Discover
What is a blessing? Who (or what) can be blessed? And what effect do blessings have? Here are 7 things to know and share…..
There is currently considerable discussion about whether it is possible to bless persons in same-sex unions. In light of this, it can be useful to step back and take a look at the topic of blessings in general. Here are 7 things to know and share about blessings. 1) What are blessings? The English word bless is used to translate the Latin word benedicere and the Greek word eulogein. Both of these mean “to speak good.” In Scripture, the terms have a variety of uses. For example, one may bless God by speaking good of God — i.e., praising him (Psalm 68:26, James 3:9, etc.). However, another prominent use of the term is speaking good about something other than God in hopes of bringing about good effects. Thus the patriarch Isaac intended to bless his son Esau to bring good things upon him, but...
North Carolina Woman Sues Doctors and Therapists in Wake of Gender Transition Surgery as a Teen…
By SueAnn Howell, O.C.D.S. Charlotte, N.C., Jul 20, 2023 / 16:10 pm Prisha (Abigail) Mosley, 25, a detransitioning woman formerly known as Charlie Mosley, filed a lawsuit July 17 in North Carolina’s Gaston County Superior Court naming her therapists, physician, surgeon, and their corresponding medical facilities who facilitated her medicalized gender transition to a man during her late teens as defendants. In the first lawsuit of its kind in North Carolina, Mosley alleges that medical professionals in charge of her mental and physical well-being during her formative years caused harm on seven counts before, during, and after her gender reassignment surgery — by committing various types of fraud, medical malpractice, inflicting emotional distress, and utilizing unfair and deceptive trade pr...
80 years ago, Pope Pius XII defied American bombs to become ‘Defender of the City’…
ROME – Rome is a city that prides itself on having seen it all over the course of its millennia-long history, so much so that “Been there, done that” might well be the unofficial civic motto. Here’s how journalist Fabrizio Roncone summed up Roman reaction to the record heat this week, which reached an official peak of 109 degrees on Tuesday. “Romans don’t get burned, they don’t melt, they don’t evaporate. The Romans resist. They’re used to it … not to the heat, but to much worse,” Roncone wrote in Corriere della Sera. Yet even by that world-weary standard, the events of July 19, 1943, exactly 80 years ago yesterday, shocked and scarred the city like little else in its long history – and, for precisely that reason, a virtually unprecedented papal reaction that day still lives in the civic m...
This summer, kibosh the gadgets and encourage real play. Your children’s response might surprise you. And one day, they might thank you…..
Robert Louis Stevenson’s wonderful verses often capture more than meets the eye. When I was down beside the seaA wooden spade they gave to me.To dig the sandy shore.A Child’s Garden of Verses They – whoever ‘they’ were – clearly did this child a good turn. They brought him to a good place, and they gave him a good ‘toy’–if we call it a toy. The best ‘play’ is a kind of first exercise in the deeper things of life: such as playing house, playing workman, or playing army. Or simply digging in the earth. Children have a kind of natural fascination with many things, some of them good, some of them not. How they play, what they play and with whom they play will either grow or diminish these fascinations. Current customs, particularly because of the technologies involved, can turn play into somet...
‘I Feel I Have Arrived Home’: Former Anglican Bishop Discusses His Journey to the Catholic Church…
On July 2, Richard Pain became the 11th such bishop to be received into the Church. “I honestly feel I have arrived home,” says Richard Pain, who, on July 2, became the 11th former Anglican bishop — and the first Anglican bishop of Wales — to be received into the Catholic Church through the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham since its creation in 2011. In July 18 comments to the Register, the former Bishop of Monmouth in Wales discussed his journey to the Catholic Church and explained how, although he has found “a delightful home” in the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, he does not see becoming a Catholic as “a panacea for those disillusioned by Anglicanism” but as “a step in the right direction for me personally.” Born in London in 1956, Pain was ord...
Pope Francis’ Preferential Option for Diplomats…
Ten years into the Francis pontificate and the triumphant return of the nuncios goes from strength to strength. And the nuncios are returning the favor, speaking of the Holy Father in increasingly exalted terms. In his recent consistory announcement, Pope Francis chose to elevate three nuncios to the college of cardinals: Archbishop Christophe Pierre, nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Emil Paul Tscherrig, nuncio to Italy, and Archbishop Agostino Marchetto, already retired. While many cardinals are former nuncios, having gone on to senior curial posts, it is rare that currently serving nuncios are created cardinals. That the Holy Father has done so multiple times is a sign of his preferential option for diplomats. In 2006, when Pope Benedict XVI appointed Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone sec...
