Friday 19th April 2019

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Reverence As A Way Of Life In Church And Beyond

March 21, 2019 Frontpage Comments Off on Reverence As A Way Of Life In Church And Beyond

By JAMES MONTI In a previous essay, we looked at reverence as an overriding principle of fitting sacred worship. Here we return to the subject of reverence to consider some specific ways by which it is expressed in the sacred liturgy and in other aspects of life as well. Lent is a particularly opportune time to reflect upon reverence, for it is a season of serious soul-searching, a season beginning and concluding with solemn rites that bring us to a hushed standstill before awesome events and mysteries. It begins with a rite that literally writes the remembrance of death on our faces, the imposition of ashes, and as it draws to a close we enter Jerusalem with Christ on Palm…Continue Reading

Are We Facing The Complete Loss of Innocence?

March 20, 2019 Frontpage Comments Off on Are We Facing The Complete Loss of Innocence?

By REY FLORES It’s Girl Scout Cookie time again as I write this, but this column isn’t about cookies. It’s about how we as individuals and as a society have made the country an almost completely unsafe and dangerous place for children. We have failed our children in so many respects, and as Christians, we all know about that millstone around our necks. With every generation that comes, we have lowered the bar every time, almost as if we were enjoying the downward spiral as if it were some kind of twisting waterslide. The thing about this whirlpool is that it is the flushing of our entire civilization down the toilet. When I see those little girls and their parents…Continue Reading

Longtime Physician Says . . . Conference In Rome Will Explore “The Fallacies Of ‘Brain Death’”

March 19, 2019 Frontpage Comments Off on Longtime Physician Says . . . Conference In Rome Will Explore “The Fallacies Of ‘Brain Death’”

By DEXTER DUGGAN How the practice of medicine viewed patients began to change in 1968, when “brain death” was proposed as a shift in medical thinking in order to obtain healthy organs for transplant, a longtime physician who helped plan a conference in Rome on brain death scheduled in May told The Wanderer in a telephone interview. “I question whether Roe v. Wade would have happened” in 1973, when the Supreme Court legalized nationwide permissive abortion, without the brain-death proposal in 1968, Paul Byrne, MD, a former president of the national Catholic Medical Association, said in a March 4 interview. It was an intoxicating period of time when some physicians reconsidered whom they were primarily serving, the patient or “certain…Continue Reading

Where Has Our Sense Of Humor Gone?

March 18, 2019 Frontpage Comments Off on Where Has Our Sense Of Humor Gone?

By MIKE MANNO “Political correctness is fascism pretending to be manners” — George Carlin. + + + The best humor, they say, is based in reality. If that’s true, then George Carlin hit one out of the park. For the last several years I’ve noticed that we’ve stopped laughing at — or with — one another. What was once a great American sense of humor, especially involving current events, has apparently been replaced by systematic dowdiness. We used to be able to poke fun at ourselves and others in a friendly sort of way like we do with our families and close friends. So what has happened? Well, my guess is that our overreliance on mandated political correctness as well…Continue Reading

Meghan McCain… Intensifies Her National Profile For Defending Preborn Babies

March 17, 2019 Frontpage Comments Off on Meghan McCain… Intensifies Her National Profile For Defending Preborn Babies

By DEXTER DUGGAN PHOENIX — If the late Sen. John McCain ever used his local branch library here, it would have been Century Library at 1750 E. Highland Ave. McCain’s high-rise condo was a few blocks to the east. The morning of Tuesday, March 12, one of that city library’s workers carried some newspapers that had arrived over the weekend over to the newspaper reading racks. One of them was the March 11 Wall Street Journal, whose opinion pages included a column that McCain’s daughter Meghan co-authored with Sen. Ben Sasse (R., Neb.). It was headlined, “America’s Extremist Abortion Industry.” Meghan’s pro-life views already were well known. She had been vocal about them on the ABC television daily program The…Continue Reading

Do Catholic Laity Need Our Own Conference?

