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Catholic Replies

September 1, 2017 Our Catholic Faith Comments Off

Q. With all the talk about the recent solar eclipse, some people thought the end might be near. They cited Bible passages about the sun being darkened and the moon not giving its light as signs that the end is coming. How are we to understand these signs? — W.S., Arizona. A. Jesus did indeed mention signs like these in chapter 24 of Matthew’s Gospel, but He also said in the same chapter that no one knows when Heaven and Earth will pass away, “neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.” He went on to say: “For as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son…Continue Reading

Seeking The Good

August 31, 2017 Our Catholic Faith Comments Off

By FR. ROBERT ALTIER Twenty-Third Sunday In Ordinary Time (YR A) Readings: Ezek. 33:7-9 Romans 13:8-10 Matt. 18:15-20 When God approached Cain after he had slain Abel, the Lord asked where Abel was and Cain replied: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” On one hand we are all responsible for our own self and for our own salvation. If we sin, we have to take responsibility for our action and bring our sins to Confession. If your friend sins, unless you are part of the action, you have no responsibility. In the readings today, however, we see that we do have some responsibility for others. St. Paul reminds us, in the second reading, that we are to owe nothing to anyone…Continue Reading

Iceland Is Not Alone In “Freezing Out” The Disabled

August 30, 2017 Our Catholic Faith Comments Off

By MSGR. CHARLES POPE (Editor’s Note: Msgr. Charles Pope is the pastor of Holy Comforter-St. Cyprian, Washington, D.C. Monsignor kindly gave The Wanderer permission to reprint this essay from his blog of August 20, 2017. All rights reserved.) + + + Most of you have probably heard or read the reports trumpeting the “eradication” of Down syndrome in Iceland. The problem is that what is being termed “eradicating” the “problem” actually means that those with Down syndrome are being put to death. The celebratory language is all too similar to the way we once spoke of wiping out malaria by killing infected mosquitoes. But of course children in the womb are not mosquitoes; they are human beings, love and willed…Continue Reading

A Leaven In The World… How Catholics End Up As Practical Protestants

August 28, 2017 Our Catholic Faith Comments Off

By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK The Church is in the business of making Catholics, of proclaiming and calling all to the fullness of saving truth in Jesus Christ our Lord. Our mission to those who doubt or refuse some of our teachings is to call them to that fullness, whether Catholics already in our pews or Protestant brothers and sisters on our periphery. A confusion, sometimes called “ecumania,” has resulted in an inversion of the Church’s mission on the part of some Catholics, even among our Catholic leadership, as we have seen Walter Cardinal Kasper among those who would change Catholic doctrine on marriage to mirror what is already abundantly available among non-Catholic confessions. But our mission as Catholics is…Continue Reading

What Is Divine Grace?… Heresies About Grace That Poisoned Belief

August 27, 2017 Our Catholic Faith Comments Off

By RAYMOND DE SOUZA, KM Part 3 From the early days of Church history, some individuals emerged as self-appointed new “apostles” who allegedly received directly from God the proper understanding of the Sacred Scriptures about this or that subject, especially grace, justification, and salvation. They disagreed with the Magisterium of the Church — whose teachings came directly from the apostles — and claimed that they knew better, or course. Three of the more famous ones were Pelagius, Luther, and Calvin. Let us begin with Pelagius. His heresy developed around the year AD 400. Even though his heresy is over 1,600 years old, to this day there are people, both inside and outside the Church, who cling to it in one…Continue Reading

The Sacrament Of Anointing Of The Sick

August 26, 2017 Our Catholic Faith Comments Off

By DON FIER Having concluded its treatment of the Sacrament of Penance, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) now examines the teaching of the Church on the second of the two sacraments she designates as sacraments of healing: Anointing of the Sick. To preface our consideration of this sacrament which was formerly called Extreme Unction, let us recall earlier words of the Catechism: “The Lord Jesus Christ, physician of our souls and bodies, who forgave the sins of the paralytic and restored him to bodily health (cf. Mark 2:1-12), has willed that his Church continue, in the power of the Holy Spirit, his work of healing and salvation” (CCC, n. 1421). The Sacrament of Penance, as has been demonstrated…Continue Reading

Catholic Replies

August 25, 2017 Our Catholic Faith Comments Off

Editor’s Note: Reflecting on the Transfiguration of the Lord and gender confusion, Fr. George Rutler said recently that the glorification of Jesus “confounds the Gnostic mistake of treating nature as an evil construct, destructive of the human spirit that struggles to be free of it. That perennial heresy is now a fashion in the form of gender politics. ‘Transgender’ is a misnomer. Gender pertains to grammar and not biology.” In the bulletin of the Church of St. Michael in New York City, Fr. Rutler wrote that “a Gnostic agenda treats the body as though it were merely an irrelevant noun that can be changed to what it is not. This is mutilation and not transfiguration. Mutilations are ‘against the moral…Continue Reading

The Cost Of Discipleship

August 24, 2017 Our Catholic Faith Comments Off

By FR. ROBERT ALTIER Twenty-Second Sunday In Ordinary Time (YR A) Readings: Jer. 20:7-9 Romans 12:1-2 Matt. 16:21-27 The first line of the first reading today is one of my favorites in all of Scripture: “You duped me, O Lord, and I let myself be duped.” When people feel drawn to do something for the Lord, it is fairly typical that their minds are filled with romantic ideas of how wonderful this will be. While they will be rudely snapped out of their daydream in fairly short order, initially the ideas of rejection and suffering are the last things in their imaginations. Part of this fairy tale is due to the idea that since this work is being done for…Continue Reading

Canon Lawyer… Notes Clergy Confusion About Preaching On Contraception, Related Issues

August 23, 2017 Our Catholic Faith Comments Off

By DEXTER DUGGAN Part 2 PHOENIX — A member of the leadership team of the Diocese of Phoenix explored contraception and related issues in an interview with The Wanderer after he preached on the topics during July 22-23 weekend Masses at one of the large diocesan parishes, St. Thomas the Apostle, in a residential area of Phoenix. Fr. Chris Fraser, JCL, ordained a priest for this diocese in 2001, earned a licentiate in canon law in 2006 at the Catholic University of America, in Washington, D.C. Upon graduation, he returned here to work full time in the diocesan tribunal, where he has served as judicial vicar since late 2007. During a Q-and-A interview, Fraser told The Wanderer that “when the…Continue Reading

A Leaven In The World . . . Silence Is Human And Divine

August 21, 2017 Our Catholic Faith Comments Off

By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK Perhaps you, like me, have sometimes been left with the sudden and awkward realization that you are in fact speaking to yourself when, confronting another human being with whom you thought you were communicating, you were met with total silence and completely ignored. More and more, the ubiquitous earphones have become mandatory equipment for many young people — and those who fancy themselves so — as these increasingly shut out the real world around them and enable escape into a world of their own artificial manipulation. Earphones are becoming smaller and smaller, harder to detect, making it more and more difficult to know whether others are tuning out their environment and their neighbors. The option…Continue Reading

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