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Reader attacked during livestreamed Mass at Philadelphia cathedral…
PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) — Philadelphia Archbishop Nelson J. Perez is speaking out after a churchgoer was attacked during Sunday morning’s Mass. The attack was captured on video during the 11 a.m. Mass at Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter & Paul while the service was streaming online. Archbishop Perez said in a statement that a female lector was punched by someone in the congregation as she left the altar. Video shows the lector leaving the altar as a woman punches her twice. It’s still unclear what sparked the attack. The victim did not require medical attention. Reverend Dennis Gill of Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter & Paul said they immediately contacted authorities. “We immediately followed up on it off-camera and it’s important for us to do that be...
Focus on your household and protect and deepen your family life — for the sake of your neighbors, nation and Church…
Now it is best that there should be a public and proper care for such [moral] matters; but if they are neglected by the community it would seem right for each man to help his children and friends towards virtue, and that they should have the power, or at least the will, to do this.”Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics According to Aristotle—and most other thinkers in the great tradition—society should, especially in its laws and customs, be conducive to citizens living a truly good life. Of course, he knows that often it is not. In those cases, he admonishes us to be extra attentive and intentional about our own households and friendships. This could be perceived as a retreat from society. But it is not. Aristotle, like his great teachers Plato and Socrates, has a profound sense of the other-cent...
Follow these 7 rules and learn how to argue like a Christian…..
We live in an angry, combative age. Our very language of disagreement feeds the unrest. People feel furious, misunderstood, and helpless. What’s a Christian to do? We who have been commanded to love our enemies and to spread the Gospel need to be above the fray. Herewith, some dialogue rules for Catholics. Rule 1: Don’t give up on anyone. A friend recently read The Church and Racism by the Pontifical Commission Justice and Peace and was struck by how the document denounced racism in no uncertain terms, but refused to condemn racists. It would denounce racist acts “even to those who are responsible for them,” he said, but “also seeks to understand how these people could have reached that point. [The Church] would like to help them find a reasonable way out of the impasse in which they find ...
Pope’s Sunday Angelus: ‘Christian Charity is not simple philanthropy’…
Pope Francis waves to pilgrims during his Angelus address on June 25, 2020. (Vatican Media) In his address, the pope reflected on the day’s Gospel reading (Matthew 16:13-20), in which Peter professes his faith in Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God. VATICAN CITY — Christian charity is more than simple philanthropy, Pope Francis said in his Angelus address Sunday. Speaking from a window overlooking St. Peter’s Square Aug. 23, the pope said: “Christian charity is not simple philanthropy but, on the one hand, it is looking at others through the eyes of Jesus Himself and, on the other hand, seeing Jesus in the face of the poor.” In his address, the pope reflected on the day’s Gospel reading (Matthew 16:13-20), in which Peter professes his faith in Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God. ...
Bishop Bransfield’s disgraceful non-apology…
By Phil Lawler ( bio – articles – email ) | Aug 21, 2020 This morning I had planned to write about the disgraceful excuse for an “apology” proffered by a former bishop. But I see that Christopher Altieri, writing in the Catholic Herald has beaten me to the punch: Let’s be clear about two things: Bishop Michael J. Bransfield—improbably emeritus of the Diocese of Wheeling Charleston—did not apologize; nor did he get the “justice with a gesture of mercy” that his successor, Bishop Mark E. Brennan, suggested he might have got. Bishop Bransfield, you will recall, was allowed to resign upon reaching the normal age limit, despite mounting evidence that he had used diocesan funds on personal expenses at a spectacular level and—as if that weren’t enough—established a pattern of sexual h...
Encouragement for teachers from a teacher’s pope, Pope Pius XI…
No matter what ails the nation, turmoil in the inner city, conflagrations, and riots, anxiety over the upcoming election, fears rational and irrational, nonetheless, along with the season of fall there arrives the insuppressible feeling of a new academic year! Almost akin to the instinct that irresistibly directs the feelings and actions of our friends in the animal world, the instinct that the Catholic French entomologist and scientist par excellence, Jean Henri Fabre, so eloquently and compellingly observed and wrote about, Jean Henri Fabre (1823-1915) observing insects under a glass dome so too does an instinct, a yearning for learning arise in teachers and students and parents and just about everyone who ever went to school during early youth and perhaps even through college and gradua...
