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Cardinal Hollerich’s less than ‘Honest to God’ moment…
Pope Francis accepts a book from Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich during an audience at the Vatican June 11, 2021. (CNS photo/Vatican Media) Raised in a Fundamentalist Protestant home and Bible chapel, I held to more than a few incorrect (and even wildly false) notions about the Catholic Church. Most of these involved Mary and the papacy. Catholics worship Mary! Catholics believe Mary is the fourth Person of the Trinity! Catholics worship the pope! We believed, based in part on the magisterial writings of Presbyterian theologian Lorraine Boettner (1901-1990), the equally magisterial comics of Jack Chick (1924-2016), and the rightly interpreted King James translation of the Bible, that the Catholic Church was a massive and mysterious pseudo-Christian organization built on the false teachings ...
Pittsburgh Law and Anthropology Professor Causes Uproar in Denying Ability to Tell Gender from Human Bones…
There is an interesting controversy that has erupted at the University of Pittsburgh after Dr. Gabby Yearwood, who teaches in both the anthropology and law schools, was asked by swimmer Riley Gaines if he could tell the gender of persons from skeletal remains. He denied that it was possible despite the widely accepted ability to do so in his field. The answer may reflect the ongoing push in anthropology, discussed in an earlier blog column, to put an end to gender identifications. Some insist that anthropologists need to know how an ancient human may have chosen to identify themselves. Yearwood reportedly was asked the question by Gaines, who achieved national notoriety in opposing the inclusion of transgender athletes like the University of Pennsylvania’s Lia Thomas in women competit...
Texas Federal Judge Issues Ruling in Crucial Abortion Pill Case…
‘The FDA never had the authority to approve these hazardous drugs and remove important safeguards…’ A federal judge in Texas issued a much anticipated ruling Friday that, if it holds up in court, could take the abortion drug mifepristone off pharmacy shelves due to safety concerns and in doing so, prevent over half of the abortions that take place in the country. U.S. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s preliminary ruling found that the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) did not follow proper testing and safety protocols when it approved the abortion drug in 2000. The judge allowed the FDA seven days to appeal his decision, which means the drug will still be available for the time being. Almost immediately after Kacmaryk issued his decision, a judge in Washington state issued a ruling that the ...
Christ is risen! He is truly risen! So what side are you going to be on?
Happy Easter! Today is the most important day in the Church year because it is the most important day in history. Today, human history received its final and definitive direction. Good will be victorious. Evil and its consequence — death — will be defeated. There’s no more question about that. The only question is: which side are you on? This day is an acid test of faith: Do you believe that a real human being, who was also really God, really rose in his human flesh this day from a grave? And do you believe that, one day, you will be called to do the same? Or is it just a nice story, a sentimental tradition, a wish projection? And that once you’re dead, at worst you’re dead, at best, who knows? If the former, happy to wish a fellow Christian “Christus resurrexit!” If the latter, then why a...
Why did Our Lord rise on the third day? Why not the second, fourth or 40th day?
Easter SundayBy Fr. Victor Feltes Why did Jesus rise from the dead on Easter? Christ’s resurrection was foretold, for instance in the 16th Psalm: “You will not abandon my soul to the netherworld, nor will you suffer your faithful one to undergo corruption.” Furthermore, Jesus rose again because without the Resurrection our Redemption would be incomplete. As St. Paul told the Romans, “[Our Lord] was handed over for our transgressions, and was raised for our justification.” In the words of the Church’s Catechism: “The Paschal mystery has two aspects: by his death, Christ liberates us from sin; by his Resurrection, he opens for us the way to a new life.” Jesus Christ came to redeem and save not only our souls but also our bodies and the rest of creation as well. Easter changes everything. Ins...
Christ Is Risen! Pope’s Easter ‘Urbi Et Orbi’: ‘May We Experience a Foretaste of the Beauty of Heaven!’…
Following the Easter Sunday Mass, Pope Francis delivers his Easter message and blessing “To the City and the World”, underscoring the joyous hope that Christ’s resurrection brings and encouraging Christians to rediscover the joy of serving God, working for peace, and helping our brothers and sisters in a world marked by so much suffering. By Thaddeus Jones Pope Francis gave his traditional “Urbi et Orbi” Easter message on Sunday, appearing from the central loggia of Saint Peter’s Basilica overlooking the Square below where he had just presided over the Easter morning Mass. The Mass and “Urbi et Urbi” (from the Latin: ‘To the city and the world’) message and blessing went out live on broadcasts around the world. Over one hundred th...
