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It’s a question journalists hear all the time from mystified readers: “What is ‘news’?” At least, that was a question we used to hear when newspapers tried to appeal to all kinds of people in a community, including those on both sides of common cultural and political divisions. Why are some stories big local, regional and national news stories, while others are not? Years ago, a Charlotte megachurch pastor asked me why it was news when a downtown Episcopal parish replaced a window, but it wasn’t news when his church built a multi-million-dollar facility. Well, I explained, there was controversy about changing that window because it was part of a historic sanctuary. What I didn’t say is that editors tend to think that what happens downtown is, by definition, more important than what happens...

[embedded content] This year has woken us all up to the reality of our mortality, which is not an altogether bad thing. It’s also forced us to do a lot of things to sacrifice for the good of others, which is also not a bad thing. During the first lockdown I spent a lot of time really locked down to protect my parents who were living with us — and however this pans out, I know that when I stand before God I’m not going to regret having done that, because I did it out of love. But as we come out of this pandemic I want to tell you where I stand with the whole face-covering issue — but more importantly, a concern I have about people’s spiritual health… Join Our Telegram Group : Salvation & Prosperity  

By Phil Lawler ( bio – articles – email ) | Apr 12, 2021 A: “I’m sorry that I offended you.” B: “I’m sorry that you felt offended.” You recognize the difference between those statements, don’t you? In statement A, I admit that I caused offense. Statement B only recognizes that you took offense. Statement B leaves open the possibility that you were wrong to take offense, and I was blameless. Statement A is an apology; Statement B is not. With that distinction in mind, take another look at today’s news story about the London police official who spoke at Mass this Sunday at Christ the King church. Detective Superintendent Andy Wadey told the congregation that police had been trying to keep people safe on Good Friday, when they disrupted a solemn liturgical service, strode into the...

[embedded content] “I wrote the book for two reasons. One, because I’ve had a long life of rich blessings, and as I think about the end of my life I thought maybe I had something more to say to the Church — and there’s no better way of doing that than to write a book, because it lasts a long time. That was one of the reasons for it. The other reason is that people were pressuring me…” Join Our Telegram Group : Salvation & Prosperity  

by: Philip J. Martin I declined her phone call the first time, but when she called back I immediately knew. I asked my students to excuse me as I stepped into the hallway and began to walk as quickly as I could down the hallway. Without slowing my pace I listened to my wife explain that we had lost our baby at twenty weeks. It was a routine ultrasound, and were it not for COVID restrictions I would have been at her side. This baby would have been our fifth living child, but became our second miscarried. Later, in the hospital, upon preparing for delivery, we discussed names. Having been caught off guard, we were unprepared, but I had made up my mind. Earlier that morning a chance conversation with a colleague on the topic of baby names, though unknown to my wife at the time, had solidified...

Monsignor Stephen Rossetti Msgr. Stephen J. Rossetti PhD DMin is a priest of the Diocese of Syracuse and a research associate professor at the Catholic University of America. He is a licensed psychologist and has been the Chief Exorcist of the Archdiocese of Washington for over 13 years. He is the author of many books and articles, particularly on priestly formation and spirituality. He currently heads the St. Michael Center for Spiritual Renewal, whose ministry involves exorcisms, deliverance praying and the support and renewal of priestly spirituality. ALL POSTS Join Our Telegram Group : Salvation & Prosperity  

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Increasing vocations to the priesthood, improving the way laypeople and priests work together and ensuring that service, not power, motivates the request for ordination are all possible outcomes of a major symposium being planned by the Vatican in February 2022. “A theological symposium does not claim to offer practical solutions to all the pastoral and missionary problems of the church, but it can help us deepen the foundation of the church’s mission,” said Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops and the chief organizer of the symposium planned for Feb. 17-19, 2022. The symposium, “Toward a Fundamental Theology of the Priesthood,” seeks to encourage an understanding of ministerial priesthood that is rooted in the priesthood of all believers conf...

April 8, 2021 “Unless we stand up today, women’s and girl’s sports and all of our opportunities will fade away. We all know it. It will not take long until there will be an entire male/female team,” said Beth Stelzer, founder of Save Women’s Sports. Stelzer is described as a “housewife, mom, and amateur powerlifter in Minnesota” on Save Women’s Sports, which is “a coalition that seeks to preserve biology-based eligibility standards for participation in female sports.” Follow her @BethStelzer on Twitter. Join Our Telegram Group : Salvation & Prosperity  

We live in times in which mercy, like so many other things, has become a detached concept in people’s minds, separated from the things that really help us to understand it. For indeed, mercy makes sense and is necessary because we are sinners in desperate shape. Yet many today think it unkind and unmerciful to speak of sin as sin. Many think that mercy is a declaration that God doesn’t really care about sin, or that sin is not a relevant concept. On the contrary, mercy means that sin does exist. Thanks be to God for the glory, the beauty, and the gift of His mercy! Without it, we don’t stand a chance. I don’t know about you, but I’m certainly going to need boatloads of grace and mercy to make it. Only through grace and mercy can we be freed from sin and healed from its effects, or ever hop...

ROME – According to German Archbishop Georg Gänswein, the personal secretary of Pope emeritus Benedict XVI, it’s not appropriate to make a “papal ranking,” and acknowledged that the former pope has been misinterpreted not only by foes, but also by friends. “Everyone knows that the figure and work of Benedict XVI have encountered resistance, opposition and rejection in certain environments,” Gänswein said. “And not so much because of the way he communicates, but rather because of the specific contents of his teaching.” “This is an unpleasant experience for all those who follow a clear and unclouded line in proclaiming and defending the Catholic faith,” he continued, differentiating these critics from those who bought the “stereotypes and clichés” about the former pope, who served as prefect...

Today is the Second Sunday of Easter and Divine Mercy Sunday. It’s not a Sunday after Easter but a Sunday of Easter, because the entire Easter Season — the 50 days from Easter to Pentecost — is one unified celebration of the Paschal Mystery in which “the joy of the Resurrection” cannot be contained in a single day or even octave. Easter is 50 days long. Last Sunday’s Gospels left us at the empty tomb — the Gospel for the Easter Vigil related the encounter of Mary Magdalene and her companions with the young man, who shows them the empty tomb. The Gospel for Mass on Easter Day recounted how Sts. Peter and John went to the tomb and found it empty, seeing the burial linens set aside and “seeing and believing.”  Today’s Gospel (John 20:19-31) relates the Apostles’ first encounter with the ...

Suffering is not just a problem to be solved — it is a mystery to be endured in union with God Incarnate, who “suffered death and was buried, and rose again on the third day.” Why must the wicked appear always to prosper, while the innocent are made to suffer, seeing all their efforts come to grief? It is a question at least as old as the Book of Job, which framed the problem in such a way as to place God himself in the dock. Who, in the eyes of a disbelieving world, cannot possibly acquit himself of the charge.  How does the argument run? That if God were all-good, then obviously he would wish to rid the world of evil — and if his powers were equal to his goodness, then he’d surely have done so by now. But the world God made remains a fallen and unjust place, engulfed by the flames o...