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Blessed Are Those Who Mourn: A Forgotten Beatitude

November 22, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on Blessed Are Those Who Mourn: A Forgotten Beatitude

By JAMES MONTI When reflecting upon the sacredness of all human life, a cemetery is probably not the first thing that comes to our mind. And yet a Catholic cemetery is actually one of the Church’s most profound expressions of this truth by affirming in practice that every human life is so sacred that even the lifeless human body devoid of the soul remains a sacred object. For the body is an essential part of our human nature, it has served in life as the Temple of the Holy Trinity, and it will be restored to us at the end of time. Moreover, in this day and age when attacks of unprecedented depravity upon marriage and the very identity of…Continue Reading

Escape From Cynicism

November 21, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on Escape From Cynicism

By DONALD DeMARCO Cynicism results when a person believes that he has conquered hope. Since it is a conquest of sorts, though surely a negative and counterproductive one, it can endow the cynic with a certain amount of pride. In a similar way, a younger brother can take pride in knocking over the tower of blocks that his older sibling constructed. In this case it is pride that goes after a fall. So, too, the cynic believes he has achieved something when he imagines that he has caused either philosophy or theology to topple over. In his own strange way, he finds nihilism, the defeat of hope, to be amusing as the following anecdote suggests. A philosopher and a theologian…Continue Reading

Paris And Freedom

November 20, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on Paris And Freedom

By ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO The tragedy in Paris on November 13 has regrettably been employed as a catalyst for renewed calls by governments in Western Europe and even in the United States for more curtailment of personal liberties. Those who accept the trade of liberty for safety have argued in favor of less liberty. They want government to have more authority to intrude upon the daily lives of more innocent people. Their targets are the freedoms of speech and travel and the right to privacy. Their goal is public safety, but their thinking is flawed. The clash between liberty and safety is as old as the republic itself. The United States was quite literally conceived in liberty. In the Declaration…Continue Reading

Dangerous Step Pope Might Take: “Nightmare Scenario”?

November 19, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on Dangerous Step Pope Might Take: “Nightmare Scenario”?

By PHIL LAWLER (Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on CatholicCulture.org November 16 and LifeSiteNews republished it with permission. All rights reserved. (Phil Lawler is the editor of Catholic World News [CWN], the first English-language Catholic news service operating on the Internet. CWN provides daily headline news coverage for the Catholic Culture site, where Lawler also offers regular analysis and commentary. Earlier, he served as editor of Catholic World Report.) + + + Sometime soon — we know not when — Pope Francis will issue a document concluding the work of the Synod on the Family. One question looms over all others: Will the Pope endorse the Kasper proposal? Fr. Raymond de Souza predicts that he will. “He has steadily…Continue Reading

Compelling Reasons Why . . . The Pope Could And Should Avoid Pushing Ahead With The Kasper Proposal

November 18, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on Compelling Reasons Why . . . The Pope Could And Should Avoid Pushing Ahead With The Kasper Proposal

By PHIL LAWLER (Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on CatholicCulture.org November 4 and LifeSiteNews republished it with permission. All rights reserved. (Phil Lawler is the editor of Catholic World News (CWN), the first English-language Catholic news service operating on the Internet. CWN provides daily headline news coverage for the Catholic Culture site, where Lawler also offers regular analysis and commentary. Earlier, he served as editor of Catholic World Report.) + + + Ross Douthat of The New York Times has argued forcefully that Pope Francis has created dangerous fissures within the Church by supporting the Kasper proposal. But now Douthat suggests that the Pope could head off a crisis by issuing a post-synod exhortation in which he would “just…Continue Reading

Culture Of Life 101 . . . “How To Avoid Homosexual Semantic Traps”

November 17, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on Culture Of Life 101 . . . “How To Avoid Homosexual Semantic Traps”

By BRIAN CLOWES (Editor’s Note: Brian Clowes has been director of research and training at Human Life International since 1995. For the complete Culture of Life series on homosexuality [with footnotes], e-mail him at bclowes@hli.org.) + + + Most of us know a handful of homosexual friends, co-workers, and family members, and we may also be acquainted with others who support the “gay rights” agenda. We have also seen that it is our God-commanded duty to attempt to save souls and combat evil in this life. We will not be held blameless for the opportunities we miss to preach and teach the truth. This puts us in a bit of a quandary at times. When discussing the special rights agenda,…Continue Reading

Demonizing Charter Schools

November 16, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on Demonizing Charter Schools

By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK There is no guarantee that the success of charter schools will lead to the widespread acceptance of some form of relief, perhaps in the form of vouchers or tax credits, for parents who send their children to Catholic schools. But it might. Successful charter schools could prove to be the camel’s nose under the tent that leads to greater public acceptance of alternatives to the public school monopoly over education in the United States. In recent years, the supporters of the current public school system, especially the teachers unions, have campaigned against charter schools by arguing that they have not achieved academic results superior to local public schools; also that their main purpose is to cater…Continue Reading

Inaccurate 911 Call . . . Brought Police Out To Disband Conservative Event

November 15, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on Inaccurate 911 Call . . . Brought Police Out To Disband Conservative Event

By DEXTER DUGGAN PHOENIX — A caller provided misleading and inaccurate information to a 911 emergency line when seeking to have police come out and remove a social gathering of the international Breitbart News Network at a suburban Phoenix restaurant patio. A female 911 caller to the suburban Scottsdale Police Department referred to the troublesome “conservatives” there. In these days of silencing people who don’t practice “political correctness,” one can wonder if restaurant workers were drawing the line at an unwelcome political opinion being expressed. The November 5 issue of The Wanderer reported the October 21 evening incident at K O’Donnell’s restaurant and sports bar in Scottsdale, under the headline on page 3, “After ‘immigration’ was mentioned, restaurant calls police,…Continue Reading

Dalton Trumbo Had It Coming

November 13, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on Dalton Trumbo Had It Coming

By PATRICK J. BUCHANAN “Dalton Trumbo was a socialist, but he loved being rich.” So says Bryan Cranston, who stars in Trumbo, out this past week, and plays the screenwriter who went to prison with the Hollywood Ten in the time of Harry Truman. Actually, Trumbo was not a socialist. Bernie Sanders is a socialist. Trumbo was a Stalinist, a hard-core Communist when the Communist Party USA was run from Moscow by the Comintern, agents of the greatest mass murderer of the 20th century. Trumbo was not what Lenin called a “useful idiot,” a liberal simpleton. He was the real deal, a Bolshevik who followed every twist and turn in the Moscow party line. When Hitler signed his infamous pact…Continue Reading

The Tyranny Of The Powerful

November 12, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on The Tyranny Of The Powerful

By THE MOST REV. JAMES CONLEY (Editor’s Note: Here is the latest column from Bishop James Conley, Lincoln, Neb., reprinted by ZENIT News Agency from the Southern Nebraska Register. All rights reserved.) + + + The historian Christopher Shannon claims that in America, social progress and advancement is perceived as the expansion of “free choice” to as many individuals as possible. Shannon says that modern Americans understand history as the advancement of increased protection for license across as many social groups as possible. What Shannon means, it seems to me, is that Americans have a tendency to believe that justice requires more legal protection, for more choices, in all circumstances, at all times. Less relevant is whether those choices are…Continue Reading