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On Friday, President Donald Trump to become first president in history to attend March for Life…
Washington D.C., Jan 22, 2020 / 04:53 pm (CNA).- U.S. President Donald Trump will address the national March for Life in person on Friday, making him the first president in the event’s 47-year history to do so, organizers announced. “See you on Friday…Big Crowd!” the president said Wednesday in a retweet of a video from last year’s march, posted by the national March for Life account. Jeanne Mancini, president of March for Life, said in a statement that the organizers of the Washington, D.C., event are “deeply honored” to welcome Trump to the march. “He will be the first president in history to attend and we are so excited for him to experience in person how passionate our marchers are about life and protecting the unborn,” she said. She also praised the efforts Trump and his adminis...
Supreme Court split over Montana case on public funding for religious schools…
People lined up Tuesday outside the Supreme Court ahead of oral arguments in the Montana case. Photo: lawrence hurley/Reuters By Jess Bravin Updated Jan. 22, 2020 4:32 pm ET WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court appeared ready Wednesday to reinstate a Montana program providing state aid to religious schools, after arguments in which conservative justices cited anti-Catholic sentiment in the 19th century that led many states to bar public support for sectarian education. The program at issue was relatively small; it provided up to a $150 tax credit to residents who contributed a like amount to organizations providing scholarships to private schools, whether secular or religious. The Montana Supreme Court struck down the entire program, finding it violated the state constitution’s ban on public suppo...
Pope appoints Cleveland’s Bishop Nelson Perez to succeed Archbishop Chaput in Philadelphia…
Philadelphia, Pa., Jan 23, 2020 / 04:25 am (CNA).- Bishop Nelson Perez of Cleveland was appointed Archbishop of Philadelphia Thursday, returning to the local Church of his priestly ordination. He succeeds Archbishop Charles Chaput, 75, who had led the Philadelphia archdiocese since 2011. Ordained a priest of the Capuchin Franciscans in 1970, Archbishop Chaput served as Bishop of Rapid City and Archbishop of Denver before his transfer to Philadelphia. “Bishop Perez is a man who already knows and loves the Church in Philadelphia, and is already known and loved by our priests and people. I cannot think of a better successor to lead this Archdiocese,” Chaput wrote online following the announcement. Bishop Perez, 58, was born in Miami to Cuban parents, and grew up in New Jersey. He ...
Parish in Rome opens doors to the poor, 24 hours a day…
ROME – Despite the fact that Rome has some 900 Catholic churches, finding one that is open for prayer at any given moment can be quite challenging. Some keep office hours, but most open only around Mass time. Yet as of last December, there is a church that is open 24/7, with Eucharistic adoration and a team of 8 to 10 volunteers who, together with the parish priest, make sure there is always someone available to welcome those who need a helping hand. “This project is not only for poor people,” said Roberta, a volunteer at the Church of the Stigmata of St. Francis, during an open house on Monday to show a recently inaugurated dorm for some 30 homeless people. “If you come here at night one time, you’ll see that there’s always someone here, praying,” she told Crux. “And they are not homeless...
A pilgrimage to the world’s oldest house church — which is in Connecticut…..
My family spent Christmas back in my hometown, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Some of us took a pilgrimage of sorts to visit ancient and medieval art in New York City and Yale University’s Art Gallery in New Haven. Connecticut may seem an odd location, but a team from Yale helped to excavate the Roman colony of Dura-Europos in Syria in the 1930s. They discovered the oldest extant church in the world, including frescoes that date back to around the 230s AD. At the Dura-Europos exhibit at Yale We know the location of other ancient house churches, but many of them gave way for larger construction after the legalization of the Church. Dura-Europos, however, was abandoned in 256 during a siege from the Persians. The house church, near a tower along the city walls, was back filled to bolster the fort...
HBO’s ‘The New Pope’ serves up plenty of sin, but no substance…
While Sorrentino and HBO have a right to make any series they want, the church and Catholics also have the right to condemn it. They also don’t have to watch, which is something many will ultimately opt to do. That Sorrentino is a great director is not in question. What is, regarding this series, is taste. Sorrentino appears to be battling his own inner demons — he all but said that in interviews ahead of the series’ premiere — when it comes to his faith. “My interest was in breaking the taboos in the portrayal of priests and nuns, in the representation of the clergy in general, because they are always painted as saints or scoundrels,” Sorrentino said in a recent interview. “I wanted to paint them for that they are — human beings, strange human beings who have to relate with God, thi...
