And an interview with Raymond Arroyo. “The collaboration between a future pope and young prelate is transformed into profound friendship when circumstances thrust Joseph Ratzinger into the Apostolic Palace, even as he expected to be released in retirement to his beloved Bavaria. Monsignor Georg Gänswein never left his side, and witnessed one of the most… Read More “Who Believes Is Not Alone.” Mons. Georg Gänswein.
The need to be in a state of grace to receive Communion (CCC 1385) Leila Miller: … Christ said marriage is a one flesh union. So anytime you’re ripping that living flesh apart, something is dying. I mean, something pretty serious is being lost. Trent Horn: Yeah, because we think about divorce, it’s always so… Read More Trent Horn on the Evil of Divorce and the Way to Healing.
Brother Gabriel of St Mary Magalene, 1953, writes, “There are many who desire to make progress in the spiritual way and constantly entreat God to draw them and let them advance to this state of perfection [the state of union], but when it pleases God to begin to bring them through the first trials and… Read More The Temptation to Escape The Cross
Charles Lewis. Review of The Priest Barracks: Dachau 1938-1945 by By Guillaume Zeller. National Catholic Register . Updated. “On July 20, 1933, six months after Hitler rose to power, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII, and the German vice chancellor, Franz von Papen, signed a concordat — a sort of peace treaty between the… Read More Enduring Faith Amid Horror: The Priests of Dachau
Also, Dr Ralph Martin on the same. 1255 For the grace of Baptism to unfold, the parents’ help is important. So too is the role of the godfather and godmother, who must be firm believers, able and ready to help the newly baptized. As Pope St. John Paul II beautifully put it in his theology of the body, “the body… Read More National Catholic Register on Recent Vatican Statements on Baptism
Hear Davies’ talk: What Happened at Vatican II? +++ Michael Treharne Davies (13 March 1936 – 25 September 2004[1]) was a British teacher and traditionalist Catholic writer of many books about the Catholic Church following the Second Vatican Council… Although Davies opposed French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s canonically-illicit consecration of four SSPX bishops in 1988 against the wishes of Pope John Paul II,… Read More Michael Davies. What Happened at Vatican II?
Why “faith and culture”? Do they go together? Can they be separated? Can faith exist without culture? Can culture exist without faith? In the broadest sense of the word, faith and culture are inextricably connected because a culture is always an expression of the faith which informs it. If a culture is animated by a… Read More Faith and Culture by Joseph Pearce
It was Aldous Huxley who, very early, saw sexual decadence combining commercial interests with political manipulation in the emerging media. And he knew what that would mean for a culture. “Aldous Huxley in his 1932 dystopian novel Brave New World depicts a culture in which pleasure is compulsory and engineered to eliminate intellectual challenge and to… Read More Aldous Huxley, Sex, and Corporate Psychological Manipulation
The Gospel according to St John, read by Sir David Suchet. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God; 3 all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. 4 In him was life,[a]… Read More Beginning Again. In the beginning.
A fireworks of metaphors employed in quest to assess its place in Catholic history. Then there is Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne who (Oct. 8) thinks “The assembly that Pope Francis opened in Rome last week is radical, though not in the sense that his right-wing critics have in mind. Its purpose is downright… Read More Theologians See Trainwreck in Synod of Pope Francis.
“For the first time in over fifty years, a Catholic bishop has published his own comprehensive presentation of the Faith–what to believe, how to live, and how to pray as Christ taught. Sure to be a classic for generations to come, Credo: Compendium of the Catholic Faith offers a clear and readable summary of Catholicism… Read More Credo: Compendium of the Catholic Faith. Athanasius Schneider.
National Review: “Billions of dollars of aid have flown into Gaza while it has been under Hamas’s control, but instead of going to help alleviate the suffering of its people, the money has been diverted by Hamas to fund its terror operations. The group has dug up water pipes to repurpose them as rockets to… Read More Hamas Is to Blame for Gaza’s Problems
USA Today: “If you care about democracy, or about abortion rights or about the lives, freedoms and well-being of LGBTQ+ friends and loved ones, this past week was important… If you see former president and current criminal defendant Donald Trump and his MAGA movement as a dishonest, disingenuous threat to America, if you believe religion… Read More How the Left Defines “Democracy” in One Paragraph
Vatican synod ends without clear stances on women deacons, LGBT. AMERICA MAGAZINE : Gerard O’Connell “… There was a section on truth and love where the document talks about controversial issues and how to address them. In that section, the term L.G.B.T. doesn’t specifically appear. What do you see [that] is addressing that issue? Because… Read More Progressives Scramble to Explain Absence of LGBT in Final Synod Document
And he gave as good as he got 🪓 It is bizarre to hear how little the otherwise impressive English historian Tracy Borman seems to know about the Catholic theology of Indulgences, medieval and otherwise. It would have been better to consult the turn of the century Catholic Encyclopedia online or the Catho!ic Answers website… Read More An Axe to Grind. Cromwell’s Cynical Propaganda.
