounter our God in a more intimate manner than in any other sacrament, sacramental, or form of prayer. I recall hearing of a modern writer who has claimed that for those who have reached the highest states of prayer the Holy Eucharist is of lesser importance; this is utter and arrogant nonsense. The presence of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament is a presence par excellence surpassing any other experience of the presence of God that we can have in this life. If you really want to ascend Mount Carmel as…Continue Reading

Moral Judgments — Facts Or Opinions?

September 17, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on Moral Judgments — Facts Or Opinions?

By ARTHUR HIPPLER (Editor’s Note: Dr. Hippler is chairman of the religion department and teaches religion in the Upper School at Providence Academy, Plymouth, Minn.) + + + Allan Bloom began his Closing of the American Mind with this memorable observation: “There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.” College education does not make these students relativists — they come to university that way. This is what I have seen myself from high school students for over the last ten years. This becomes evident during an exercise I give to them in which they are asked to distinguish “facts” from “opinions.” I give them…Continue Reading

The Complete Thinker

September 16, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on The Complete Thinker

By DONALD DeMARCO “The Complete Thinker” is borrowed from the title of Dale Ahlquist’s 2012 book, the subtitle of which is The Marvelous Mind of G.K. Chesterton. “Thinking,” for Chesterton, “means connecting things.” Ahlquist regards G.K.’s thinking as “complete” in the sense that it deals with a wide variety of subjects and integrates them in a consistent pattern. It is as if Chesterton has conducted a symphony in which all the instruments are playing in perfect harmony. Chesterton credits Catholicism for assisting him in the valuable exercise of thinking. In The Catholic Church and Conversion he stated: “To become a Catholic is not to leave off thinking, but to learn how to think.” Catholic universities have always stressed the importance…Continue Reading

Our Lady Of Fatima: The August Apparition

September 15, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on Our Lady Of Fatima: The August Apparition

By FR. SEAN CONNOLLY (Editor’s Note: This is the seventh 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.) + + + During the entirely misnamed age of the “Enlightenment,” movements to dethrone prominent Catholic monarchies began to spread throughout Europe. Both absolute monarchy and the fixed dogmas of the Catholic Church were the primary targets of the philosophes who achieved their most striking victory in 1789 when the King of France was dethroned. The revolution embroiling France did not really end when the monarchy was completely abolished in August 1792. Revolutionary fervor continued even into the 18th and 19th centuries and…Continue Reading