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Cool Down, Alarmists . . . It’s Just Hot In The Desert In The Summer

July 6, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on Cool Down, Alarmists . . . It’s Just Hot In The Desert In The Summer

By DEXTER DUGGAN PHOENIX — “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore, Toto,” said one of the two women seated in front of me in the shuttle van at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport some while ago. Do I recall they were from New Jersey? It was the customary misquotation of actress Judy Garland noticing that something’s really different in the Land of Oz. I looked up from my book. Outside the van window were cactuses in airport planters. No surprise to me, but a different sight to the majority of U.S. residents, from cooler territories. Living in the lower desert in summer isn’t the life most people are used to. When I walk home from daily morning Mass at…Continue Reading

Barbarians Within The Gates

July 5, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on Barbarians Within The Gates

By JUDE P. DOUGHERTY The subject in this essay is not immigration, but the barbarians who control big or corporate media. One does not have to be in New York City or Washington, D.C., to be influenced by it. Its tentacles are far reaching. Call it what you may, it is the print and television media that speak with one voice, suppressing all others. Destruction seems to be its aim. John Courtney Murray in his We Hold These Truths defined the barbarian as a threat to the life of reason embedded in the law and custom. “The perennial work of the barbarian,” he held, “is to undermine natural standards or judgments, to corrupt inherited wisdom by which people have always…Continue Reading

A Book Review… Proverbs From The Bible Applied To Modern Living

July 4, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on A Book Review… Proverbs From The Bible Applied To Modern Living

By MITCHELL KALPAKGIAN The Proverbs Explained: A Blueprint for Christian Living, by Fr. Mitch Pacwa, SJ (EWTN Publishing, Inc.: Irondale, AL, 2017), 141 pp.; paperback $14.95. Available at www.Sophiainstitute.com or call 1-800-888-9344. In a politically correct world dominated by moral relativism and scornful of traditional values and timeless moral truths, the wisdom of the Book of Proverbs restores moral sanity and simple common sense. God in His divine Providence gives man’s mind the light to guide him in the paths of righteousness and happiness and to protect him from many errors that lead souls astray. Divided into three parts, this excellent book examines the realms of human living that all people encounter — Family, Justice, and Virtue — and selects…Continue Reading

John Paul The Great… Battling The New Barbarians

July 3, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on John Paul The Great… Battling The New Barbarians

By DONALD DeMARCO Fr. Jaroslaw Kupczak, OP, has produced an excellent study on the thought of John Paul II, entitled, Destined for Liberty (2000). On the very last page, the author asks whether history will honor John Paul as “the Great.” This encomium, to be sure, is awarded most sparingly. Only Popes Leo I and Gregory I have been so honored. Fr. Kupczak quotes George Weigel, who has informed us that both of history’s “Great” Pontiffs had one thing in common that was a claim to their distinguished title. Each was successful in resisting the threats of barbarians. Leo turned Attila the Hun back from Rome; Gregory effected a truce with the invading Lombards and then set to work converting…Continue Reading

U.S. Supreme Court . . . Agrees To Weigh In On Colorado Cake Artist’s Freedom

July 2, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on U.S. Supreme Court . . . Agrees To Weigh In On Colorado Cake Artist’s Freedom

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court agreed September 26 to weigh in on whether the government can force a Lakewood, Colo., cake artist to use his artistic talents to create a wedding cake celebrating a same-sex ceremony. In July of last year, Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys representing Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop asked the High Court to take his case and rule that the government cannot coerce him to create artistic expression that communicates a message with which he fundamentally disagrees. The Colorado Supreme Court declined to take the case after the state’s Court of Appeals affirmed a Colorado Civil Rights Commission decision from May 2014. That decision ordered Phillips and his employees to create cakes that celebrate same-sex…Continue Reading

Judging And Judgmentalism

July 1, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on Judging And Judgmentalism

By ALICE von HILDEBRAND We are repeatedly told today that we should not be “judgmental.” I even suspect that it is a new word that has crept into our vocabulary. The constant warning given us in homilies, on talk shows, radio programs, and magazines that “we should not judge,” should be a welcome reminder that the danger of pharisaism is deeply rooted in our fallen nature. We enjoy passing judgment on others; we enjoy feeling ourselves above these admonitions. As long as we live, we need these warnings to be strengthened against the ever-rampant temptation to sit in judgment on others. But you must also have noticed that this has led to another danger. In our eagerness to wage war…Continue Reading

The Full Conversion Of Russia… Why We Must Promote The Five First Saturdays Devotion

June 30, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on The Full Conversion Of Russia… Why We Must Promote The Five First Saturdays Devotion

By DONAL ANTHONY FOLEY This is the Centenary year of the Fatima apparitions, and so this is a good moment to look back exactly one hundred years this very month of July, to the July 13, 1917 apparition of our Lady to the three Fatima children. This was the most important of all six apparitions in terms of content, since it was on this occasion that she gave them a secret in three parts. The first part was a momentary but terrifying vision of Hell, while the third part was revealed in the year 2000, and showed a Pope being killed at the top of a mountain before a rugged cross. This article, though, is essentially about the second part…Continue Reading

UN Secretary General Analyzes Refugee Situation

June 29, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on UN Secretary General Analyzes Refugee Situation

By JOHN J. METZLER UNITED NATIONS — In an impassioned appeal to the media, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres decried the rising tide of refugees worldwide, but advised that ultimately political solutions to the crises remain the key to stem the tide creating chaotic human displacements. While more than 65 million people around the world are victims of a score of conflicts, both humanitarian assistance and preventive diplomacy to solve these calamities are needed now. “Now we are witnessing the largest number of refugees ever,” the secretary general stated glumly, while adding that although developed countries have carried an enormous burden to aid these ongoing humanitarian emergencies, it was largely overlooked that smaller and poorer states have carried a disproportionate…Continue Reading

Are Persecutions Of Chinese Christians Enough For Asylum?

June 28, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on Are Persecutions Of Chinese Christians Enough For Asylum?

By DEACON MIKE MANNO (Editor’s Note: Deacon Mike Manno, an attorney, is director of deacons for the Diocese of Des Moines and host of Iowa Catholic Radio’s Faith On Trial program [www.iowacatholicradio.com]. He can be reached at deaconmike@iowacatholicradio.com.) + + + What constitutes religious persecution in the eyes of the U.S. government? A case heading to the Supreme Court may give a somewhat conclusive answer to the question. The question being put to the court, if it decides to hear it, comes from a Chinese national who entered the country illegally, fleeing what he claimed was religious persecution by the Chinese government. His claim of religious persecution was rejected by the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) and by a three-judge…Continue Reading

Restoring The Sacred… St. Thomas More And The Defense Of Truth

June 27, 2017 Featured Today Comments Off on Restoring The Sacred… St. Thomas More And The Defense Of Truth

By JAMES MONTI As Catholics in America participate in the annual Fortnight for Freedom to pray for the protection of religious liberty, the example of St. Thomas More will again be invoked as in years past, with the liturgical commemoration of his martyrdom on June 22 coming only a day after the beginning of the Fortnight and the actual anniversary of his death falling just two days after the Fortnight’s close on July 4. The saint’s heroic stance in refusing to give his assent to King Henry VIII’s takeover of the Church in England and the monarch’s divorce and remarriage are rightly highlighted to present More as an example in the defense of religious freedom. What usually gets overlooked, however,…Continue Reading