Detroit deacon’s sacramental abuse causes ripple effect of invalid confirmations, ordinations, absolutions, anointings, Masses…
Denver Newsroom, Aug 22, 2020 / 02:10 pm MT (CNA).- If you think you’re a priest, and you really aren’t, you have a problem. So do a lot of other people. The baptisms you performed are valid baptisms. But the confirmations? Nope. The Masses you celebrated were not valid. Nor the absolutions or anointings. And the marriages? Well…it’s complicated. Some yes, some no. It depends on the paperwork, believe it or not. Father Matthew Hood of the Archdiocese of Detroit learned all this the hard way. He thought he’d been ordained a priest back in 2017. He’d been doing priestly ministry since then. And then this summer, he learned he wasn’t a priest at all. In fact, he learned he wasn’t even baptized. If you want to become a priest, you must first become a deacon. If you want to become ...
21st Sunday of Ordinary Time — Is the pope in the Bible?
In terms of Catholic “preachability,” this Sunday’s Readings are a soft-ball pitch, a long high arc that every homilist ought to be able to knock out of the park. The lectionary readings have been set up for a clear explanation of the nature of the Papacy and its basis in Scripture. The context of the Old Testament reading should be explained. During the lifetime of the prophet Isaiah, the royal steward of the palace, a certain Shebna, was arrogating himself by adopting royal privileges. In particular, he was having a tomb cut for himself in the area reserved for the royal sons of David. Like Denethor in the Return of the King (not an accidental parallel, by the way—Tolkien was a devout Catholic), he was forgetting his place as steward and confusing his role with th...
Biden 2020: ‘Devout’ Catholic? ‘Cuomo’ Catholic? ‘McCarrick’ Catholic? ‘Pope Francis’ Catholic?
<div class="sqs-block video-block sqs-block-video" data-block-json="{"blockAnimation":"none","layout":"caption-hidden","overlay":true,"description":{"html":"Joe Biden: \"May history be able to say that the end of this chapter of American darkness began here tonight.\" Full video here: https://cs.pn/2E3qHlt"},"hSize":null,"floatDir":null,"html":"\n","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnmQr0WfSvo","width":854,"height":480,"providerName":"YouTube","thumbnailUrl":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/pnmQr0WfSvo/hqdefault.jpg","resolvedBy":"youtube"}” da...
Top 10 articles on Christian symbolism found in DC Comics…
DC Comics remains one of the most popular brands of entertainment, with its iconic superheroes, such as Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. Surprisingly, over the years much Christian symbolism has found its way inside DC Comics stories, including many of their latest movies. Whether intentional or not, truth, beauty and goodness is on display and many of our bloggers have reflected on these hidden gems. Below are the top 10 articles on our Voyage Blog that delve into the Christian symbolism inside DC Comics most popular stories. For all the articles we have on DC Comics, click this link. Why comic book artists rely on Catholic symbols to portray religion The Joker Conundrum: Batman, Joker and the Dignity of the Human Person Batman, Ash Wednesday and the power of symbols Living Water: The C...
Words do not make reality, as seen in a commercial…
The situation of the man in this commercial reminds me of modern life in general. We talk a lot about freedom, but compulsiveness, addiction, and lack of self-control are more the case with the average person. We have collectively rejected the “Ten Big Laws of God,” declaring our freedom from being told what to do. But the result has not been that we have fewer laws; rather we now have thousands of “little laws,” imposed upon us through oppressive government, by which we are told what we must do under penalty of law. Many cultural revolutionaries have marched under the banners of freedom and tolerance, but once having gained a foothold they have tyrannically forced their agenda on others by law. The talk of tolerance and respect for differences turned out to be just that—talk. The man in t...
How do we preach the Gospel to a man who sits upon a self-made precipice of doom?
The contemporary man, or rather post-apocalyptic androgyne, loves building walls – not the kind that sets boundaries in which to thrive, but rather divisions for manipulation and oppression. Having once clamored hope, he peddles fear: whether border barriers or fences between angry neighbors, he is all about dungeon partitions. Caged in narratives of constant crisis: his own state media shames, patronizes, intimidates, moralizes, and blames him as would an abusive parent with ever changing but always oppressive norms. Without regard for consistency and coherence, a new ethic divides the communion of hearts that he might otherwise know, and this not for nobility or greatness or tender goodness, but for sterile, hygienic and self-absorbed cellphone monological explorations. After he ex...
