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Happy Feast of the Baptism!  The celebration of the Lord’s baptism brings to a close the Christmas season.  (In the extraordinary form calendar, the Christmas season continues till Feb. 2, the Feast of the Presentation.  Thus, the custom of some of leaving their Christmas tree up until “Ground Hog Day.”)  We are sad to leave behind the beautiful mysteries surrounding the birth of Our Lord on which we have been meditating for the past several weeks, but the tenderness of the childhood of the Lord must give way to the maturity of his manhood and the beginning of his public ministry.  John the Baptist, that greatest of prophets and remarkable saint, has been accompanying us almost from the start of Advent, and makes a critical appearance once again i...

Pope Francis concluded his pre-Christmas address to the Roman Curia by invoking the memory of Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, SJ, who died in September 2012. The Holy Father recalled that, “in his last interview, a few days before his death, [Cardinal Martini] said something that should make us think: ‘The Church is 200 years behind the times. Why is she not shaken up? Are we afraid? Fear, instead of courage. Yet faith is the Church’s foundation. Faith, confidence, courage … Only love conquers weariness.’” The Martini Curve should indeed make us think. I thought about it at the time and ended up with questions rather than answers. What, precisely, was the Church two hundred years behind? A western culture come unglued from the deep truths of the human condition? A culture that celebrates the...

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio – articles – email ) | Jan 10, 2020 Today’s news about the minimal approval for a subsidy hike for the USCCB merits reflection. The Conference of Catholic Bishops in the United States—as in other countries—is funded by assessments on each diocese. These assessments are controlled and imposed in the United States by a two-third majority vote of all of the bishops, which I presume to be typical. Proposed increases do not always pass, but in this case, a three percent increase failed inconclusively at the annual November meeting among those present. In other words, while the two-thirds majority was not quite achieved at that time, it was still thought to be possible if all the absent bishops could cast votes. As it turned out, the more complete vote conduct...

> Italiano> English> Español> Français> All the articles of Settimo Cielo in English * Six days after the killing in Baghdad of Iranian general Qassem Suleimani (in the photo, with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei), there was great anticipation over what Francis would say in the traditional beginning of the year speech to the diplomatic corps. The pope expressed himself in this regard with these words, revisiting what he said before at the Angelus of January 5: “Particularly troubling are the signals coming from the entire region [of the Middle East] following the heightening of tensions between Iran and the United States, which risk above all compromising the gradual process of rebuilding in Iraq, as well as setting the groundwork for a vaster conflict that all of us would want to av...

The hot weather that meant Douglas and other family members survived the initial sinking, however, would now become their enemy. “If it’s pretty warm then you are going to lose about half a litre of fluid a day, through the skin,” says Tipton. The Robertsons had two other immediate sources of water beyond their meagre bottled supplies – rainwater and condensation. With a canopy over the top of the dinghy, sweat and water vapour breathed out by the family would condense on it. “Having a way of collecting that is essentially a way of recycling body fluid.” What anyone hoping to survive must never do, however, is drink seawater or urine. “Urine is about 4% more concentrated than standard body fluid,” says Tipton. “So, you’d need to be diluting it by an enormous amount. You’r...

ROME – From the beginning, two things have been true about the clerical sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church. The first is that the Church failed, and failed miserably, in its duty to protect children and vulnerable adults entrusted to its care. Unearthing those failures, and doing justice for them, is a long-term challenge that’s far from over. The second is that despite those failures, the Catholic Church also carries generations of wisdom about raising children successfully, about parenting and education and formation, but it’s been difficult to get any of that across in a context in which you put the words “children” and “Church” into a sentence. For most people the third word that automatically comes to mind is “abuse.” On Thursday, Pope Francis may just have unveiled a strate...