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His last written words were: ‘I have given all for you, my Lord.’ Jesuit Father Walter Ciszek (1904-84) was an American priest who traveled to the Soviet Union as a missionary, was arrested and imprisoned for 15 years in solitary confinement and labor camps, and spent another eight years there with restricted freedom. He experienced the harsh conditions of Siberia and the brutality of prison life, including the constant threat of starvation. He was returned to the United States in 1963 as part of a prisoner exchange and wrote two books about his experiences, With God in Russia and He Leadeth Me. With God in Russia was the book of his experiences he wrote in 1964 at the request of his superiors; He Leadeth Me was his book of spiritual insights from his time in Russia that he wrote and relea...

Most of us would like to think that if we found ourselves at the center of a potentially world-ending crisis, we would turn into a real-life action hero: Keep a cool head, do what was necessary, save a bunch of lives, and be home in time for dinner.  One of the things such a hero might find themselves doing? Disarming a nuclear bomb. Say a ragtag group of evildoers led by an eccentric but charismatic figure (picture: Nicolas Cage) got a hold of the most powerful weapon ever developed by humankind … which is set to go off … and you’re the only one there to stop it. You’ve got a few basic tools, an expert on the phone, and a sweaty forehead. How’s it likely to pan out? For fairly obvious reasons, a lot of the specific ins and outs of how nuclear weapons work is classified. I...

Pope makes ‘minor’ changes to canonical supreme court Skip to content Pope Francis issued a new motu proprio, Munus tribunalis, promulgated on Feb. 28 but published on March 2, amending the language of eight articles of the proper law of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura.  Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome. Public domain. The changes were characterized as “minor” by the Vatican’s official media portal, with most of the changes related to terminology and language, bringing the court’s proper law into harmony with the pope’s 2021 constitution on the Roman curia Praedicate Evangelium.  But the changes also highlight some of the important curial and canonical developments of recent years — and continue ongoing debate about the nature and exercise of governing authority ...

There are few aspects of life where you can fail seven out of 10 times and still be considered great at what you do. With a 30 percent score on the MCAT, you wouldn’t get into medical school. You’d likely lose money if you only won 30 percent of your Super Bowl bets. But in baseball, if you get a hit 30 percent of the time you step up to the plate, you might be headed to the Hall of Fame—and that’s because it’s perhaps the most difficult thing to do in any major sport. Ted Williams, for instance, one of the greatest hitters to ever play Major League Baseball, finished his 19-year career playing for the Boston Red Sox with a .344 batting average. That’s a 34 percent success rate, tied for seventh best in the sport’s history. But even he famously said that hitting a baseball is the hardest t...

Lent’s back nine, the laity, and Crazy Skip to content Pillar subscribers can listen to this Pillar Post here: The Pillar TL;DR- The Tuesday Pillar Post Hey everybody, JD Flynn here, and you’re reading The Tuesday Pillar Post. I’ve got great news for you: Today is something of a super Tuesday for us, because tomorrow is the mid-point of Lent.  For some of you, this probably means the midway point of some disciplined prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, which may well be already bearing fruit in your lives. But if you’re like me, the mid-point of Lent is a good chance to begin again — to remember that early enthusiasm I had for the Lenten disciplines which have fallen gradually off my radar — and even to ask the Lord for help renewing my commitment to them.  Anyone who lives the...

Most of us rely on our smartphones many times throughout the day—for everything from banking to photo taking to chatting with friends—and that means losing a phone or having it stolen can be hugely stressful and annoying. It’s also worrying, considering so much of our lives is managed through these handsets. We spoke to Steve Wilson, a Senior Director at security experts Norton, for some advice about what to do if you lose your phone. Norton develops a range of software for protecting user security and privacy, including Norton 360 Deluxe. “Our smartphones and computers are more than just devices—they are often lifelines to our personal and professional lives, holding everything from sensitive emails to personal pictures,” says Wilson. “The moment you realise your phone, tablet or computer...

Peter Martin, the director of communications for the diocese, told CNA that Barron “joined the seminarians from the Immaculate Heart of Mary Seminary (Winona) for an hour of prayer as a part of the 40 Days for Life in Rochester.” “This has been an annual event in our diocese and the bishop and seminarians join each year to pray for an end to abortion,” Martin said. The participants “are there to pray for all those involved, in particular, for the lives of the unborn and their mothers.” Barron, who founded the Catholic media company Word on Fire prior to his elevation to the bishopric, has regularly used his expansive platform to advocate for the unborn and speak against abortion. The bishop recently engaged with California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna in a wide-ranging discussion that touched...

A version of this exhortation was presented during Masses at St. Matthew Cathedral, South Bend, Indiana, the weekend of February 10-11, 2024.  _______________________ When Nancy and I and our newborn son became parishioners here at St. Matt’s nearly 30 years ago, we automatically signed up for collection envelopes. Automatically. As in: No question. For us, to be parishioners – actually, to be Catholic – necessarily included financially supporting the church, our spiritual home.  That’s not some quirk of the Beckers – or some holdover from my youthful upbringing as a Protestant Christian. It’s in fact the teaching of the Church. As a convert, I discovered that fact through a little red booklet from Liguori Publications, Handbook for Today’s Catholic – the 1978 ver...

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio – articles – email ) | Feb 29, 2024 Sometimes the news can appear to be just plain strange. Sometimes the point becomes clear on further reflection. Sometimes it doesn’t. And sometimes it is clear that the figures in the story are missing the point altogether. Just for fun, I’ve decided to compile ten examples of the strangeness of some very recent Catholic news: Church mediates truce in Mexican drug-cartel conflict: There is no reason Church leaders shouldn’t attempt to protect public safety in cases like this, if they can. But at first glance the story appears bizarre. That the Church may be able to reduce murderous violence without being able to reduce the sins that underlie it is not really inconceivable in a topsy-turvy world. But the whole situatio...

Days after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel—killing over 1200 men, women and children, beheading babies, murdering the elderly, killing more Jews in any day since the Holocaust—hundreds of students at our nation’s most prestigious universities protested … Israel. A thousand students at Harvard condemned their university for complicity in genocide, holding “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for the violence” and stating that the attack was “both morally just and politically necessary” and “the natural and justified response to decades of oppression and dehumanization.” Protests also took place at Yale, Columbia, and many other universities. Assault, vandalism, harassment, and hostile rallies—including 500 such incidents on college campuses—skyrocketed against … Jews. Controve...

Your body is a Temple and Jesus wants you to drive the greed and self-love out of it this Lent. There is a lot going on beneath the surface in the cleansing of the Temple story we hear on the Third Sunday of Lent (Year B). Ultimately, though, it is meant to drive home the point that Lent demands a violent cleansing of your soul in order to aggressively restore it to its true purpose. In the passage we hear from the Gospel of John, Jesus goes to the Temple and he doesn’t like what he sees. “Jesus went up to Jerusalem,” begins Sunday’s Gospel. “He found in the temple area those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves, as well as the money changers seated there.” He reacts with angry violence. “He made a whip out of cords and drove them all out of the temple area.” Sheep and oxen bolt and coins clatt...