This is a war we’re in. Get used to it…..
During my recent bout with the flu I had the chance to re-read Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honor trilogy. One of the criticisms of the books is that they are uneven, dull at times, confusing and disjointed. On re-reading I realize much of that was intentional. Waugh was showing the reality of war. I’ve also been reading more church history–both George Weigel’s’ recent book The Irony of Modern Catholic History and Tom Holland’s Dominion-How the Christian Revolution Changed the World. Both books on church history are a reminder of one of my main punching points–that crisis in the church is what church history is all about. From the beginning the church has been engaged in a knock down, knuckle to chin battle. That’s the default setting. From the start and in every a...
The dangerous and beautiful storms of the Midwest…
Eric Meola would be the first to admit that shooting dramatic storms in the Great Plains isn’t always glamorous. Horizontal rain hits your face like ice. Baseball-size hail pounds down from the sky. Winds of up to 50 miles per hour threaten to knock you and your tripod to the ground. “You really get a sense of just how unbelievably powerful these storms are,” says Meola, a photographer from upstate New York who has driven 900 miles across the country in a single day to capture them on camera. “The reality is fairly grim.” The images, though, are stunning. Meola’s decades-long fascination with midwestern superstorms culminated with a photo book, Fierce Beauty: Storms of the Great Plains, published in November. It showcases 105 photographs that Meola took betwe...
Pro-life group counters Planned Parenthood, announces $52 million war chest for 2020 election…
Washington D.C., Jan 22, 2020 / 07:05 am (CNA).- A pro-life political group has announced its plans to support President Donald Trump and pro-life senatorial candidates in their 2020 election campaigns. The announcement comes after Planned Parenthood announced its own plans to spend an unprecedented amount during the 2020 elections. The Susan B. Anthony List and Women Speak Out PAC, its partner super PAC, said Friday it has plans to spend $52 million in the 2020 election cycle. Mallory Quigley, national spokeswoman for the group, told CNA the amount is “the largest budget for any election cycle that we’ve ever had.” News of the pro-life group’s campaign war chest followed an announcement last week that Planned Parenthood Votes will spend $45 million in a “We Decide 2020” ca...
We must stop running from reality. But how to begin?
By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio – articles – email ) | Jan 17, 2020 When my children were young and played games together, my younger daughter sometimes infuriated the others when, after she had lost a game, she would declare: “In my mind, I won.” She wasn’t completely serious, but she certainly frustrated the winners. But wait: We live in a society in which a great many people do the same thing and believe it. This frustrates me, too. I am referring not to games but to life. We live in an era in which people seem to think that reality is whatever the make up in their own heads, and that they are really winning when they make extraordinarily bad choices. Willfulness—even if it often arises from a herd mentality—is rampant. It seems that we may believe whatever we want (at least as long...
Planned Parenthood to invest $45 million in 2020 elections…
As abortion-supporters brace for another year of restrictions and court battles, Planned Parenthood is throwing its weight into the 2020 elections. This week, Planned Parenthood launched the biggest electoral effort in its history: a $45 million spend to support presidential, congressional and state-level candidates in the 2020 elections who support abortion rights. Jenny Lawson, the Planned Parenthood Votes Executive Director, said, “The stakes have never been higher.” “[The Trump Administration} has managed to undo so much over the last three years,” Lawson said in an exclusive interview with CBS News. “The fact that this summer the Supreme Court might gut Roe v. Wade is an indicator of their intention and they’ve never been so bold.” The Battle ...
Make sure the voice of Jesus is the first one you seek in the morning, and that His word informs your every decision…
Sometimes I decide what I’m going to write about. And sometimes God does. I just came back from the FOCUS conference in Phoenix. It was awesome, incidentally, and I highly recommend that you all look into it for next year. Yes, it is sponsored by the Fellowship of Catholic University Students. And yes, there are a lot of college kids there. But there is also a marvelous adult track, with wonderful speakers and fabulous activities. But I digress. The very first speaker was Father Mike Schmitz, and the theme of his talk was that Jesus is not “optional.” It was a wonderful talk and gave me so much spiritual food for thought. I wrote “Jesus is not optional” in my little column ideas list. Then I came home and went to a movie. The movie, A Hidden Life, was about Franz Jagerstatter, the Au...
