Thank You For Your Patience
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Monday 21st April 2025
We are currently updating our new website. We have not been updating our posts as of late. We will have our new site up and running soon!
By DR. CHRISTOPHER MANION Eighty-two years ago, Sophie Scholl and her brother Hans, both students at the University of Munich, were found guilty of sedition by a Nazi court and sent to the guillotine the same afternoon. The Scholls were members of the White Rose, a peace movement that anonymously distributed flyers in universities throughout the country. Nazi prosecutors reportedly offered her a reduced sentence if she would testify against her brother. She refused. “Sie werden stehen wo ich stehe,” the 23-year-old Sophie told Judge Roland Freisler, when he announced the death sentence. “You will be standing where I’m standing.” That prediction was fulfilled in every detail. After the Reichstag fire in 1933, Adolf Hitler had formed “The People’s Court”…Continue Reading
By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK Inclusion becomes a concern upon discovering that something or someone is being unjustly or unreasonably excluded — that is, under normal circumstances. We do not find ourselves in normal circumstances; this is an era of one scam or grift after another. For some reason, there are those with influence who have inverted their speech about reality and are selling the idea that people are being excluded if they are asked not to sin. Rejecting sin is not excluding people. We are not our sins. Rejecting or excluding sin is necessary to include people in the life of the Gospel, of grace and the Kingdom of Heaven. Perhaps we could synod about radically including God in…Continue Reading
By DR. CHRISTOPHER MANION The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has sued the federal government to restore federal taxpayer funding of the works performed by the conference’s secular agencies that participate in the government’s refugee settlement programs. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Feb. 18, urges the government “to uphold its legal and moral obligations to refugees and to restore the necessary funding to ensure that faith-based and community organizations can continue this vital work that reflects our nation’s values of compassion, justice, and hospitality.” Among the Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that resettle millions of aliens crossing the border under the Obama and Biden administrations, Catholic Charities, USA receives the greatest share of…Continue Reading
By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK For a bit of Italy in Virginia I stopped at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s Palladian inspiration, following a recent visit with priest friends. I toured the house and lawn once again, having visited when very young for the first time with my parents shortly after they transferred to Maryland from Michigan, where I was born. After stepping with my tour group into the front hall of the house, I was interested to make note of two paintings hanging there close to the weighted clock over the door. Two copies of paintings he admired in France and elsewhere in Europe depicting Christ before Pilate and St. Jerome. And, in the room designated for entertaining that overlooks the…Continue Reading
By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK Many are suffering a devastating spiritual wildfire that is leaving vast destruction in its wake. Some speak out, but many others keep their counsel, for reasons ranging on the spectrum all the way from fear to prudence, or some combination thereof. What I describe finds an apt metaphor in California ravaged by an aggressive wildfire gone out of control, threatening many lives and the destruction of property. We grieve with those who lost their homes. News comes as I write on this winter morning that two persons have in fact died as result of the blaze. May others be spared a similar fate. The danger of death ever threatens all of the living. But because…Continue Reading
By FR. RICHARD D. BRETON Each year we gather around the Christmas Creche as we contemplate the gift of our Incarnate Lord. We see Mary and Joseph, the child Jesus, the Magi pagans from the east, and the shepherds. These individuals participated in the first moments of the incarnate life of the newborn Savior, and yet do we really understand the significance they participated in the plan of our salvation history? Today, as we celebrate the newborn child of Bethlehem, let us reflect on the role the shepherds played in God’s unfolding plan. The story of the shepherds at the birth of Christ is a poignant narrative in the Nativity account that often draws admiration for its simplicity and depth.…Continue Reading
By CHRISTOPHER MANION We’ll all be celebrating Thanksgiving come Thursday, and clearly there’s a lot to be thankful for. The country certainly celebrated. For more than a fortnight, America has been peaceful. The transition to the second Trump Administration is going smoothly, with the usual suspects supplying the necessary chatter. Yes, America has a lot to be thankful for, and so do our shepherds. Their border state “charities” alone have received over half a billion taxpayer dollars a year under Joe Biden. They also received some $3.5 billion in 2020-2021 in COVID Relief Funds due to an “unprecedented exemption,” the AP reports. Our bishops know all this, of course, but they don’t like to be asked about it. Perhaps that’s…Continue Reading
By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK This country has dodged a bullet with the least qualified and most radically pro-abortion and infanticide candidates in history now, we may hope and pray, both permanently sidelined from the country’s highest offices and any possible future political life. And the most anti-Catholic as well. Harris snubbed the Al Smith dinner in a much-publicized political and religious blunder, which may have inevitably served to draw further attention on the part of less aware voters to her long-simmering hostility toward the Church. A new and more intense religious persecution on the horizon was predictable with Harris’ public avowal to forbid any religious carve-outs to her sweeping anti-family, anti-life, anti-God agenda. So, many Catholics voted faith this…Continue Reading
By DR. DONALD DEMARCO A writer does not need to look very far to find grist for the mill. If he has an open mind he will find abundant opportunities to ply his trade. But if his mind remains open and never closes on anything worth communicating, he betrays his vocation. If one is open for business, he does want to close a sale or two. I was in a drug store waiting for a prescription to be filled. This gave me time to roam the aisles to see if anything else tempted my pocketbook. I came upon an elaborate Halloween display. A row of ghoulish-looking talking heads caught my attention. I activated the voice box of one of them…Continue Reading