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On one level, this week’s think piece is not about religion. Then again, it is a personal and transparent piece from The Seattle Times — written by GetReligion contributor Julia Duin, a veteran religion-beat professional. It’s a piece about what it’s like to travel with one or more children with “hidden disabilities.” She is talking about PTSD, autism, anxiety disorders and other intense conditions that, to be blunt, may not immediately be obvious to people at nearby restaurant tables, in lines at theater parks or jammed into adjacent airplane seats. OK, what about people of various ages who are settled in for peace and quiet, or even transcendence, in a nearby pew during Mass? So read Duin’s article and picture that scene in your mind. Look for the situations that religious leaders of all...

I am reposting this article since we are discussing it on EWTN’s Morning Glory radio show. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday we commemorate today, is best known as a civil rights leader who worked to end racial injustice, but he had other things to say as he preached each Sunday, first in his own assembly and later as he spoke around the country. Among his recorded sermons is one in which Dr. King addressed the problem of unbelief, of materialism and atheism. His reflections are well worth pondering today because the problem is even more widespread now than it was when he made these remarks in 1957. A complete transcript of the sermon is available here: The Man Who Was a Fool. In this sermon, Dr. King commented on Jesus’ parable of the wealthy man who had a huge harvest and, inst...

4 Seminarians walking (Catholic Church of England and Wales CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) The purpose of discernment is action. The purpose of discerning if you are called to the priesthood is to either be set on the path of ordination or set on the path to marriage. Someone may ask whether all discernment should come before entering the Seminary. Recently, a story about those who had discerned out of the seminary lead some people I know to wonder if such discernment should be done before the seminary. I thought I should give a brief explainer about why discernment should not finish before the seminary. I’ve not worked extensively in a seminary but base this on my own experience and experiences shared by those I’ve known. My goal is not to explain every point about seminary discernment but to point out...

Kevin Wells pleads for the recovering of a Roman Catholic priesthood steeped in the muscular Christianity of bygone days. Invoking especially the memories of his murdered monsignor-uncle, he makes a fervent layman’s appeal for priests to abandon the niceness and complacency that have contributed to the recent woes of the church. The Priests We Need to Save the Church, by Kevin Wells (229 pages, Sophia Institute Press, 2019). Kevin Wells’ monograph was started as a celebration of the priestly ministry of his uncle. Monsignor Thomas Wells was a devout and effectual priest whose ministry was cut short by his untimely murder. While compiling notes and tributes to write about the hallmarks of this pious priest, Mr. Wells unexpectedly found himself writing in the aftermath of the 2018-19 scandal...

Every year since 1908, beginning on January 18 and ending on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul on January 25, the Graymoor Institute and the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement have been promoting a focused week of prayer and reflection, asking God to bring unity to the body of Christ. The idea of an octave of prayer for unity among Christians was the brainchild of Servant of God Fr. Paul Wattson, who conceived of it while he was still an Anglican. In a 2016 lecture at St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity in Minnesota, Msgr. Jeffrey Steenson gave a thorough and fascinating presentation on the man behind the International Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which you can watch here: [embedded content]

The notion that women must support abortion has “become part of the cultural air that we breathe,” author Carrie Gress told Our Sunday Visitor. While this was not always the case, abortion has been labeled as the solution for women’s problems — namely the “problems” of children and chastity. In an interview with Our Sunday Visitor, Gress, who received her doctorate in philosophy from The Catholic University of America, explains how we live in a culture that is anti-virgin and anti-mother — ultimately anti-Mary, the Virgin Mother herself. Sharing insights from her most recent book, “The Anti-Mary Exposed” (TAN Books, $27.95), Gress gives hope that our Blessed Mother is the antidote to this culture of death. Our Sunday Visitor: This year’s theme for the March for Life is “Life Empowers: Pro-...

