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As Bitter Civil War Rages, Cameroon Archbishop Consecrates Contested Territory to the Blessed Virgin Mary, ‘Queen of Peace’…
Listen to this story: YAOUNDÈ, Cameroon – Amid ongoing violence pitting the country’s French-speaking majority against an embittered Anglophone minority, Cameroon’s leading Catholic cleric, Archbishop Andrew Nkea Fuanya, has consecrated the contested Bamenda Episcopal Province to the care of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The province corresponds to the territorial circumscription of the North West and South West regions of Cameroon where a separatist war has been raging for six years. The two English-speaking regions constitute 20 percent of the country’s 27 million people. For decades, people in the two regions have complained of marginalization from the Francophone-dominated administration in Yaoundé. The pent-up frustrations reached a head in 2016 when Anglophone teachers and lawyers took to...
‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ leads the pack in putting the ‘holy’ in holiday specials…
Classic Christmassy fare offers reason-for-the-season themes amid standard secular offerings. It’s that time of year again. The Rankin/Bass lineup of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, The Year Without a Santa Claus and Frosty the Snowman, just to name a few, remain, all these decades later, staples of Christmastime television. Most of their catalog represents the pacification of Christmas into a mash-up of vague bromides of happiness and joy, without ever scratching the surface as to why this season, as opposed to all others, is so joyful and happy. The other element all of these Christmas specials relied on: heavy doses of fantasy. It is not that Rankin/Bass Christmas specials spearheaded the diminution of Christmas as a high holy day, but they certainly joined along in an organized march t...
Celebrating Christmas on Dec. 25 is an ancient Christian practice — and pagan holidays had nothing to do with it…
Every year, various myths about Christmas circulate. Some are innocent misunderstandings of things from the Gospels, while others are downright hostile. One of the most common ideas is that Christmas is based on a pagan holiday, so it’s really “pagan” in origin. This claim is made by some secularists and even by certain Protestants. Before I was Catholic, I knew members of my Protestant congregation who didn’t celebrate Christmas because of its “unbiblical” pagan origins. Let’s see what the historical evidence has to say about some of these myths. Not a matter of faith Non-Christians who delight in saying that Jesus wasn’t born on Dec. 25 sometimes seem to take pleasure in the idea that they’re somehow undermining Christianity, but they’re not. Jesus being born on Dec. 25 is not a matter o...
Rejoice despite your dungeon! It seems absurd to be patient while wicked flourishes, until you remember one thing…..
Imagine that, this Christmas, instead of sparkling lights, gifts, and your favorite food you get locked in a cellar. What should you do? Rejoice! And patiently wait for something better. That’s what the readings say this Third Sunday of Advent, Year A, Gaudete (Rejoice) Sunday. Last week we heard John the Baptist confidently predicting the Messiah’s victory, coming soon. This week he has never been more defeated. Sunday’s Gospel begins: “When John the Baptist heard in prison of the works of Christ, he sent his disciples to Jesus with this question, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?’” It’s important to realize what it means to be in prison in the ancient world. John wasn’t in an airy jail cell with a cot. He was most likely in something like a dungeon, sleeping...
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The media are scapegoating Catholics for the Club Q shooting in Colorado Springs [WSJ paywall]…
My state witnessed an unmitigated tragedy on Nov. 19 when a gunman opened fire in a gay club in Colorado Springs, killing five and wounding 25. Unfortunately, the reaction has thus far fostered more vitriol and division than peace and unity as the press has blamed religious communities, including the Catholic Church, to which the shooter has no apparent connection. “Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric leads to violence,” read the headline of a recent Denver Post report. The piece asserted that “hateful rhetoric directed toward transgender people and the broader LGBTQ community” has been aired from “church pulpits” to “school board debates and libraries.” It cited the Archdiocese of Denver’s school-admission guidance on transgender and same-sex-attracted students to substantiate its claim. The archdiocese’...
It’s been 52 years since Oregon blew up a whale carcass. Here’s a video of the moment ‘the blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds’…
You might have heard of this story in the past- A 45 foot, 8 ton whale washed up on the beach of Florence, Oregon in 1970, and officials weren’t sure what to do about it. According to the legendary news clip (which is embedded below), nobody wanted to cut up the whale, and officials deemed that burying it would just lead to the carcass eventually becoming uncovered. So, what did they do? They loaded a half ton of dynamite under the carcass with the intention that the explosion would disintegrate it. I won’t spoil what happens for those of you that haven’t seen the clip before. Just trust me when I say that you’re going to want to watch what happens: You can skip ahead to the 1:55 mark if you just want to see the explosion and aftermath. The officials from the Oregon Department of Tran...
