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Recovering The Body In The Teaching Of John Paul II

July 30, 2020 Featured Today Comments Off on Recovering The Body In The Teaching Of John Paul II

By MOST REV. JOSEPH STRICKLAND Part 2 In our first column on Pope St. John Paul II’s series of Wednesday catechetical teachings which are popularly referred to as the “Theology of the Body,” we noted that this treasure given to us by the late St. John Paul II represented a decided shift in theological anthropology. That is the area of theology which reflects upon the nature of the human person as created and re-created in Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word.That shift can be characterized as a movement from finding a place for the human body in Christian theology to building a “theology of the body.” The former represented an effort to defend the role of the body, while the latter…Continue Reading

A Book Review . . . John Cassian Revisited

July 29, 2020 Featured Today Comments Off on A Book Review . . . John Cassian Revisited

By JUDE DOUGHERTY Clements, Niki Kasumi. Sites of the Aesthetic Self: John Cassian and Christian Ethical Formation. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2020. Pp. Xi + 280. The book opens with an account of a well-educated young man, John Cassian, and his companion, Germanus, who attempt to establish in Bethlehem a monastic community based on the asceticism of the Egyptian desert model.The mid-decades of the fifth century have been described by Robert Markus as the watershed of the great debates in the Latin West on what it means to be and live as a Christian. There is ample evidence to support that judgment as we follow the writing and activity of John Cassian, Augustine, John Chrysostom, Benedict…Continue Reading

Planned Parenthood… Tries To Erase Its Past

July 28, 2020 Featured Today Comments Off on Planned Parenthood… Tries To Erase Its Past

By BILL DONOHUE (Catholic League President Bill Donohue commented July 22 on Planned Parenthood’s rejection of its founder.) + + The founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, was a notorious racist and anti-Catholic bigot, yet this never stopped the organization from defending her until now. Indeed, I once clashed on TV with a Planned Parenthood official who denied Sanger was a racist. Now the abortion-happy institution has come clean and is admitting the obvious.In fact, the New York-based abortion mill is removing Sanger’s name from its building (her name from local streets in Greenwich Village may also be removed).With rare exception, the removal of tributes to historic leaders from public spaces should be resisted. This certainly includes Margaret Sanger. By…Continue Reading

A Book Review… A Scholarly Assessment Of The Next Papacy

July 27, 2020 Featured Today Comments Off on A Book Review… A Scholarly Assessment Of The Next Papacy

By DONAL ANTHONY FOLEY The Next Pope: The Leading Cardinal Candidates, by Edward Pentin. Publication date: August 4, 2020 (Sophia Institute Press, 704 pages, Kindle and Paperback). To order, visit www.sophiainstitute.com or call 1-800-888-9344. Edward Pentin, the lead author of The Next Pope: The Leading Cardinal Candidates, is the Rome correspondent for National Catholic Register. He has written this lengthy, very informative book in collaboration with an international team of writers, and it is clearly the product of much research.In the introduction, he outlines the aim of the book as being “to equip readers with a detailed knowledge of some of the cardinals considered to have the greatest likelihood of being elected pope.” For this work, Pentin and his collaborators…Continue Reading

Something Worse Than Racism

July 26, 2020 Featured Today Comments Off on Something Worse Than Racism

By DONALD DeMARCO Racism is unquestionably an evil that all of us should endeavor to eliminate. And it is universally regarded as such. The great impediment to eradicating this evil is that many people do not understand the nature of racism. For example, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter in Toronto has stated that “White ppl [people] are recessive genetic defects. This is factual,” and that “white ppl [people] need white supremacy as a mechanism to protect their survival as a people because all they can do is produce themselves.”Being white, or of any color, for that matter, does not exemplify racism. The fact that such a statement receives a great deal of publicity is most disheartening and does nothing…Continue Reading

Rising Diversity Is Joe Biden’s Worry, Too

July 25, 2020 Featured Today Comments Off on Rising Diversity Is Joe Biden’s Worry, Too

