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When President Trump ticks off his accomplishments since taking office, he frequently mentions his aggressive makeover of a key sector of the federal judiciary — the circuit courts of appeal, where he has appointed 51 judges to lifetime jobs in three years. In few places has the effect been felt more powerfully than in the sprawling 9th Circuit, which covers California and eight other states. Because of Trump’s success in filling vacancies, the San Francisco-based circuit, long dominated by Democratic appointees, has suddenly shifted to the right, with an even more pronounced tilt expected in the years ahead. Trump has now named 10 judges to the 9th Circuit — more than one-third of its active judges — compared with seven appointed by President Obama over eight years. “Trump has effectively...

Most of the saints have written about the central battle of our life: desire. What we desire is crucial because in the end, we get what we want. Either we die wanting what God offers, or we die not wanting it. Either we love what and whom God loves, or we don’t. We tend to think that everyone wants to go to Heaven, but that isn’t true. Heaven is not one’s personally designed paradise; it is the Kingdom of God with all of its values: forgiveness, chastity, love of all (including our enemies), and generosity, among many others. In addition, God is at the center, not us. Many people don’t desire some or all the values of the Kingdom of God and thus die in a state of indifference or opposition to what God is offering. For example, some do not want to love their enemies or live chastely. God wi...

Former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow said that he would rather be known for saving babies than winning Super Bowls during an anti-abortion event. “It really does mean a lot more than winning the Super Bowl,” he said to a crowd at a football-themed banquet hosted by Kansans for Life earlier this month. “One day, when you look back and people are talking about you and they say, ‘Oh my gosh, what are you going to be known for?’ Are you going to say Super Bowl, or we saved a lot of babies?” At one point in the speech, Tebow turned to people affiliated with the Super Bowl-winning Kansas City Chiefs football team who were in the audience and addressed their recent feat. “It’s amazing,” Tebow said. “What an accomplishment! But you know the best part of that accomplishmen...

2 Minute Read “People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy, and I can’t do that as Bruce Wayne. As a man, I’m flesh and blood; I can be ignored, I can be destroyed. But as a symbol … as a symbol I can be incorruptible. I can be everlasting.” – Bruce Wayne, Batman Begins In Batman Begins, after spending several years living the life of a criminal and training with the League of Shadows, Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham City. He realizes he can’t fight the criminals who control the city as himself. He must become something else. A symbol. Google says a symbol is “a thing that represents or stands for something else,” especially something abstract. Symbols are all around us. They are stamped on the things we buy, like clothing and automobiles. They fly as flags over government buil...

There is a memorable character in the Graham Greene novel A Burnt Out Case named Rycker who is a former monk who has left to get married. He is living in mortal sin, but he thinks the dryness of his spiritual life is because he is going through “the dark night of the soul.” So deluded by his own spiritual pride he imagines that he is a great saint who is suffering for Jesus. In fact, Greene brilliantly portrays the man as almost a comic figure for his foolishness, false humility and fake bravado. It is a cautionary tale reminding one of the genuine minefield through quicksand that the spiritual life can become. There are all sorts of ways one can lose the faith, and there’s the old story about the sixteen year old schoolgirl who went to the Mother Superior at her convent school and said, “...

Atstock Productions/Shutterstock It comes down to science and logistics. Unless you have a seat in first or business class, boarding and deplaning an aircraft can be stressful experiences. Because you’re so busy worrying about finding room in the overhead compartment and trying not to knock other passengers on the head with your personal item, you may not notice things like the plane’s interior color scheme. But if you pay attention the next time you board a plane, you’ll likely notice that its seats are blue. Of course, there are exceptions to this—like Virgin Atlantic’s red seats and the green seats on Aer Lingus—but in general, airline seats tend to be blue. So why is that? We spoke to some experts and looked into the science to find out. Here’s how to pick the best airplane seat for ev...

