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8 Nicaraguan Priests Expelled by Ortega Regime Celebrate Mass for First Time in 6 Months…
HYATTSVILLE, Md. — The private chapel at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ imposing, multistoried building in the nation’s capital typically draws a stream of USCCB staff and visiting prelates who want to celebrate Mass and are pleased to take advantage of a convenient venue for that purpose. But on Feb. 10, the USCCB chapel was the first stop for eight exiled Nicaraguan priests who had been prevented from celebrating Mass for six months following their imprisonment by the Nicaraguan government. On Feb. 9, the previous day, the priests were taken from their prison cells and brought to Augusto Cesar Sandino International Airport in Managua, where they were transported from their homeland to Washington, D.C., on a flight organized by the U.S. State Department. The priests were p...
Before he became pope, Pius XI conquered the Matterhorn — now, thanks to this drone, you can see what he saw…
[embedded content] The videographer hiked to the Hornli Hut and flew his drone the remaining 4,000ft vertical and 1 mile distance to the summit and down the ridgeline. Services Marketplace – Listings, Bookings & Reviews Entertainment blogs & Forums
At Asbury University in Kentucky, a routine Protestant service last Wednesday has turned into a nonstop ‘spontaneous revival,’ with echoes going back to the Great Awakening in the 1730s …
WILMORE, Ky. (WKYT) – A days-long chapel service at Asbury University in Wilmore is still ongoing. It began on Wednesday, Feb. 8, and, on Monday, Feb. 13, it was still going. Prayers, praise, worship music and testimonies – all of it, people say, a movement they themselves could not have started. The service is being described as a revival, “a movement that only God could orchestrate and keep going.” What began with students has blossomed and grown to include people from all over the country. People from as far away as Oregon have heard about this and are showing up to sing, raise their hands in praise or kneel down to pray. “No big lights or big media or anything like that. It’s proof the Lord is working. Right now. Amazing to see. We just wanted to be a part of that desperate...
Have you become a news junkie? Then stop it. The quality and richness of your life, and your shared life with those you love, is on the line…..
“The industry has to convince its consumers of the significance of today’s News, and it has to make them want to come back tomorrow for more News—more change.” C. John Sommerville, ‘Why the News Makes Us Dumb’ There are numerous reasons we should be concerned about how much ‘news’ we consume. C. John Sommerville offers many in his article from 1991. I want to consider one: the very concept of ‘news’—especially as it has become the product of an industry—tends to focus on bad news. We are often served what arouses fear, shock, or even revulsion. And this becomes our daily diet of ‘what is happening’ in the world. I suggest our response should be more radical than, “Hey, tell us about some of the good stuff!” A problem with news is its focus on the ephemeral. Almost always what is ‘breaking’...
Yes, religion is dangerous — but not for the reasons the FBI claimed…
A recent internal memo issued, and subsequently retracted, by the FBI labeled “radical traditionalist Catholics” as “potential terrorists.” Since the memo’s release, 20 state attorneys general have objected to the memo’s premise that Catholics are an extremist threat. “Anti-Catholic bigotry appears to be festering in the FBI, and the bureau is treating Catholics as potential terrorists because of their beliefs,” the AGs wrote to FBI Director Christopher Wray and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland. Bishop Barry Knestout of the diocese of Richmond, Virginia, denounced the memo. In a statement released Feb. 13, he said, “The leaked document should be troubling and offensive to all communities of faith, as well as all Americans.” Condemning the memo as “a threat to religious liberty,” Bisho...
How did the Catholic Church get here on sex abuse? The same way the rest of “get here” with our sins — by walking downhill…
Temptation works like gravity. When you’re trying to walk uphill, it pulls you downhill. Worse, at the bottom of the hill are places you think you want to go and at the top of the hill are places you don’t want to go — you want the place with the great ribs rather than the gym. It’s easier to go downhill, and you want to go downhill. You can say that societies have their own temptations that work the same way. Huge numbers of people all making small decisions for themselves, usually in their personal best interest, as a group tend to go downhill as a matter of course. That’s why to understand the Church today, we should understand how people in groups work. We have a sad example in our own Church’s sex abuse scandal. The pain of publicly dealing with a predator could be avoided by not deal...
This priest has been the matchmaker for 270 marriages (and counting). None of the couples have divorced. Here’s his secret…..
