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German Catholics Defy Vatican . . . With Blessing Ceremonies For Same-Sex Couples

May 19, 2021 Featured Today Comments Off on German Catholics Defy Vatican . . . With Blessing Ceremonies For Same-Sex Couples

(CNA) — Priests and pastoral workers in Germany defied the Vatican on May 10 by conducting blessing ceremonies attended by same-sex couples.Organizers held a day of protest in response to the Vatican’s recent declaration that the Church does not have the power to bless same-sex unions.The ceremonies, known as “Segnungsgottesdiensten fur Liebende,” or “blessing services for lovers,” were promoted using the hashtag “#liebegewinnt” (“love wins”). Organizers said that the services were open to all couples, including — and in particular — those of the same sex.CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German-language news partner, reported that ceremonies took place in around 80 cities in Germany as well in Zurich, Switzerland’s largest city.But it said that it was difficult to calculate the precise number…Continue Reading

A Book Review… Overcoming Sinful Thoughts With Humor And Humility

May 18, 2021 Featured Today Comments Off on A Book Review… Overcoming Sinful Thoughts With Humor And Humility

By PEGGY MOEN Overcoming Sinful Thoughts: How to Realign Your Thinking and Defeat Harmful Ideas, by Fr. T.G. Morrow; Sophia Institute Press, Manchester, N.H.: 2020; paperback, 129 pages. To order, visit sophiainstitute.com or call 800-888-9344. “It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity,” G.K. Chesterton famously wrote.Fr. T.G. Morrow’s Overcoming Sinful Thoughts is loaded with humor, that is, with the antidote to seriousness, or pride, the first of the seven deadly sins.For example, in the first chapter, title “I Am the Best,” he relates the story of how St. John Vianney, the Curé of Ars, accidentally received a copy of a petition some priests were circulating against him. The petition accused…Continue Reading

St. Joseph, Patron Of The Dying

May 17, 2021 Featured Today Comments Off on St. Joseph, Patron Of The Dying

By FR. MARK MORIARTY (Editor’s Note: Fr. Moriarty is the pastor of the Church of St. Agnes in St. Paul, Minn.) + + Scripture is silent about the death of St. Joseph. Joseph is last seen searching for Jesus when Jesus was separated from His parents as He stayed behind in the temple. The next event where we see the Blessed Virgin Mary present is the miracle at the wedding feast of Cana. Jesus and His disciples were invited, Mary was there, but Joseph is not mentioned. It should be noted that the foster father is absent at the first public work of Jesus.St. Francis de Sales imagined this about St. Joseph’s death, “a saint who had loved so much…Continue Reading

Respecting Our Use Of Words

May 16, 2021 Featured Today Comments Off on Respecting Our Use Of Words

By DONALD DeMARCO Dag Hammarskjold, former secretary of the United Nations, has given us important advice concerning how we must be most careful in how we use our words. In his classic work, Markings, he states: “Respect for the word is the first commandment in the discipline by which a man can be educated to maturity — intellectual, emotional, and moral. Respect for the word — to employ it with scrupulous care and incorruptible heartfelt care for truth — is essential if there is to be any growth in a society or in the human race.”This respect for the word is not evident in the current use of language in our society. As a result, we are often misled by…Continue Reading

Where Did All Those “Capitalist Pigs” Go?

May 15, 2021 Featured Today Comments Off on Where Did All Those “Capitalist Pigs” Go?

By PATRICK J. BUCHANAN “There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money,” is an insight the famed biographer James Boswell attributed to Samuel Johnson.Clients of the late Bernie Madoff, however, might take issue.Over four decades, Madoff, acclaimed as the greatest fraudster of them all, ran a Ponzi scheme that swindled 40,000 people, including his closest friends, out of $65 billion.But if “getting money” is among the most innocent of callings, America has more than its fair share of the goodly people who excel at it.According to Forbes’ 35th annual ranking of billionaires, last year witnessed a population explosion. Some 660 new billionaires were added to the number for a total of…Continue Reading