In Unanimous Decision, 8th Circuit Court Hands Victory to Religious Sisters of Mercy, Blocks Biden Attempt to Force Catholic Hospitals to Perform Sex-Change Procedures …
Enforcement of a federal requirement that health-care and insurance groups perform or pay for gender-transition care would violate the religious rights of several Catholic organizations, the Eighth Circuit affirmed Friday. The Religious Sisters of Mercy and the other groups are entitled to a permanent injunction, the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit said in a unanimous decision. The US Health and Human Services Department and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s interpretation of how the Affordable Care Act’s Section 1557 and Title VII apply to transgender care conflicts with the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the court said. The decision echoes one by the Fifth Circuit in August affirming an order permanently blocking the government from requiring Christian doctors and ...
Why the gonzo ‘Rome Isn’t Real and Catholics Made It All Up’ conspiracy theory keeps going viral…
When Alex Fitzpatrick decided to pursue a career in archaeology, her friends from school asked her, not entirely jokingly, “Oh, like the Ancient Aliens people?” referring to the popular A&E Networks show based on the pseudoscientific premise that extraterrestrials visited Earth thousands of years ago. “No, I’m going to be a real archaeologist,” she recalled responding. Now a researcher and science communicator with a doctorate in archaeology, Fitzpatrick told The Daily Beast that her field has long attracted intrigue from fringe thinkers. “Historically, archaeology has been weaponized for loads of different things, whether it’s eugenics, race science, or nationalistic propaganda, so archaeology is very ripe for this kind of conspiracy thinking,” she said. That’s why Fitzpatrick wasn’t ...
Meet Cora Evans, California’s Catholic mystic (and possible future saint) who was a convert from Mormonism…
MENLO PARK, Calif. — When Catholics gather for Mass on Christmas Day this year, the readings for the liturgy will include one of the most famous and powerful passages from the Gospel of John: “And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.” The passage affirms the coming of the Christ Child as the fulfillment of God’s plan for the salvation of the world. But it does not describe the Virgin Mary’s actual experience delivering her Divine Son in that rough stable in Bethlehem. Catholics hungry for such details must look elsewhere, and one place to consider is The Refugee From Heaven, an “eyewitness account” of the story of Jesus written by Servant of God Cora Evans, a California resident and conve...
More people are demanding to be ‘debaptized’ — here’s what’s wrong with that…
In some places, the demand for debaptisms has been going up, which could be rather surprising. “What’s a debaptism?” you might ask. “Is that even a thing? How can you un-pour water on someone?” The short answer is that No, debaptism isn’t a thing, but that hasn’t stopped people from asking for it. And yes, “debaptism” is the language they use. The Pillar explains: The Catholic Church in Belgium reported on Wednesday a sharp rise in the number of people asking for their names to be removed from baptismal registers. The Church’s latest annual report, published on Nov. 30, said there were 5,237 such requests in 2021, compared to 1,261 in 2020 and 1,800 in 2019. … Nevertheless, a rising movement in Europe promoting ‘debaptism’ has encouraged Catholics to write to Church authorities asking to b...
Time traveling to Bethlehem — some thoughts that ought to fill us with humility and joy…
Like many of you, I have been saying the St. Andrew novena this Advent. “Hail and blessed be the hour and moment In which the Son of God was born Of the most pure Virgin Mary, at midnight, in Bethlehem, in the piercing cold. In that hour vouchsafe, I beseech Thee, O my God, to hear my prayer and grant my desires, through the merits of Our Savior Jesus Christ, and of His blessed Mother. Amen.” The language is hauntingly beautiful. I’ve probably said this prayer hundreds of times. And yet, there is something I missed before: I was time traveling to Bethlehem. Because God is outside of time, He knows, of course, every prayer that will ever be uttered, even unto the end of time. We tend to have the point of view that our prayers, works, and sufferings “work” now, and forward into the futu...
8 Things You Need to Know About the Immaculate Conception…
December 8th marks the feast of the Immaculate Conception. It celebrates an important point of Catholic teaching, and it is a holy day of obligation. Here are 8 things you need to know about the teaching and the way we celebrate it. 1. Who does the Immaculate Conception refer to? There’s a popular idea that it refers to Jesus’ conception by the Virgin Mary. It doesn’t. Instead, it refers to the special way in which the Virgin Mary herself was conceived. This conception was not virginal. (That is, she had a human father as well as a human mother.) But it was special and unique in another way. . . 2. What is the Immaculate Conception? The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains it this way: 490 To become the mother of the Saviour,...