South Bend, Ind., Jan 18, 2020 / 04:00 am (CNA).- Raffaella Stroik loved beauty. A devout Catholic and a talented professional ballerina, Raffaella felt she experienced the beatific vision when she was performing for others. She hoped her art could be transformative in their lives. But Raffaella’s short life ended in tragedy. On Nov. 14, 2018, her body was found in a lake some 140 miles from St. Louis, where she was a member of the city’s ballet. She was 23 years old. Authorities ruled that there seemed to have been neither foul play nor self-harm. “…the only thing that seems to have happened, could have happened, is some kind of an accident,” Duncan Stroik, Raffaella’s father, told WNDU News in South Bend, Indiana in November. “We don’t know what could h...

Franz Jägerstätter’s life and death raise one question above all: why did he do it? Why did this Austrian farmer refuse to fight in Hitler’s army, and why did he stick doggedly to that decision even when told he would face the death penalty for doing so? Jägerstätter’s martyrdom – he was declared Blessed by Pope Benedict XVI – has always resonated with religious believers, and Terrence Malick’s new biopic, A Hidden Life, has been most warmly received by Jägerstätter’s fellow Christians. For the Eastern Orthodox writer Rod Dreher, it is “the best evocation of the Gospel ever committed to film”. It is, as Malick’s films tend to be, inventively told and achingly beautiful. But the big question goes unanswered. That’s not to demean August Diehl’s performance. His Franz is, no doubt, what Malic...

BEIJING — The number of babies born in China last year fell to a nearly six-decade low, exacerbating a looming demographic crisis that is set to reshape the world’s most populous nation and threaten its economic vitality. About 14.6 million babies were born in China in 2019, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. That was a nearly 4 percent fall from the previous year, and the lowest official number of births in China since 1961, the last year of a widespread famine in which millions of people starved to death. That year, only 11.8 million babies were born. Births in China have now fallen for three years in a row. They had risen slightly in 2016, a year after the government ended its one-child policy and allowed couples to have two children, a shift that officials hoped would driv...

By Tom Hoopes, January 16, 2020 There is no greater joy in this world than encountering Jesus. There is no greater peace than being in communion with God. No work is as satisfying as work that you know pleases him. These are three rock-bottom truths that the world, the flesh and the devil continually lie to us about (and that we lie to ourselves about) but the Church brings them into sharp focus in the readings for the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A. A real encounter with Jesus floods you with happiness. Many people practice the recognition of God with various prayers. A morning offering may pray, “let me see you, Lord, in the events of every day.” At the elevation of the host, many pray, “My Lord and my God” (and “My Jesus, mercy,” at the elevation of the chalice). These pray...

Grocery shopping and Christmas-themed aerobics classes are not part of a typical high school curriculum. But at Marian High School, these are important lessons for particular students. Marian has five additions this year, and principal Mark Kirzeder hopes to see a similar increase next school year. Not new classes, but special new students — students with mild intellectual disabilities. They are the first of the school’s Bernadette Scholars, and they are making their mark at Marian. The Bernadette Scholars Program is separate from individualized education/resource room programs, and the 2019-20 school year marks its pilot year at the Mishawaka high school. Affectionately called “Bernies,” Bernadette Scholars are on non-diploma, certificate-of-completion tracks. They spend the bulk of the d...

2 minutes Summary Our job as parents is to stop pigeonholing genius to classrooms and books, embrace the countless forms of genius, and see the brilliance in our children. Aesop might refer to what follows as “sour grapes,” but I’m willing to run that risk. Here it goes. In America, there is a radical overemphasis on the relationship between academic grades and overall intelligence. Test scores—typically, the largest component of final grades—receive a hyper-focus. In many circles, whether you are deemed “smart” depends on how well you do on tests. Here’s where the part of the sour grape comes in: I never did well on tests in college. In fact, I don’t remember ever receiving an “A” on an exam. Not once. If final grades depended on quizzes and tests alone, I would have failed out of college...