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The Popes, Marian Devotion, And The New Evangelization

June 24, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on The Popes, Marian Devotion, And The New Evangelization

By DONAL ANTHONY FOLEY Part 2 This is the second article in a series which looks at Marian aspects of the New Evangelization, in the light of the teaching of recent Popes. Following the tremendous events at Fatima in 1917, and particularly the Miracle of the Sun on October 13, and the approval of the apparitions by the local bishop in 1930, the following year, the Portuguese bishops collectively consecrated Portugal to Mary’s Immaculate Heart. In 1936, at the site of the Fatima apparitions, with the prospect of the country being afflicted with Communism as a result of the conflict raging in neighboring Spain, they made a vow to organize a national pilgrimage to Fatima if Portugal was delivered from…Continue Reading

Why “Caitlyn” Jenner Matters

June 23, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on Why “Caitlyn” Jenner Matters

By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK My initial reaction to the surgical attempts by Bruce Jenner to transform himself into a woman was to ignore them, in the same way that I ignore the reality shows about bizarre behaviors that I come across when I am switching TV channels, everything from the fattest people on Earth to suburban swingers to people who pierce and tattoo every piece of flesh they can find. It is a decision that works for me. I have no idea what takes place on the shows about the Kardashians and the “housewives” from New Jersey, Beverly Hills, and Atlanta. And I like it that way. I guess it could be argued that I should make an effort to…Continue Reading

HOPE Against Hope

June 22, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on HOPE Against Hope

By DONALD DeMARCO “Marriage is not an arbitrary convention and is not meant to change with the times.” Not too many years ago, there would be little reason to frame such a sentence. It would obvious to virtually everyone and from time immemorial that marriage had a distinct and fundamentally unalterable nature. The fact that it was a union between a man and a woman was unquestioned. If this sentence had been composed in earlier times, critics may have found that its only flaw lay in its redundancy. If something is not an arbitrary convention it surely would not change with the times. Two things make this sentence pertinent to our present times. First, it needs to be said. People…Continue Reading

“Cultural Cleansing” In Iraq And Syria

June 21, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on “Cultural Cleansing” In Iraq And Syria

By JOHN J. METZLER UNITED NATIONS — Facing the onslaught of wanton destruction, cultural pillage, and a growing black market for stolen antiquities, both Iraq and Syria are feeling the brunt not only of the ideological violence of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), but also of the barbaric “cultural cleansing” of antiques that date back millennia. As the Mideast confronts the expansion of the ISIL terrorist state, we also face the unintended consequences of both historic destruction and equally the attacks on religious minorities such as the Christians and Yazidis. “Present-day Iraq, known in classical antiquity as Mesopotamia, was home to the oldest civilizations in the world,” according to UNESCO. “The Cradle of Civilization, Mesopotamia, as…Continue Reading

Archbishop Nienstedt, Auxiliary Bishop Piché . . . Resign Following Criminal Charges Against St. Paul-Minneapolis Archdiocese

June 20, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on Archbishop Nienstedt, Auxiliary Bishop Piché . . . Resign Following Criminal Charges Against St. Paul-Minneapolis Archdiocese

(From combined sources) ST. PAUL — Pope Francis on June 15 announced the resignation of Archbishop John Nienstedt and Auxiliary Bishop Lee Piché from the pastoral care of the St. Paul-Minneapolis Archdiocese. Ten days earlier, the Attorney’s Office of Ramsey County, St. Paul, Minn., had filed criminal charges against the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis for failing to protect children from a priest who was sexually abusive, Curtis Wehmeyer. Former priest Wehmeyer is serving a prison term of five years. In 2013, he pled guilty to 20 counts related to child sex abuse and child pornography. Wehmeyer sexually abused two boys in 2010 while serving as pastor of Blessed Sacrament Church in St. Paul. In March, Pope Francis issued a decree…Continue Reading

The Popes, Marian Devotion, And The New Evangelization

June 19, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on The Popes, Marian Devotion, And The New Evangelization

By DONAL ANTHONY FOLEY Part 1 This is the first in a series of articles which looks at Marian aspects of the New Evangelization, in the light of the teaching of those recent Popes who have emphasized this evangelization as being crucial to the Church’s role in the modern world. Of course, the Church has been involved in evangelization for the past 2,000 years, ever since Christ, at His Ascension, gave His commandment to the apostles to “go and make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19). But the principle of a New Evangelization has assumed a greater urgency since the Second Vatican Council, given that society as a whole has undergone such tremendous changes in recent years, not all of…Continue Reading

Culture Of Life 101 . . . “Is Homosexuality An Addiction?”

June 18, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on Culture Of Life 101 . . . “Is Homosexuality An Addiction?”

By BRIAN CLOWES (Editor’s Note: Brian Clowes has been director of research and training at Human Life International since 1995. For electronic copies of previous articles on homosexual “marriage,” the special rights agenda, and the role of homosexuality in the Church crisis, e-mail him at bclowes@hli.org.) + + + “It was as if it was an instant addiction as to a drug and for ten years almost I wanted to get out of it and could not” — ex-homosexual activist Linda Wall. + + + Most men and women with a homosexual orientation live relatively normal lives, just like the rest of us. They have the same joys and the same problems we do, and their lives differ from ours…Continue Reading

A Book Review . . . A Thriller About Galileo

June 17, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on A Book Review . . . A Thriller About Galileo

By JUDE DOUGHERTY Bucciantini, Massimo, Michele Camerota, and Franco Giudice. Galileo’s Telescope. Trans. Catherine Bolton. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2016. x + 339 pp. No, this is not another treatise on the “Trial of Galileo,” or l’affaire Galilée as Descartes called it. For those who are vaguely acquainted with the subject, this is a thriller as exciting as any that may have kept you spellbound. There are heroes and villains, and then there is Galileo. When will he learn of the spyglass that caused such a stir when presented to Count Maurice of Nassau at The Hague? Will he ever acquire a specimen? Will he ever learn to build one himself? Will he ever acquire the lenses needed to…Continue Reading

Imperial Overstretch

June 16, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on Imperial Overstretch

By PATRICK J. BUCHANAN Toward the end of the presidency of George H.W. Bush, America stood alone at the top of the world — the sole superpower. After five weeks of “shock and awe” and 100 hours of combat, Saddam’s army had fled Kuwait back up the road to Basra and Baghdad. Our Cold War adversary was breaking apart into 15 countries. The Berlin Wall had fallen. Germany was reunited. The captive nations of Central and Eastern Europe were breaking free. Bush I had mended fences with Beijing after the 1989 massacre in Tiananmen Square. Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin were friends. The president declared the coming of a “new world order.” And neocons were chattering about a new “unipolar…Continue Reading

Where Is My Place?

June 15, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on Where Is My Place?

By DONALD DeMARCO When our children were very young we celebrated their birthdays with guests and games. One of our favorite games was “Pin the Tail on the Donkey.” The point of the game is for a child, after he has been blindfolded and spun around three times, to place the tail he is holding in his hand where it belongs on the donkey. The poor little tykes, however, in a state of disorientation, would pin the tail anywhere but where it belonged, much to the glee of all observers. The philosophical point here is that when we are in a state of disorientation we are lost and cannot locate our proper place. We observe, but not with glee, important…Continue Reading