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Respect Life Radio: John Martignoni on how to help Catholics learn and defend their faith…
October 20, 2021 “First and foremost, my target are the Catholics because Catholics don’t know their faith as well as they should, on average,” said John Martignoni, founder of Bible Christian Society, longtime former host of EWTN Radio’s Open Line and author of Blue Collar Apologetics (Sophia Institute Press), as well as director of the Office of New Evangelization and Stewardship for the Diocese of Birmingham, Ala. “I use the hook of, ‘Hey, I can teach you how to answer those questions that you’ve been getting from your non-Catholic brother-in-law or your neighbors or your coworkers.'” For more, see a recent EWTN Bookmark show with Martignoni and his Bible Christian Society Facebook page. Join Our Telegram Group : Salvation & Prosperity...
Why is this so hard to understand?
Why Is This So Hard to Understand? October 20, 2021 Fr. John Riccardo Try to imagine the following scenario, if you can. The parish is gathered on Sunday morning for Mass and, after the proclamation of the Gospel, I begin my homily with these words: “Brothers and sisters, it has come to my attention that Fr. X (an associate pastor at our parish) has been sexually abusing some of the children in the school.” Immediately, faces flash everything from shock to anger to everything in between. But it gets worse. I then go on to say, “Now, let me make this abundantly clear. I am personally opposed to this kind of behavior, but I don’t know how I can impose my own views on Fr. X.” This is simply ludicrous, isn’t it? Can anyone possibly imagine me, or any other priest, publicl...
Missouri Protestant church wins settlement over COVID-19 restrictions on worship…
The church argued that the rules went against both the First Amendment and the Missouri Constitution. KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A Kansas City-area Baptist megachurch has reached a $150,000 settlement with the county over coronavirus restrictions, with the church claiming that the county treated them more harshly than secular institutions when it came to COVID protocols. Abundant Life Baptist Church, which has locations in Lee’s Summit and Blue Springs, Missouri, filed a lawsuit against Jackson County over a year ago, arguing, as places of worship in other states have, that the county’s coronavirus restrictions treated places of worship more harshly than secular institutions such as retail stores. Under the terms of the settlement, Jackson County vowed that in exchange for the church d...
From Critical Race and Gender Theory Curricula to Abortion Access for Teens, Parental Rights Battles Mount Nationwide…
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Closing an acrimonious, five-year debate on the adoption of an Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation this month that mandated the teaching of the hotly debated program as a requirement for high-school graduation by 2026. “Ethnic studies courses enable students to learn their own stories — and those of their classmates,” said Newsom, in a signing statement. Yet while the initiative garnered strong support from the Democrat-majority state Legislature, the curriculum battle isn’t over and has merely shifted to local school districts that must craft their own course materials addressing the historic resistance movements and achievements of Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans and Asian Americans. The controversy over the ethnic studi...
Christians pray, fast for release of 17 missionaries kidnapped in Haiti…
Those kidnapped “are from Amish, Mennonite, and other Anabaptist communities in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Oregon, and Ontario, Canada,” and are continuing “to support each other with prayers and encouragement during this difficult time,” the group said. The hostages range in age from 8 months to 48 years. Of the 17 hostages, all but one are American citizens; the other is Canadian. “Pray for government leaders and authorities—as they relate to the case and work toward the release of the hostages,” Christian Aid Ministries said. “We appreciate the ongoing work and assistance of those knowledgeable and experienced in dealing with kidnapping cases.” On Thursday, the leader of the 400 Mawozo gang released a video saying that he would kill the hostages if his dem...