He was several years ahead of dating apps and helped hundreds of people find true love and a partner to live the faith. This is the story of Fernando Cuevas Raposo, a priest who was the matchmaker for 270 marriages. Father Fernando is an Opus Dei priest and chaplain of several residence halls in Valencia, Spain. He is 67 years old, lives in Ibiza, Spain, and began matchmaking Catholic couples 13 years ago. Thanks to his strategy, more than 500 people found love. This priest helped more than 500 people find the love of their lives Over the past 13 years, Father Fernando applied the same methodology for all the candidates. People hoping to find their Catholic match fill out a form. They include their name, age, birthday, height, studies, place of employment, hobbies, virtues, shortcomin...
Why I had a Mass offered for Janis Joplin…
“It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins.” — 2 Maccabees 12:46 Margaret was getting a new car, so she sold me her spunky old Camry for a decent price. It turned out, however, that it had more problems under the hood than anybody knew. “Struts and brakes all around, rack and pinion, timing belt, oil pump. It’s definitely not worth fixing,” said our mechanic. “It has so many leaks, it’s not even worth changing the oil. Just keep topping it off and drive it until it dies.” Fair enough. Ben used it to scoot around town when he was home over the holidays, and so did Cecilia. In fact, Cece asked if she could take it to college for the spring semester. I agreed — if she was willing to faithfully watch the dipstick. “You were NOT kidding...
The 3 Kinds of Atheists, and How to Respond to Them…
“What books should I give an atheist?” a friend asked me. It wasn’t an easy question for me to answer, because I don’t get atheism. I’m wired for agnosticism, in that “I don’t know” seems to me the best answer to most questions, barring good evidence. Even when I was a secularish young man, I could not see how one could be so dogmatic as to become a believing atheist. The whole challenge of the idea of God is that you couldn’t know for sure what he is up to, because he has the big picture we don’t. God, if he exists, might show himself. But he might not. He might keep himself out of sight for his own mysterious reasons. It seemed ridiculously presumptuous to declare definitively that he didn’t exist. I can’t be sure I’m being fair to the atheist, since our minds are so far apart. But I do ...
Beatification Date Announced for Married Couple and Seven Children Martyred by Nazis; Youngest Child Will Be First Unborn Baby Beatified in Church History…
Father Witold Burda, the postulator for the Ulma family, has said that a Bible was found inside the Ulma house in which the parable of the Good Samaritan had been underlined in a red pen. The beatification date has been announced for Józef and Wiktoria Ulma and their seven children, who were killed by the Nazis for hiding a Jewish family in their home in Poland. The Archdiocese of Przemyska announced Tuesday that the entire Ulma family — including one unborn child — will be beatified on Sept. 10. Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, the prefect of the Vatican Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, will preside over the beatification ceremony in Markowa, the village in southeast Poland where the Ulma family was executed in 1944. Pope Francis recognized the martyrdom of the couple and their children in ...
The Spiritual Anatomy of a Marriage Proposal…
A visible concern resonated from the young lady’s face as she began to express her desire for marriage. Her fiancé equally expressed concern as he listened to what she had to say about their relationship and the fear of engaging in a lifelong and permanent relationship with one another. The conversation shifted toward their relationship with Jesus Christ, which to their honest admission, had not been a focus of their relationship. The idea that Jesus Christ would serve as a pivotal mediator in their relationship had not been discussed. With their first marriage preparation session about to end, I asked the future groom if he had any post-thoughts about the night he proposed to his future bride. He appeared surprised and curious about the question as his fiancé also expressed a sense of cur...
Super Bowl Ads: 5 Things to Know About the ‘He Gets Us’ Jesus Campaign…
A nondenominational group wishes to share the message of Christ’s love to whole new audiences. Super Bowl viewers this Sunday may be surprised to see two ads that don’t seem to have anything to do with Christianity until the end, when the words “Jesus” and “He Gets Us” flash across the screen. The He Gets Us ads running during the Super Bowl, the most-watched U.S. event of the year, were created by a nondenominational group to share the message of Christ’s love to whole new audiences. Here are 5 things to know about the HeGetsUs.com ad campaign: The two Super Bowl ads created by the campaign will focus on “the behavior Jesus modeled in relationship and conflict,” He Gets Us spokesman Jason Vanderground told CNA. “Instead of responding to divisiveness in anger or avoiding conflict alt...
