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From DC’s Hall of the Americas, Helen Alvaré and others speak on Religious Freedom…
English[embedded content] Spanish[embedded content] “Celebrating the International Day of Religious Freedom: Guarantee of Human Rights and the Common Good” was organized by the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the Organization of American States. Services Marketplace – Listings, Bookings & Reviews Entertainment blogs & Forums
Humanistic individualism, like Communism, is false — and John Paul II’s Christian vision of man is true…..
By Fr Hugh Mackenzie St John Paul II is widely accepted as having made a major contribution to the 1989 downfall of the Soviet regime. For him this was the victory of the Christian vision of the human person over the Marxist one. The truth about Man ‘will out’ as long as we are ‘not afraid’ to live and teach it. This was the vision he courageously preached to the people of his native Poland, from the post-war pulpits of Krakow, the 1950’s lecture halls of Lublin university, through to the massive papal stages of his 1979 and 1983 pastoral visits to the land which formed him. Person as rooted in Word and Work In 1941, aged 21, during the Nazi reign of terror over Krakow, he helped found the ‘Rhapsodic Theatre’. This was building upon the trad...
Surrounded by Halloween witchery, Catholics in Salem wage a battle for souls…
On an unseasonably warm October afternoon in the Witch City, America’s unofficial Halloween capital, thousands of people are passing by a lay Catholic street preacher. Some are wearing skin-tight black skeleton costumes, others vampire hoods and makeup, and some look like demons. Most are revelers, celebrating Halloween a little early. But others have intense looks on their faces, as if this is game day. The preacher, Anthony Correnti, 35, isn’t in costume. Instead, he’s wearing a black T-shirt that says “Need Prayer?” He stands on a granite wall on Essex Street with a microphone in his right hand. Near a black two-and-a-half-foot-high Sony speaker is a sign with a Divine Mercy image of Jesus and the magic-markered words “He Has Risen.” Below that is another sign, also in red and blue magi...
‘A Bible Made of Stone and Glass’: Chartres Cathedral Celebrates 1,000 Years of Its Foundation…
Notre Dame of Chartres Cathedral in France, a Christian landmark since the Middle Ages, is currently celebrating the first millennium of its foundation. This Marian shrine, whose fame almost equals that of Notre-Dame de Paris, will host a series of religious and artistic celebrations until Aug. 15, 2025. A vast renovation and embellishment project has been developed in the cathedral’s crypt for this occasion, in collaboration with the French Ministry of Culture. It will feature a new jubilee itinerary, a special pilgrimage focusing on conversion and baptism. For Father Emmanuel Blondeau, rector of the cathedral for the past eight years, this jubilee, which promises to swell the stream of visitors from around the world, represents a privileged means of offering a powerful exper...
I Like Luce…
I like Luce Skip to content Pillar subscribers can listen to JD read this Pillar Post here: The Pillar TL;DR Hey everybody, First things first. I like Luce. I think she’s a fun piece of pop art with accessible symbolism, and I hope they retail a funko pop version of her so I can buy one for my kids. And if you’ve spent the last 24 hours posting online that Luce is a symbol of everything wrong with contemporary Catholicism, I think you should take a breath and chill out a little bit. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Luce is the cartoon mascot of the Church’s upcoming 2025 jubilee year, in which Catholics are invited to become pilgrims, receiving a “Jubilee indulgence” by going to confession, receiving the Eucharist, praying for the pope, and by making a pilgrimage — either to the b...
I was raised Wiccan — here’s how I found my way to Jesus Christ and His Catholic Church…
Share via: Nora has also shared her testimony on Signposts and The Journey Home. ***** I grew up in the beautiful mountains of Colorado with loving parents. We were not religious at all; in fact, our family had an anti-Christian attitude. I believed in an impersonal God and had a deep devotion to angels, though I am not sure where those beliefs originated. My parents worked hard to provide for my brother and me, and they instilled in us a strong sense of right and wrong. We were a tight-knit family. Wicca, a Family Affair When I was 11 years old, my brother and I were playing in our yard. We stumbled upon a stone circle we had never noticed before; the stones and the circle were clearly placed by human hands, in a pattern that pointed to their ritualistic purpose. Thinking satanists must h...