By PATRICK J. BUCHANAN Is her racial diversity America’s greatest strength?So we are told. Yet, even before America becomes a majority-minority nation, 25 years from now, recent changes in the composition of the country are going to impact both parties in 2020.According to Brookings Institution demographer William Frey, between 2010 and 2020, while America’s population grew by 20 million, our white population fell for the first time since the 1790 census.White Americans fell as a share of the population in all 50 states, in 358 of 364 metropolitan areas, in 3,012 of 3,141 counties. During that same decade, our Black population grew by 3 million, our Asian population by 4 million and our Hispanic population by 10 million.What’s the significance…Continue Reading

Iconoclasm’s Evil War Against The Sacred . . . The Beeldenstorm Of 1566 And How Catholic Artists Fought Back

July 24, 2020 Featured Today Comments Off on Iconoclasm’s Evil War Against The Sacred . . . The Beeldenstorm Of 1566 And How Catholic Artists Fought Back

By JAMES MONTI Part 2 In early September of 1566, the Catholic parishioners of St. Ursula’s Church in the northern Dutch village of Warmenhuizen had reason to worry for their future. Just a month earlier, Calvinist militants had begun their Beeldenstorm of ruthless iconoclasm in Belgium that had quickly advanced north, spreading into Holland and reaching Amsterdam on August 23, leaving in its wake a trail of desecrated and decimated churches and shrines.On September 2, the Franciscans’ church in Alkmaar, just seven miles to the south of Warmenhuizen, was attacked by local evangelical fanatics, who destroyed the church’s religious imagery. Radical Catholic priests and religious who dissented from the Church’s teachings were “networking” in this region and were beginning to…Continue Reading

Notre Dame Cathedral Spire . . . Will Be Rebuilt As Replica Of Pre-Fire Design

July 23, 2020 Featured Today Comments Off on Notre Dame Cathedral Spire . . . Will Be Rebuilt As Replica Of Pre-Fire Design

(CNA) — President Emmanuel Macron of France has announced that the Notre Dame Cathedral spire will be rebuilt as a replica of the one destroyed in the fire at the cathedral last year.Macron’s government had previously initiated an architectural competition to submit a variety of suggestions for the restoration. Macron has also called for “an inventive reconstruction” of the cathedral with a more contemporary design.The possibility of a new design for the spire of the historic building had been controversial. The designs proposed included a rooftop swimming pool and a greenhouse atop the 850-year-old cathedral.Last year, the French Senate passed a bill mandating that Notre Dame be rebuilt as it was before the fire.Macron’s change of mind on the spire…Continue Reading

The New ‘Systemic Racism’ That Is Coming

July 22, 2020 Featured Today Comments Off on The New ‘Systemic Racism’ That Is Coming

By PATRICK J. BUCHANAN Before our Black Lives Matter moment, one had not thought of the NBC networks as shot through with “systemic racism.”Yet, what other explanation is there for the past week’s draconian personnel decision of NBCUniversal chairman Cesar Conde.According to Conde, the white share of NBC’s workforce, now 74 percent and divided evenly between men and women, will be chopped to 50 percent.Persons of color — Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, and multiracial folks — are to rise from the present 26 percent of NBCUniversal’s workforce to 50 percent.What does this mean?White men will be slashed as a share of NBCUniversal’s employees from the present 38 percent to 25 percent — a cut of one-third — and then…Continue Reading

The Face Of Evil

July 21, 2020 Featured Today Comments Off on The Face Of Evil

By DEACON ANTHONY BARRASSO (Editor’s Note: Deacon Barrasso serves in a Maryland parish.) + + We don’t think of it often, we ignore it, we are not too concerned about it, yet it is the most dangerous, cancerous, malevolent, heinous reality around us: evil. Television shows and series on a daily basis pump out every form of depravity and profanity which were once prohibited for human consumption. Violence, destruction and lawlessness percolate through the news daily and we accept it like a cup of coffee for breakfast, as if it were the norm.Seldom do we think of its source until it knocks on our front door and we peek out to take a good look and really see what is…Continue Reading