“… will face a canonical process over allegations of sexual, psychological, and spiritual abuse against women religious, the Vatican announced Friday, in an apparent about-face. The Vatican has not formally specified the charges Rupnik will face, and the Vatican’s press office has declined questions on its statement. null The Holy See press office said Oct. 27… Read More Pope Francis waives statute of limitations in cartoonist Rupnik case
“Remember all those ingrained habits, cherished ideas, beloved objects, and stubborn preferences from the pre-Internet age? They’re gone. To some of those things we can say good riddance. But many we miss terribly. Whatever our emotional response to this departed realm, we are faced with the fact that nearly every aspect of modern life now… Read More 100 Things We’ve Lost to the Internet
If the West has too often acted unjustly throughout the world —and it certainly has— this fact can never make genocidal Hamas right. “Hamas never wanted peace with Israel.” The Christian Post. “It was — and is — the mission of Hamas to obliterate Israel, not make peace with Israel. As noted in an October… Read More Genocidal Hamas
“Pat Robinson has written in a book a few years ago that we should have a world government but only when the Messiah arrives. He wrote that that literally any attempt to receive world order before that time must be the work of the devil. Well, join me I am glad to sit here at… Read More Walter Cronkite, World Government and Satan
Solène Tadié Vatican October 17, 2023 NCRegister. “Eight years after a footnote in one of Pope Francis’ signature documents appeared to open the door for divorced-and-remarried Catholics to receive Communion while remaining sexually active, a new round of public conflicts over its doctrinal legitimacy has exposed just how unsettled the issue remains at the highest levels… Read More Cardinal Müller: Latest Vatican Guidance on Divorce-Remarried Communion Represents a ‘Rupture’ With Church Teaching
‘In him we live and move and have our being’…‘For we are indeed his offspring.’ — Acts 17:28. A Breviary of Philosophy from the Works of St. Thomas Aquinas by Thomist philosopher Josef Pieper. The Creature is vanity in so far as it comes from nothingness, but not in so far as it is an… Read More St. Thomas On Being and Nothingness.
By Joseph Pearce “…In the world before religion was banished by the new godless creeds of secularism, there were no labor camps, no concentration camps, no gas chambers, no blitzkrieg, no Hiroshimas or Nagasakis. And yet the new atheists, proclaiming the creed of “progress,” have the sheer temerity and audacity to claim that religion and… Read More G.K. Chesterton and the Meaning of Progress
“The world is the theater of God’s glory—says Calvin, following Augustine. Man is the witness of the great acts of God, and “has to express what he has seen.” It is a great conception, but it is inadequate. I like better St. Irenaeus, who brings it even closer: Man himself is the glory of God,… Read More Theater of God’s Glory by Thomas Merton
The Palestinian Argument Today. Context, 2004. Dershowitz: The Case for Israel and Palestine. Debate: Norman Finkelstein vs. Alan Dershowitz (2003). Image Source: Politico “The Dershowitz–Finkelstein affair was a public controversy involving academics Alan Dershowitz and Norman Finkelstein and their scholarship on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in 2005. Shortly after the publication of the book The Case for Israel, by Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, Norman Finkelstein… Read More Israel and Palestine Today. Dershowitz–Finkelstein.
