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The Catholic Church is getting closer to getting her first samurai saint, Justus Ukon Takayama…
A renowned Japanese warrior in his day and a man of great learning and culture, Takayama renounced his power and possessions rather than give up his Christian faith. For his defiance Takayama was exiled from Japan, fleeing with 300 other Christians to the Philippines where he died in 1615. In 2016, Pope Francis approved a decree designating Takayama’s death as a martyrdom and he was officially beatified in February 2017. To be canonized as the Church’s first samurai saint, the Vatican must approve at least one verified miracle attributed to Takayama’s intercession. Samurai, general, ruler … saint? Born in a castle to a noble Japanese Buddhist family in 1552, Takayama was raised to be a warrior and an exemplar of the Japanese spirit and culture. The Takayama were daimyo: m...
I have a confession to make: For 20 years I’ve been a keen fan of the Wiggles. No, I haven’t lost my senses. And yes, I am being serious…..
Why, one wonders, would readers of The Imaginative Conservative be interested in hearing of my enjoyment of music videos designed for very young children? The answer is that the Wiggles offer children (of all ages) entertainment that is both imaginative and conservative. I have a confession to make. For almost twenty years I’ve been a keen fan of the Wiggles. I own dozens of their DVDs, all of which I’ve watched countless times. For those who haven’t heard of the Wiggles, they have been a hugely popular music and dance group, catering to the pre-school and grade school children’s market. Their greatest hits include Get Ready to Wiggle, Rock-a-bye Your Bear and Toot Toot, Chugga Chugga, Big Red Car. No, I haven’t lost my senses. And, yes I am being serious. Perhaps some further explanation ...
We’ve long heard there was “no room at the inn” — but what inn?
The typical re-telling of the Christmas story has Joseph, Mary and the donkey arriving in Bethlehem on a cold, winter night looking for a place to stay. All the hotels have “No Vacancy” signs on display because so many people, like Mary and Joseph, have traveled to Bethlehem to register for the census. A grumpy innkeeper turns them away, but on second thought says if they want they can shelter in the stables. By now Mary is experiencing contractions and desperate for a place where she can give birth, Joseph finds a makeshift shelter in a drafty shed with the donkeys and oxen. He fills a rickety wooden feeding trough with straw to make a crib for the newborn, and when baby Jesus arrives he is wrapped tightly in strips of cloth and laid in the manger bed. Is that how it happened? No, not rea...
The Civil War started and ended on the same person’s property…..
The 1860s brought war to the doorsteps of many Americans, but none as literally as Wilmer McLean, who witnessed the beginning and end of the Civil War from his own home. McLean and his wife, Virginia Mason, moved to Manassas, Virginia, in 1853, shortly after their wedding. A few years later, the couple was surprised when Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard commandeered their property to serve as his headquarters ahead of the first major land battle of the Civil War, the First Battle of Bull Run (although several smaller skirmishes had been fought during the months prior). The home was so close to the action that a cannonball soared through the kitchen and landed in the fireplace. The battle ended on July 21, 1861, in a Confederate victory, and as the fighting continued, the McLeans decid...
The oceans contain 3 million shipwrecks, with $60 billion worth of treasure, and fewer than 1% of the wrecks have been explored…..
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Cardinal Fernández Discusses ‘Fiducia Supplicans’ in Exclusive New Interview, Says Same-Sex Blessing ‘Does Not Validate or Justify Anything’…
Cardinal Fernández: Same-sex blessing ‘does not validate or justify anything’ Skip to content Lee en español. Church leaders have been in the grip of sharp debate this week, after the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith published on Monday Fiducia supplicans, a declaration which offered a framework for clerical blessings of same-sex couples, and others living in relationships outside of marriage. Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, pictured Sept. 30, 2023. © Mazur/cbcew.org.uk. Some bishops’ conferences and dioceses which had already given a green light to such blessings, in Belgium and Germany especially, saw in the document a validation of their approach to the issue, with some promising to defy the document by pub...