Women Deacons, ‘Sexuality’ and More: Here’s How the Synod Final Document Changed From the Draft…
When the final document of the Synod on Synodality’s was confirmed on Oct. 26, it emphasized that the possibility of women deacons remains unsettled. “The question of women’s access to diaconal ministry remains open,” reads the document, which was expressly approved by Pope Francis after each of its 155 paragraphs were affirmed by 355 voting members. “This discernment needs to continue.” But that language wasn’t included in the initial draft that members of the monthlong assembly were presented with earlier in the week. In fact, according to a copy of the draft obtained by the Register, there was no mention of the possibility of women deacons at all. The language’s last-minute insertion may be an indication of why the paragraph in question received significant push-back from synod de...
We have to talk about the trend in the Church toward clustering parishes…
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Phyllis Zagano Damages Her Own Argument for Female Deacons…
Phyllis Zagano is well-known as one of the biggest advocates for female deacons in the Catholic Church. However, she has shown a lack of understanding the concept of Imago Dei (Image of God) in a way that really harms her argument. If she makes a mistake here, it undermines here argument for female deacons. This piece will note Church teaching on the Image of God, point out Zagano’s error, and note another issue she had with fundamental theology principles. Church Teaching on the Image of God Male and female hand (CC0 Pixabay) The image and likeness of God is a fundamental principle when talking about how humans are all equal. I spend a lecture on this at the beginning of bioethics and mention it in fundamental moral theology. The point is that dignity is intrinsic, being based on being an...
When I read this definition of ‘glory’ from St. Thomas Aquinas, it stopped me in my tracks…..
It is remarkable how many words we use—often even important ones—without a clear notion of what they mean. Glory has been one of those words for me. Then one day I read a definition in Thomas Aquinas that fairly stopped me in my tracks. “The word glory properly denotes that somebody’s good is known and approved by many.” Honestly, I kept reading this over and over, smiling. Every word other than ‘is,’ ‘and,’ and ‘by’ is significant here: somebody, good, known, approved, many. All right at hand in this definition are a whole worldview, the meaning of life, and a deep moral challenge… not to mention a new sense of the ‘glory’ of autumn! Let us begin with the second and third terms. There can be glory when goodness is manifest; there is no glory if goodness remains unperceived. And it must be...
Why actor Sir Anthony Hopkins called California’s Thomas Aquinas College one of the ‘most beautiful places’ he had ever seen…
Greetings from Wichita, Kansas, where I am in town — as I frequently am — to visit family and to be tempted into buying stacks of books (and icons) at the amazing Eighth Day Books (see this 2015 New York Times feature). This time around, I am one of the speakers at the 10th annual Inklings Festival at the Eighth Day Institute. The title of my talk: “The Scariest Five Chapters in the Work of C. S. Lewis.” Anyone want to guess which five chapters I will be discussing? Yes, they are five chapters in the same book. If you happen to be cruising across the High Plains, please drop by. The Inklings pub crawl is worth the effort, all by itself. Anyway, down to business. I am still thinking about that post earlier this week: “Hollywood Christians: A large congregation?” That made me think about an ...
Can the Vatican-China deal move forward without looking back?
Can the Vatican-China deal move forward without looking back? Skip to content The Holy See announced Tuesday that it has renewed for four years its “Provisional Agreement regarding the Appointment of Bishops” with the Chinese government — an increase from the prior two-year renewals signed after the deal was originally struck in 2018. Alamy stock image. The renewal of the agreement comes “in light of the consensus reached for an effective application” of the deal into the future, according to the Vatican’s press statement. “The Vatican Party remains dedicated to furthering the respectful and constructive dialogue with the Chinese Party, in view of the further development of bilateral relations for the benefit of the Catholic Church in China and the Chinese people as a whole,” the statement...