21-Year-Old Terminally Ill Spanish Carmelite Dies on Eve of Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel…
Friar Alsono was diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer, when he was 16 years old, but he still felt the call to religious life. A 21-year-old Carmelite friar who had been admitted to a Carmel in Spain “in articulo mortis” (at the point of death) died July 15, the eve of the feast day of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel. “We inform you that this morning in the Carmelite Convent of St. Andrew in Salamanca, Friar Pablo María de la Cruz Alonso Hidalgo has given his life to the Father,” prior provincial Friar Salvador Villota Herrero said in a statement. “‘I am the Resurrection and the Life,’ says the Lord. Those who have died with Christ, our Love and our Hope, will rise with him,” Friar Villota wrote. Friar Alsono was diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer, when he ...
ChatGPT Encounters the Catechism of the Catholic Church…
Irmo, SOUTH CAROLINA — “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.” So said more than 350 technology executives, researchers and academics in a signed statement that warned of the existential threats of Artificial Intelligence. That statement was published in May 2023, and, hot on its heels, came another warning, this time from Twitter boss Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak, a co-founder of Apple. Their joint letter called for a six-month moratorium on the development of advanced AI systems because of the risks still to be determined around AI — though Musk just announced his new AI company, xAI. At the same time, in the U.S., the Biden administration has begun talking of the need to “m...
European Bishops Condemn Drafting of ‘Right to Abortion’ in European Union’s ‘Charter of Fundamental Rights’…
Furthermore, they argued, “there is no recognized right to abortion in European or international law.” Limits on European Union authority, meanwhile, proscribe the governing body from enacting such a measure. “There are no competences at the EU level for regulating abortion,” the bishops wrote, “and it must be seen that fundamental rights cannot establish competences of the Union.” The European Court of Human Rights “has never declared abortion to be a human right protected by the European Convention on Fundamental Rights,” the bishops added, while in contrast the court “has declared the right to life as a fundamental human right and confirmed in its case law that it is [a] legitimate objective for the contracting states of the convention to protect the unborn life.” Abortion is broa...
The Martyrs of Compiègne sang all the way to the guillotine…
On January 26, 1957, the Teatro alla Scala in Milan was the site of a new opera by noted French Catholic composer Francis Poulenc. Dialogues des Carmélites (Dialogues of the Carmelites) was based in part on a screenplay written by the Catholic writer Georges Bernanos and inspired by Gertrud von le Fort’s German novella, Die Letzte am Schafott (” The Last on the Scaffold“). The new work presented a seemingly odd choice for its subject—the execution of sixteen French Carmelite nuns from Compiègne during the darkest days of the French Revolution. The opera was recognized immediately as one of the greatest of the twentieth century and opened to rave reviews both in Italy and France. At the heart of Poulenc’s opera is the harrowing approach of death for the nuns in the Carmelite cloi...
My Word Shall Not Return to Me Empty…
What do you expect to happen as a result of reading and hearing God’s Word? Do you expect to encounter something that will change you? The response of most people is pretty tepid and uninspired. Most don’t really expect much nor have they ever. For them, reading or hearing God’s Word is more of a tedious ritual than a transformative reality. The readings for this Sunday clearly set forth that God’s Word can transform, renew, encourage, and empower us. We ought to begin to begin to expect great things from the faithful and attentive reception of the Word of God. However, Jesus also spells out some obstacles that keep the harvest small or even nonexistent for some. Let’s look at what the Lord teaches in three steps. I. Promise – The first reading shows that the Word of God can utterly transf...
A Vatican without sovereignty? Consider the Russian Orthodox…..
ROME – Back in 2007, the prestigious English news magazine The Economist carried an article on Vatican diplomacy, which concluded with a bit of unsolicited advice: The Vatican, the journal opined, “could renounce its special diplomatic status and call itself what it is – the biggest non-governmental organization in the world.” The Vatican was not amused. The then-Secretary for Relations with States, French Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, responded with a truculent one-sentence riposte: “This is certainly not an acceptable invitation!” He added that the suggestion reflected a worryingly “reductionist vision” of the Holy See’s role in international affairs. It’s roughly the same response the Vatican has given over the years when other calls have popped up to drop its sovereign status, such as...