What the bee teaches us about meditating on spiritual things. “Meditations, properly so called, are certain considerations by which we raise the affections to God and heavenly things. Now meditation differs therein from study and ordinary methods of thought which have not the Love of God or growth in holiness for their object, but some… Read More St. Francis de Sales on Meditation
Edward Pentin of the National Catholic Register writes, “Pope Francis appears to open the door to same-sex blessings in his response to dubium no. 2, saying that priests may use their discretion in giving such blessings, so long as they don’t imply a same-sex union is equivalent to a heterosexual marriage: a) The Church has… Read More Francis Appears to Open Another Door
Trent Horn: “A lot of people think St. Francis of Assisi was just a hippie who preached the “serenity prayer” to animals. But did you know St. Francis actually preached on the fires of hell and didn’t say many of the sayings we attribute to him? It’s time to meet “the real St. Francis”! “…What… Read More The Real St. Francis
“… It is not money that takes people away from the Church but classical liberalism, which commodifies everything. Poland is interesting in this regard, as just over half of the Catholic population still attends Mass, and there is a strong rural and traditional element there. It would be interesting to see where Hungary lands in… Read More Wealth, Greed and Hubris
“For more than 50 years, the vast majority of the world’s most prominent archaeologists and historians have proclaimed that there is no hard evidence to support the Exodus story found in the Bible. In fact, they say that the archaeological record is completely opposed to the Bible’s account. This view of extreme skepticism has spread… Read More The Exodus: Patterns of Evidence
By Laura Loker.The Pillar. America is facing a crisis of loneliness. With nationwide declines in social connectivity, even the U.S. surgeon general is concerned about the “epidemic of loneliness and isolation” facing Americans. And Catholics are not exempt from the crisis. But parishioners at St. Thérèse Little Flower in South Bend, Indiana, might just have… Read More Household’ gatherings offer intentional community at South Bend parish
The final phase of the Synod of Synodality will begin in October. Among the 400 participants (cardinals, bishops, lay people and religious) will be the former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Gerhard Müller. Interview with Cardinal Müller: Q- This coming October, the final phase of the Synod on Synodality… Read More Cardinal Gerhard Müller: “whenever Popes have felt or behaved like politicians … “
Evangelical Protestant Michael Jones explains here
Christs love and service to all, to native born and to foreigners whom we encounter. The Order of Saint John, more commonly called the Order of Malta, lived by its credo, “Our Lords, the Sick and the Poor.” The members of the Order make a promise upon investiture to serve, to the best of their… Read More “Our lords the sick and the poor.”
Dr. James Tour, Dr. Hugh Ross “There are over 30 space-time theorems in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. Not all space-time theorems are supportive of the biblical cosmic beginning that includes the beginning of space and time. However, the few theorems that are not rule out the possibility of physical life ever existing in the universe.… Read More On the Origins of the Universe
“Pope Francis oversees a curia where the Relator General for the Synod on Synodality claims the Church’s teaching about homosexual acts is “false,” where the head of the Pontifical Academy for Life endorses a book that calls for a complete reversal of the Church’s teaching on contraception, and where the head of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of… Read More Hard to Believe History Will Be Kind
…the National Lawyers Guild, and the 65 Project. Last Spring famed attorney Alan Dershowitz, who has been ostracized by many or most of his present and old friends for speaking out against legal violations in what he calls the political prosecution of former President Donald Trump, warned about “what is coming,” saying repression is going… Read More Dershowitz Warns Against Stanford Law Radicals
“Russian-Jewish immigrants came from the shtetls and ghettos out to Hollywood.… In this magical place that had no relationship to any reality they had ever seen before in their lives, or that anyone else had ever seen, they decided to create their idea of an eastern aristocracy.… The American Dream—is a Jewish invention. — JILL… Read More Jews and the ‘American Dream’
According to Forbes, Elon Musk has an estimated net worth of $421 billion (2024), making him richer than the Jacob Rothschild family. (Musk net worth Dec. 2024) “The combined wealth of the Rothschild family across all its branches is estimated to be $15.7 trillion. But ” more conservative estimate from a Sunday Times report in 2023 said… Read More Musk, the Rothschilds, Current Rivals…
NEW YORK (AP) — Those attending outdoor parties or barbecues in New York City this weekend may notice an uninvited guest looming over their festivities: a police surveillance drone. The New York City police department plans to pilot the unmanned aircrafts in response to complaints about large gatherings, including private events, over Labor Day weekend,… Read More Glimpsing the Future. NY police drones to monitor backyard parties, spurring privacy concerns.
2007: In the preface to the book John Allen wrote on the Popes ascendance, “The Rise of Benedict XVI: The Inside Story of How the Pope was Elected and Where He Will Take the Catholic Church” by John L. Allen. “Because the new pope [Benedict XVI] has been a highly public figure generating diverse reactions,… Read More Benedict XVI, John Allen and Myself