Israeli envoy accuses Latin Patriarch of ‘blood libel’ for blaming Gaza parish shooting on IDF sniper…
Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part interview with Israel’s Ambassador to the Holy See, Raphael Schutz. ROME – Days after two women were killed at the Catholic parish in Gaza, with local church authorities pinning blame on IDF forces, Israel’s Vatican ambassador has denied any intentional wrongdoing and has hit back against allegations of inflicting willful harm. On Dec. 16 mother and daughter Nahida and Samar were shot and killed on the grounds of Holy Family parish in Gaza, and the convent belonging to the Missionaries of Charity attached to the parish was also hit, destroying the generator used to power medical equipment aiding the 57 disabled persons in their care. In the wake of the incident, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem issued a fiery statement pinning the bla...
The ambiguity of ‘Fiducia Supplicans’ makes way for multiplying misinterpretations…
In the “declaration” Fiducia Supplicans from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the prefect, Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, has exceeded even his own innovative capacities by endorsing “pastoral blessings” for couples, including those of the same sex, in extramarital conjugal unions. John Bursch in these pages quickly insisted that, “anyone who claims that the Vatican’s document authorizes blessings of same-sex unions has not read it or is intentionally misinterpreting it.” The U.S. bishops’ statement may agree with that position, but spoke at such a level of generality as to be meaningless, except to say that Church teaching on marriage had not changed. The Canadian bishops were much more clear: While explicitly affirming the Church’s traditional understanding of marria...
Archbishop Chaput on ‘Fiducia Supplicans’: ‘Deliberate or Persistent Ambiguity … Is Not of God’…
One of the standards the Church uses to measure the quality of her leaders is a simple line from Scripture: “God is not the author of confusion but of peace” (1 Cor. 14:33). So it was for Paul. So it is now. So it is for local pastors and bishops, including the bishop of Rome. Confusion among the faithful can often be a matter of innocent individuals who hear but fail to understand the Word. Confused teaching, however, is another matter. It’s never excusable. The transmission of Christian truth requires prudence and patience because humans are not machines. But it also demands clarity and consistency. Deliberate or persistent ambiguity—anything that fuels misunderstanding or seems to leave an opening for objectively sinful behavior—is not of God. And it inevitably results in damage to indi...
This Sunday, Advent Warns Us to Avoid These Four Christmas Mistakes…
We tend to make a few basic mistakes about Christ in our lives. This Sunday, by celebrating the Fourth Sunday of Advent on Christmas Eve, we have a great chance to correct them. We see these mistakes in our personal spiritual lives, our attitudes toward politics, our attitude toward our families, and our attitude the Church — especially when we don’t understand or disagree with the Church, as happened this week on a worldwide scale over the matter of blessing couples. Sunday’s Gospel breaks into our lives like an unexpected angel. It feels like Christmas already — and yet at Mass we light yet another purple candle and the Gospel gives us the angel Gabriel on March 25, not the host of angels on Dec. 25. That can help, actually. We can be as surprised by the angel as Mary was when Gabriel in...
Why you age slower on an airplane (and other incredibly strange effects of relativity)…
Though we will never see this from the outside, our doomed traveller will eventually cross the black hole’s event horizon, the boundary beyond which no light – or anything else – can escape. This is the point of no return, and beyond it, the traveller would be forced toward the centre of the black hole. This means their experience of time could be fundamentally changed – and they might even be able to move back and forth in time. Why so? In our ordinary lives, safely outside of a black hole, we can move how we like in the three dimensions of space, but must travel ceaselessly forward in the fourth dimension: time. But within the event horizon of a black hole, things are backwards. Inside, an astronaut would be forced to travel ceaselessly in space – toward the black hole...
The “Fiducia Supplicans” bombshell has the whole Church talking. Here’s what 8 Catholic Answers associates think about it…..
This week, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) published the declaration Fiducia Supplicans (FS), which reflects on the theology of blessing and, for the first time, sanctions clerical blessings of same-sex couples and mixed-sex couples in irregular unions. This has sparked no little controversy, particularly since that same dicastery ruled out, with the pope’s approval, the possibility of any such blessings just two years ago. The implications of the change are complex and far-reaching. In this Catholic Answers Roundtable, we offer perspectives from Catholic Answers staff on this text and what it means. Trent Horn, apologist This document, in principle, is orthodox, because it speaks of sinners seeking “spontaneous” blessings in order to live better lives, which is not a pro...