Holy Land Christians reenact the ‘funeral of Christ’…
People are pictured during a procession on the Via Dolorosa, “The Way of Sorrow,” the path believed to be taken by Jesus to his crucifixion, in Jerusalem’s Old City in 2017. CNS photo/Debbie Hill Jesus suffered and died 2,000 years ago, but Catholics today can still attend a reenactment of his funeral and burial — in the Holy Land. “The funeral procession of Jesus Christ is a unique liturgical procession that only takes place at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on Good Friday,” Dominican Father Jordan Schmidt told Our Sunday Visitor. “It is perhaps the most dramatic liturgical event that I have ever witnessed.” The ancient custom of reenacting Christ’s funeral dates back to the 13th century, when the Franciscans first arrived in the Holy Land, according to the Terra Sancta Mus...
The iconic ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ has been likened to ‘a religious experience.’ Why do some of its successors capture this better than others?
Orson Scott Card has written that the world of science fiction is like the stable in C.S. Lewis’s The Last Battle: much larger on the inside than the outside. Had Card wanted a science-fiction metaphor, the obvious point of reference would have been the Tardis in Doctor Who—but perhaps the appeal to Lewis’s religiously inflected fantasy is more evocative here, hinting at the vastness of the worlds of ideas and meaning embraced in science-fiction storytelling. In cinema history, the one science-fiction work that, so to speak, flung open the stable doors for audiences and later filmmakers was Stanley Kubrick’s towering 1968 classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, released 55 years ago this week. Science fiction in movies is essentially as old as cinema itself, and 1950s movies like The Day the Earth ...
Pope at Easter Vigil: ‘The Risen Lord Invites Us to Revive Our Faith and Rise to New Life’…
At the Vigil Mass in the Holy Night of Easter in St. Peter’s Basilica, Pope Francis says Christ’s resurrection invites us to experience the immense surprise and joy of the women who witnessed the empty tomb, adding that we are called to relive the grace of our first encounter with the Lord to grow in faith and hope. By Thaddeus Jones Pope Francis presided over the traditional Easter Vigil in the Holy Night of Easter in a full Saint Peter’s Basilica on Saturday evening. The celebration started inside at the entrance of the Basilica with the evocative rite of the blessing of fire followed by the candlelight procession while Lumen Christi was sung and the Basilica lights came on in all their brilliance. The celebration included the baptism and confirmation of eight catechume...
The Dog of Appetite…
“There’s no part of man more like a dog than brazen Belly, crying to be remembered…” Homer, The Odyssey As the Lenten season or what is also called the Great Fast comes to its culmination, I wonder whether my fasting has yielded the hoped-for fruits. Here I reflect simply from a natural or philosophical perspective on disciplining my bodily appetites. A central feature of Aristotle’s view of human nature is that the bodily (or ‘sense’) appetite can be formed by repeated good actions. While this appetite will always remain beyond the full control of reason and will, nevertheless it can be rendered increasingly amenable to the direction of our rational powers. The cardinal virtue of temperance, for instance, consists in a habitual disposition of the sense appetite to move in accord with righ...
Wikipedia had the wrong Vatican City flag for years. Now incorrect flags are everywhere…..
“Cultural communities in general have turned to flags in a stunning way,” Becker commented, citing in part a proliferation of cheaply made, mass-produced flags. And, anecdotally, there seems to be an ever-increasing interest in the Vatican flag as a way for Catholics to claim an identity, whether by flying a flag at home, waving it at a papal event, or by putting one in their social media profile picture. The Vatican flag. Bohumil Petrik/CNA Perhaps surprisingly, the Vatican flag is less than 100 years old, as is Vatican City itself. For more than a millennium before 1870, the pope ruled over the Papal States, large regions mainly within present-day Italy. After the Vatican lost control of the Papal States, it found itself a tiny island surrounded by an acrimonious Italy. It took nea...
Holy Saturday 2023: ‘He Descended Into Hell’…
Note: This article originally appeared at the Register on March 29, 2013. Everytime we say the creed, we note that Jesus “descended into hell.” Holy Saturday is the day that commemorates this event. What happened on this day, and how do we celebrate it? Here are 12 things you need to know. 1. What happened on the first Holy Saturday? Here on earth, Jesus’ disciples mourned his death and, since it was a sabbath day, they rested. Luke notes that the women returned home “and prepared spices and ointments. On the sabbath they rested according to the commandment” (Luke 23:56). At the tomb, the guards that had been stationed there kept watch over the place to make sure that the disciples did not steal Jesus’ body. Meanwhile . . . 2. What happened to Jesus whil...
