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If we have suffered wounds from rampant infidelity to Christ, we won’t resolve them by a different sort of infidelity to him. The division between orthodoxy and ideology among Christians has reached a new level of obstinacy. Both sides fear the other poses an existential threat to their core values. And in a way both are correct. By Noelle Mering There is a recurring movie scene, some version of which might be familiar to most, where a woman, fed up and visibly disgusted, gets in a car and tells the driver to take her anywhere but here. Her aversion to what she is leaving behind is palpable and her destination is irrelevant.  It’s a funny encapsulation of that feeling of having had enough with such intensity that we are consumed by the thing we are rejecting. But in reality, of course...

This is amazing news! 🙌 Pope Francis declared the new liturgical year as the Year of St. Joseph. The year begins Dec. 8, on the 150th anniversary of Pope Bl. Pius IX’s declaration of St. Joseph as patron of the Catholic Church. It is also the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. Pope Francis establishes this year “in which every faithful following [St. Joseph’s] example can daily strengthen their life of faith in the full fulfillment of God’s will.” “All the faithful will thus have the opportunity to commit themselves, with prayers and good works, to obtain with the help of Saint Joseph, head of the celestial Family of Nazareth, comfort and relief from the serious human and social tribulations that today grip the contemporary world,” the decree states. The decree comes after Fr....

Readers may recall that during the 2004 presidential campaign, Sen. John Kerry led the Democratic ticket. As a Catholic, Kerry held certain policy views that conflicted with the moral beliefs of his Church. This led to internal tensions among U.S. bishops about how to handle the matter of Holy Communion for Catholic public officials who publicly and persistently diverge from Catholic teaching on issues like abortion. At the time, Washington’s then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, along with Pittsburgh’s Bishop Donald Wuerl, had very different views from my own regarding how to proceed.   I believed then, and believe now, that publicly denying Communion to public officials is not always wise or the best pastoral course. Doing so in a loud and forceful manner may cause more harm t...

Dec. 8, 2020, marks the 150th anniversary of Blessed Pius IX proclaiming St. Joseph as “Patron of the Universal Church.” The timing was providential, for several reasons. The date also celebrated the 16th anniversary of Pius IX’s proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. With the declaration on that Dec. 8, Pope Pius IX called the day “sacred to the Immaculate Virgin Mother of God and Spouse of the Most Chaste Joseph.” Now, 150 years later, Father Matthew Spencer, provincial superior of the Oblates of St. Joseph, finds the title “perfectly apt and very important to our times.” He makes strong connections between today’s society and the situation during the time of the proclamation. “The time when Pius IX lived was facing a lot of darkness, and the Church was facing a lot of p...

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...