This Sunday’s Readings include some of the best known—and hardest to practice—passages from the Gospel, including Jesus famous command to “turn the other cheek.”  Biblical scholarship can only go so far in elucidating some of Jesus’ challenging commands; beyond that, we need the saints.  1.  Our Readings start off showing the continuity between Jesus’ teachings and the Old Testament, quoting a section from Leviticus (19:1-2, 17-18): The LORD said to Moses,“Speak to the whole Israelite community and tell them:Be holy, for I, the LORD, your God, am holy. “You shall not bear hatred for your brother or sister in your heart.Though you may have to reprove your fellow citizen,do not incur sin because of him.Take no revenge and cherish no grudge against any of your people.You shall ...

@shannon_last, Twitter / Nheyob, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA / ChurchPOP I wish every parish did this! Parents commonly struggle with loud, wiggly children in Mass. But how should parishes respond? Many parents become discouraged due to the lack of support, stares, and the general challenge of managing a child in Mass. But let’s aim to put parents’ minds and hearts at ease! The flyer below recently circulated Twitter. It supports parents’ tireless efforts in bringing children to church. While this Twitter user saw the letter in an Anglican church, the same message can also apply to Catholic Mass-goers. Along with a photo of the letter, Catholic twitter user Shannon Last wrote, “At a nearby church for our kids’ winter concert and saw and love this! Something for Twitter priests to consider?...

If insanity can be defined as not having a complete grip on reality, then I think all of us (except the saints) are at least a little bit crazy some of the time and some of us are crazy a lot a lot of the time, and a few of us are crazy all the time. Remember that it is only the ones who have lost total grip on reality who are confined to a hospital or prison somewhere. Most of the rest of us crazy people are wandering about living lives of quiet desperation not sure if we are really grasping all of reality all the time, and the ones who I worry about the most are the ones who think they are never crazy not even a little bit, ever and have everything sewn up and are think they are totally 100% sane and in control all the time. Those folks give me the creeps. In fact we see all sorts of cra...

“The beloved is said to be in the lover, inasmuch as the beloved is in the lover’s affections… [even] in the absence of the beloved, because of the lover’s longing towards…the good he wills to the beloved with a love of friendship.”“… in the love of friendship, the lover is in the beloved, inasmuch as he reckons what is good or evil to his friend, as being so to himself.”Thomas Aquinas The power of will is astounding in what it can effect in us, and in others, every day. Human life is always about presence. And presence cannot be taken for granted. As Thomas Aquinas notes, absence is opposed to presence. Often we are separated in some way or absent from those that we love. Certain kinds of absence we cannot remove, at least not completely, but rather we need to endure. For instance, if a l...

On the weekend of February 8, 2020, a storm ripped through Ireland. Storm Ciara was one of the worst of its kind for many years. Its winds, snows, and driving rains caused havoc with landslides and flooding. At the same time, a political storm ripped through the Irish political landscape. Sinn Féin up-ended the political consensus and sent shock waves through the political establishment by winning the most first-preference votes in the 2020 general election. The party almost won the most seats, too, and would have done so if it had put up more candidates, as even Sinn Féin was not able to forecast correctly last weekend’s political tempest. In the end, Sinn Féin won 37 seats; before the election it had 22. By all accounts, given the votes the party was piling up in constituency after const...

Hello! Nĭ hăo! Namaste! Hola! Bonjour! There are so many ways we as human beings can express ourselves, as one can see in our list of most-spoken languages. Around the world, there are more than 7,000 regularly spoken vernaculars, but we decided to show off the top 100 most common languages in our linguistic infographic. World languages list varied origins, with some branching off from the same ancient roots and some having a history all their own. We’ve illustrated each one with its language origin tree, so you can trace their roots. Beautiful and ever-evolving, like a forest, the sheer variety of common languages spoken around the globe has been charted here in one world language map. Check out the top 100 most popular languages and their origins. What Is the Most Popular Language in the...