March 16, 2019 Frontpage Comments Off on Do Catholic Laity Need Our Own Conference?

By CHRISTOPHER MANION Back in the 1980s, writes Catholic author Robert Royal, “Michael Novak organized a group of us who presented alternatives to the bishops’ statements on nukes and the economy. But for me, the most memorable moment in all of those controversies was an exchange between a prominent Dutch philosopher and Fr. Brian Hehir [top adviser at the USCCB] at one of our meetings: “ ‘Fr. Hehir, the work you have produced is quite serious. But I don’t see why the bishops should put their moral authority behind this particular set of proposals when there are a dozen others equally ethical. It would have been better to stick to moral and social principles.’ “ ‘Well, if we did that,…Continue Reading

Secret Works, Secret Examples, Secret Archives!

March 15, 2019 Frontpage Comments Off on Secret Works, Secret Examples, Secret Archives!

By SHAUN KENNEY One of my favorite things about this column is that readers so often send me their thoughts to add to the conversation. The mention of Solzhenitsyn sent readers to the mailbox (my favorite means of communication, it must be said) and I couldn’t be happier to place your thoughts alongside my own. First, I am exceedingly grateful to Mr. D — for mentioning that Solzhenitsyn’s last work has yet to be translated into English. There is some indication that the work is a bit too sensitive for American ears, as it deals with Russia’s relationship with the Jewish people through the February Revolution and up to this day. The book has been translated into French and German,…Continue Reading

Women’s Pro-Life Health-Care Consortium Looks To Expand Its Reach

March 14, 2019 Frontpage Comments Off on Women’s Pro-Life Health-Care Consortium Looks To Expand Its Reach

By DEXTER DUGGAN PHOENIX — A budding consortium of pro-life help centers has “a gold seal of approval” to confer for facilities that qualify to become certified with Pro Women’s Healthcare Centers, the consortium’s executive director told the monthly meeting of the Catholic Medical Association of Phoenix (CMAP). Christine Accurso told the meeting at the headquarters of the Catholic Diocese of Phoenix on March 2 that the aim is to “raise the bar, and raise the volume, on what excellent women’s health care is.” A slide she projected onto a screen said the consortium members want “to partner with women to provide comprehensive, convenient, compassionate, high-quality medical services and access to social services that empower them to care for their…Continue Reading

A Book Review… Poetry To Calm And Lift The Soul

March 13, 2019 Frontpage Comments Off on A Book Review… Poetry To Calm And Lift The Soul

By PEGGY MOEN As I was reading Wilfred G. Chen’s God Speaks in Silence: Poems for All Seasons, I also reread Pope John Paul II’s message for Lent of 2004, in which the late, sainted Holy Father reflected on the severe suffering innocent children sometimes undergo: “What evil have these children done to merit such suffering? From a human standpoint it is not easy, indeed it may be impossible, to answer this disturbing question. Only faith can make us begin to understand so profound an abyss of suffering. By becoming ‘obedient unto death, even death on a Cross’ (Phil. 2: 8), Jesus took human suffering upon himself and illuminated it with the radiant light of his resurrection. By his death,…Continue Reading

Surrogacy And The Erosion Of Motherhood

March 12, 2019 Frontpage Comments Off on Surrogacy And The Erosion Of Motherhood

By DONALD DeMARCO New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo has proposed a new law that would remove the ban on surrogacy contracts that has existed since 1992, thus making commercial surrogacy legal. The bill is expected to pass, allowing New Yorkers, for the first time, to pay a woman to have a baby for them through in vitro fertilization. The typical cost for such a procedure is somewhere between $45,000 and $50,000. According to Cuomo, “New York’s antiquated laws are discriminatory against all couples struggling with fertility, same sex or otherwise.” Critics of the bill, on the other hand, have pointed out that commercial surrogacy discriminates against infertile couples who cannot afford such a high cost as well as against the…Continue Reading