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ROME – After a year of no travel due to the coronavirus pandemic, Pope Francis will make a three-day visit to Iraq in March – a trip he had hoped to take last year to support the nation’s small Christian minority, but which was deemed impossible due to security concerns and COVID-19. In a Dec. 7 statement, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said that the pope, at the invitation of the Republic of Iraq and the local Catholic Church, will make an Apostolic Journey to the country from March 5-8, 2021, with several stops along the way. According to the Vatican, Francis will visit the Iraqi capital of Baghdad; the plain of Ur, traditionally held to be the birthplace of the biblical figure of Abraham; the city of Erbil, where most Christians fled during the ISIS takeover of the Nineveh Plain in 2014...

Here are a few practical tips on how to overcome temptation. When we feel an overwhelming temptation to commit a particular sin, it can be difficult to resist. We may know it is bad, but our passions drive us to do it anyway. St. Francis de Sales, in his book Introduction to the Devout Life, explains what you should do when you are initially tempted. So soon as you feel yourself anywise tempted, do as our little children when they see a wolf or a bear in the mountains. Forthwith they run to the protection of their father or mother, or at least cry out for help.Do you fly in like manner to God, claiming His compassion and succor,—it is the remedy taught us by our Lord Himself: “Pray that ye enter not into temptation.” However, if the temptation persists there is another remedy. If, nev...

The second reading for Sunday Mass speaks to us of “the fire next time” and reminds us of the need to be ready for the coming of the Lord. In this homily I will focus on that reading, in which St. Peter reminds us of the passing that will come for us all one day. Because Advent is a time to prepare, through prayer and repentance, we do well to heed this sacred teaching and warning. It is echoed by St. John the Baptist, of whom the Gospel today says, A voice of one crying out in the desert: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.” John the Baptist appeared in the desert proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins (Mk 1:2-3). Note four aspects of the second reading: I. The PATIENCE that is PURPOSEFUL – The text says, Do not ignore this one fact, beloved, th...

103 years ago, tragedy brought out the very best in these North American neighbors. On December 6, 1917, as local children busily prepared for Christmas and the city’s people went about their day, two ships collided in the Halifax harbor in Nova Scotia, Canada. At first, people were unaware of the danger that was about to come. However, as the Canadian Forces shared on their Twitter account, this historic event would affect the lives of thousands and create a bond between Nova Scotians and Bostonians for over a century. Most people outside of Nova Scotia have not heard the story of the Halifax Explosion, but one of the beautiful things to rise from the ashes of that tragedy was the way  communities and neighbors — right across national borders — came together. One of the ships carried...

By Phil Lawler ( bio – articles – email ) | Dec 04, 2020 Set aside, for a moment, the practical and medical questions about any Covid vaccine. (Will it work? Will it be safe? Will it have serious side effects?) Let me return to a question that I raised in in April and again in May: Should Catholics accept a vaccine that has been developed using fetal tissue from abortions? Since Catholic moralists have expressed contradictory answers to this question, let me try to offer a bit of clarity. First, not all vaccines are alike. Some pharmaceutical companies have used fetal tissues in the production of their vaccines. Other companies have used the fetal tissues to develop and test their products, but those tissue lines are not included in the actual vaccines. Still other vaccines hav...

“I have to thank Ed Meese for saving my life,” that’s what former porn star Traci Lords said about the Reagan administration’s efforts to regulate the porn industry. Nicholas Kristof’s piece in the New York Times this morning is an agonizing read. First of all: Pornhub attracts 3.5 billion visits a month, more than Netflix, Yahoo or Amazon. Pornhub rakes in money from almost three billion ad impressions a day. One ranking lists Pornhub as the 10th-most-visited website in the world. I knew it was bad, but I didn’t realize just how bad. I thought everyone used Amazon at this point. It’s just that we talk about that more freely. Though I have to say, my very first trip after months in lockdown, I was standing in Penn Station, with such dark scenes surroundin...

The “death” of the devil in people’s minds is accelerating the “death” of God in de-Christianized Western societies. For this reason, Dominican Father François-Marie Dermine decided 20 years ago to recatechize Catholic people through different initiatives.  A Canadian by birth, Father Dermine has been an exorcist for several Italian dioceses since 1994. In 2003, he contributed to the creation of the “Course on Exorcism and Prayer of Liberation,” a weeklong interdisciplinary workshop on exorcism. This annual event, held in Rome, gathers priests, women religious and lay experts from around the world to focus on Satanic activity and the formal ministry that the Church established to respond to such activity.  Father Dermine is president of the Italian Catholic association GRIS (Soci...

Several “The Lord of the Rings” actors, including Sir Ian McKellen, John Rhys-Davies and Martin Freeman, are joining forces in an effort to help purchase the former home of famed author J.R.R. Tolkien. The goal, organized by Project Northmoor, is to buy Tolkien’s old house and turn it into a literary center dedicated to his works. British author Julia Golding has secured a three-month window to purchase the house from its current owners before it will be put on the open market, the group said in a news release. The fundraising target for the project is £4.5 million, or $6 million, which the project said it will use to “promote Tolkien’s work, allow a diverse range of fantasy writers and artists to come together to write, learn and create, and preserve the fasc...

“It is a time where a lot of people are asking hard questions about the papacy. At the same time, people are asking ordinary Catholics, ‘Well, why are you still Catholic?’ I think it’s a really good question to ask. And I think it’s a question that [as] Catholics, we should… “It is a time where a lot of people are asking hard questions about the papacy. At the same time, people are asking ordinary Catholics, ‘Well, why are you still Catholic?’ I think it’s a really good question to ask. And I think it’s a question that [as] Catholics, we should embrace that opportunity to really share: why are we Catholic and what does the papacy have to do with that?” said Joe Heschmeyer, author of the recent book, “Pope Peter: ...

The Following are “Five Advent Reflections”  I have prepared. If these interest you I have prepared them also in PDF format which you can get by clicking here: The Season of Advent 1. Advent is Witnessed by Creation  – Autumn and early winter are times of great seasonal change. The leaves turn brilliant colors then fade and fall. The shadows lengthen as the days grow shorter and colder. The warmth of summer and vacations seem distant memories and we are reminded once again that the things of this world last but a moment and pass away. Even so, we look forward as well. Christmas can be a wonderful time of year. Likewise, the winter ahead has delights. Few can deny the mesmerizing beauty of falling snow and the child-like excitement a winter storm can cause. Advent draws us spiritu...

Suppose an anthropologist were asked, apart from the sound and fury of current politics, what were the signs of a dying culture, or a culture committing suicide? What might he respond, as following from human nature and from the terms of the question itself? What might he notice in our own? Such a culture would be more preoccupied with death than with life; and this preoccupation might be manifest in a variety of ways. It would promote a right to die on your own terms, but no right to live, rather only a permission to live, provided that you possess certain qualities that people acknowledge as useful or as ushering you into the fold; and what these qualities are and how they shall be recognized will shift with political exigencies and sentiments. Life is no gift, b...

by Carrie Gress A couple of years ago, my husband and I had dinner with a wonderful bishop at a trendy restaurant in Washington, D.C. It was the first time I recall actually sensing just how out of favor bishops are in an urban setting. Between then-Cardinal McCarrick in the news and the seeming triumph of the LGTB movement, my husband and I confided to each other afterward that it was the first time we could have imagined a restaurant doing something unsavory to our food because of our guest in black with a pectoral cross. There was a time, not too long ago, when it was a big deal for a cardinal or bishop to appear on TV, bringing the moral authority of the Church into our living rooms, like Archbishop Fulton Sheen. Those days are now gone, even though internet streaming makes it pos...