As the Democrat Party becomes more aggressive in its opposition to the Catholic Church, i.e. HHS mandate, the DNC positioning themselves to remove God from its party platform, the support for same-sex marriage and its unapologetic stand on abortion, the tension and contrast between the party and Catholicism naturally becomes more pronounced. With this, the hands of those in the Catholic media have been forced to talk about such things. In fulfilling their duty to report and comment on the...
I think most Catholics are still coming to grips with how people think and behave in response to what clergy and laity do or fail to do either in the public square or within the confines of the Church. It is becoming more evident that the average person does not make the same distinctions, acknowledge the same exceptions or discern the same nuances that a well-educated and spiritually formed Catholic does. Anticipating how our words and actions will be perceived always must be factored in...
Knowing the content of the Faith is only the beginning of catechesis and evangelization. This is why Our Lady of Good Help said to Adele,
“Gather the children in this wild country and teach them what they should know for salvation … Teach them their catechism, how to sign themselves with the sign of the Cross, and how to approach the sacraments; that is what I wish you to do. Go and fear nothing. I will help you.”
To sign ourselves with the Cross is a testament to people, angels...
Not just a lady and not just a mother, but a queen! Wisconsin has bragging rights it has never capitalized on. A real queen came to visit a young Wisconsin girl named Adele Brice in October of 1859. It was the Blessed Virgin Mary who appeared to her. But she referred to herself – not the queen of any particular nation – but the “Queen of Heaven.” And if she is queen of heaven, she has to be the queen of all of those who reside on the earth. Just as Our Lady of Guadalupe came to...
As the presidential election heats up, Catholics in America are bound to weigh in and give their two cents worth.
A robust engagement in the political arena by Catholics has always been encouraged by the Church. With that encouragement, however, the Catholic Church makes the distinction between endorsements and denunciations; between officially supporting a political party and publicly condemning them.
The former is forbidden for good reason. But it should be noted that the Church...
Just two months before his death in 1900 and 17 years before the Russian Revolution of 1917, Vladimir Soloviev, a convert to Catholicism, wrote the following to a friend; this, during a time when the general sentiment among the people was one of optimism and great expectation:
"Chaos reigns. Sleep is no longer the same. Something is happening. Someone is coming ... You may guess that by this 'Someone', I mean the Antichrist himself. The end of the world is coming and I feel it blowing in my...
There are some people who are anxiously waiting to hear the undiluted version of the Gospel. They just want the straight truth about God no matter how unpopular certain doctrines are or how difficult being a follower of Christ may seem.
They are fully aware of their limitations and as such they suffer no illusions about the false promises this world holds out to them. These God-seekers may be full of wrong ideas about religion and morality but when they are confronted with the truth, they...
“It is an eternal law of history that, in order to pass effectively into deeds, all revolution has need of three fundamental and simultaneously present attributes: a revolutionary situation, a revolutionary doctrine and a revolutionary personnel,” said Catholic historian Henri Daniel-Rops.
In his book, The Church of the Apostles and Martyrs (1948), Daniel-Rops explained how these three attributes of revolution were employed by the early Church.
As far as the situation was concerned,...
Modern day feminism is not so much a war against men as it is against motherhood. After all, motherhood prevents women from being identical to men. Feminism, in a nutshell, is an attempt to take back from men what is believed to be rightfully women’s; namely, the liberty to be childless.
But in the pursuit to make women identical to men, feminism paved the way for the acceptance of same-sex marriage and other social ills. Indeed, marriage is not the only thing this movement has...
One day, as I was listening to the radio, a mother called in to a Catholic talk show with a concern. She said that although her family prays the rosary on a regular basis, her high school daughter was being “lost” to some very important issues such as same-sex marriage. In other words, her daughter had begun to drift to a more secular understanding of marriage. Her little girl just could not bring herself to accept the Church’s teaching on marriage and sexuality. It also happened that...