20 surprising facts about the assassination attempt on John Paul II…
The day he was shot was also the anniversary of a day that would become one of the most important in the 20th century — the beginning of the apparitions of Our Lady at Fatima. On May 13, 1981, Pope John Paul II was on the brink of death. I wasn’t alive, but I’ve seen news reports from the time, and it’s horrifying to think what the faithful and the world were going through. Like I said, I wasn’t born yet, and I’ve discovered some incredible facts about the assassination attempt in St. Peter’s Square while reading Fatima Mysteries, a beautiful book by Ignatius Press. Here’s some facts I’ve not read anywhere else. 1. Twenty thousand people were there. The scene that day must have been traumatic for so many people, but especially those close to the incident — 20,000 people! 2. The shooter was...
The unlikely link between the Islamist murder of a Catholic British MP and the conversion of an ex-Anglican bishop…
Connecting the dots between the killing of Catholic parliamentarian Sir David Amess and the reception of ex-Anglican bishop Michael Nazir-Ali into the Catholic Church. “While it is often said that good can come out of someone’s death, it is difficult to see what good can come from this senseless murder.” So wrote Sir David Amess, the British Member of Parliament stabbed to death while meeting his constituents on Oct. 15. He was not writing about himself, of course, but of the murder of another MP, Jo Cox, in 2016. But the words apply all the more to Sir David who, by universal and multiparty consensus, was the best of the British parliamentary tradition. A Conservative MP since 1983, Sir David was a staunch Catholic about whom many said, “his Catholicism meant everything to him.” His...
Seminary allegations, St. John Paul II, and a failure to communicate…
Happy Friday friends, And especially a happy feast of St. John Paul II. Like a lot of Catholics of my age, JPII remains a central reference point for my life in the Church. He was the pope who exhorted us to be saints at World Youth Day, he was the author of encyclicals which shaped our first intellectual encounters with the faith, and his was the name said at Mass for the first two decades of our lives. For me, he was someone who simply inspired confidence. Listening to him speak, reading his writing, it was hard not to feel, well, loved by the pope — like he was personally invested in my salvation, and that if he said I could be a saint, I should aspire to nothing less. Statue of St. John Paul II, Washington, D.C. Credit: Lawrence OP When you’re the pope for more than 2...
You can tell a lot about a person by the way they use their fingers to count…
How would you count to 10 on your fingers? Do you start with the thumb or the index finger? Left hand or right? Dactylonomy (counting on your hands) seems like such a simple and natural thing to do that you might assume it’s nearly the same everywhere. After all, it’s no coincidence that we have 10 digits on our hands and the most common number systems have 10 digits. This way of counting (called a base 10 system) probably arose because we have 10 fingers. If we had evolved with 8 or 12 fingers, our number system might be quite different. And the word “digit” in the sense of numerals comes from the Latin digitus, meaning finger or toe – because of the way we use them to count. But it turns out that people around the world have vastly different techniques for ke...
Vatican census shows Catholicism growing everywhere but Europe…
VATICAN CITY (RNS) — A Vatican census released ahead of World Mission Day reveals growing numbers of Catholics in what Pope Francis often refers to as “the global peripheries,” even as the number of believers continues to diminish in Europe. The number of Catholics in the world grew by more than 15 million from 2018 to 2019, according to a census by the Vatican news agency Fides published on Thursday (Oct. 21). “The increase applies to all continents, except Europe,” which saw the number of Catholic faithful decrease by almost 300,000, the survey found. The data was released ahead of the 95th World Mission Day, which will be celebrated on Sunday in dioceses around the globe following the one-year hiatus caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the census, conducted annually among Cath...
Hard spiritual truths that will set us free…
In today’s post I would like to ponder some hard spiritual truths, but ones that will set us free. In calling them “hard truths”, I mean that they are not the usual cozy bromides that many seek. They speak bluntly about the more irksome and difficult realities we face. If we come to accept them, though, they have a strange way of bringing serenity by getting us to focus us on the right things rather than spending our time chasing after false dreams. A person can spend his whole life being resentful that life isn’t perfect, forgetting all the while that we are all in exile. We are making a difficult journey to a life in which, one day, every sorrow and difficultly will be removed and death and sorrow will be no more—but not now. There is a kind of unexpected serenity in living in the world ...