We Need Connections To God, Family, Country

May 14, 2021 Featured Today Comments Off on We Need Connections To God, Family, Country

By Fr. MICHAEL P. ORSI I’ve never appreciated landscaping as much as in these last few years, since coming to live in Florida. Landscaping wasn’t something I thought about very much. Growing up in Brooklyn, we never had very much land to be scaped.But watching highly skilled landscapers at work, seeing the beautiful effects they create from nature’s elements, has become a fascination to me. It’s also given me a new appreciation for Jesus’ famous image of the vine: “I am the vine, you are the branches.”Just as a flower can bloom only because of its connection to the mother plant, and the plant can grow only because of its connection to the earth, so we enjoy fullness of life…Continue Reading

Eastertide And The Blessed Virgin Mary

May 13, 2021 Featured Today Comments Off on Eastertide And The Blessed Virgin Mary

By JAMES MONTI Each year, whether Easter comes early or late, the Easter season that follows always continues well into May and often beyond it. There is in this a happy convergence, casting the month of Mary in the splendid spring light of the Resurrection. Even before May begins, from Easter Sunday onward, the Church daily turns to the Blessed Virgin to invite her to rejoice anew in the Resurrection with the singing of the Paschal antiphon Regina Caeli.As a liturgical chant, this antiphon can only be traced back as far as the twelfth century, yet it implicitly evokes a tradition that can be traced back much earlier — the belief that our Lord following His Resurrection revealed Himself first…Continue Reading

After Vatican Says No To Same-Sex Blessings . . . Cardinal Ruini Sees “Risk Of Schism” In Germany

May 12, 2021 Featured Today Comments Off on After Vatican Says No To Same-Sex Blessings . . . Cardinal Ruini Sees “Risk Of Schism” In Germany

By HANNAH BROCKHAUS ROME (CNA) — Italian Cardinal Camillo Ruini has said that he is praying there will be no schism in Germany, as priests and bishops in the country announce their disagreement with a document from the Vatican saying the Church cannot bless same-sex unions.In a May 4 interview with the newspaper Il Foglio, Ruini said: “I hope with all my heart that there will not be any schism, and I pray for this.”The 90-year-old cardinal referenced Pope Francis’ 2019 letter in which he asked German Catholics to keep a “connection with the universal Church.”“These words of the Pope offer a standard and a valuable direction,” Ruini said. “I do not deny, therefore, that there is a risk of…Continue Reading

Catholic Schools . . . Beat Public Schools In Reading And Math Scores

May 11, 2021 Featured Today Comments Off on Catholic Schools . . . Beat Public Schools In Reading And Math Scores

By TERENCE P. JEFFREY Here is one demonstrable fact about the difference between Catholic and public schools: Students who study at Catholic schools do better in reading and math.We know this because students who attended Catholic elementary schools in 2019 tested better in mathematics and reading than students who attended public schools.The latest issue of the Digest of Education Statistics, published by the U.S. Department of Education, includes the average reading and math scores that fourth and eighth grade students achieved in the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, tests that were administered in 2019.Table 221.32a from this digest shows the average reading scores.Fourth graders in public schools, it says, scored an average of 219 (out of a possible…Continue Reading

Archbishop Cordileone’s Letter On Abortion… Is This Nancy Pelosi’s Last Warning?

May 10, 2021 Featured Today Comments Off on Archbishop Cordileone’s Letter On Abortion… Is This Nancy Pelosi’s Last Warning?

By PHIL LAWLER (CatholicCulture.org) — With his pastoral letter powerfully reaffirming the importance of the Church’s teaching on the dignity of human life, San Francisco’s Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone has issued a serious challenge: to all Catholics, certainly, but to his brother bishops in particular, and especially to the prominent Catholic politicians who support legal abortion — notably including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, whose residence is in the San Francisco Archdiocese.“I tremble that if I do not forthrightly challenge Catholics under my pastoral care who advocate for abortion, both they and I will have to answer to God for innocent blood,” writes Archbishop Cordileone.He mentions no names, and he emphasizes that a bishop should admonish a sinner privately before…Continue Reading