Free Republic

The History of the Advent SeasonFr. William Saunders The liturgical season of Advent marks the time of spiritual preparation by the faithful before Christmas. Advent begins on the Sunday closest to the feast of St. Andrew the Apostle (November 30). It spans four Sundays and four weeks of preparation, although the last week of Advent is usually truncated because of when Christmas falls.The celebration of Advent has evolved in the spiritual life of the Church. The historical origins of Advent are hard to determine with great precision. In its earliest form, beginning in France, Advent was a period of preparation...

Why we shouldn't take our moral cues or understanding of Christianity from Gandhi.

Franciscan Media Image: Adolph Kolping | Den katolske kirke Blessed Adolph Kolping Saint of the Day for December 10 (December 8, 1813 – December 4, 1865)  Blessed Adolph Kolping’s Story The rise of the factory system in 19th-century Germany brought many single men into cities where they faced new challenges to their faith. Father Adolph Kolping began a ministry to them, hoping that they would not be lost to the Catholic faith, as was happening to workers elsewhere in industrialized Europe.Born in the village of Kerpen, Adolph became a shoemaker at an early age because of his family’s economic...

Parishioners furious after bishop transfers priest who helped expose fraudulent pastor STARKVILLE, Mississippi, December 10, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Parishioners fooled by an HIV+ priest who fraudulently claimed he was raising funds to pay for cancer treatment are furious that they’re losing the priest who helped turn him in. Father Rusty Vincent, acting pastor of St. Joseph’s Church in Starkville, Mississippi, is being moved to Vicksburg by Bishop Joseph Kopacz. According to the Mississippi Clarion Ledger, Vincent was one of at least two priests among the four confidential informants who gave information during a Homeland Security investigation into Father Lenin...

LGBT Rosary Endorsed by Fr. Martin Funds Pro-Abortion Groups Funds Women for Women International and Southern Poverty Law Center DETROIT (ChurchMilitant.com) - Father James Martin is trumpeting a pro-gay online store that happens donate to pro-abortion charities. On Twitter Monday, the Jesuit celebrity priest recommended two products by a small online store that sells handmade jewelry. One of the products the recommended is the "Rosary of Modern Sorrows." Each decade has a suggested intention, and the beads are color-coded to symbolize the intentions. Leftist social justice talking points are prominent among the intentions. For example, the second decade is made with blue and...

The Inconvenient Host Dec 10 Posted by Mundabor Francischurch truly is something.  An accidentally dropped Host is recovered and handled in the proper way, after which it appears that… it starts to bleed.  Miracle? We will never know.  A potentially bleeding host is an inconvenience for the Diocese of Buffalo, awakening the possibility, frightening to them, that there might be a God after all, and that He may have targeted Francisbishops like Bishop Malone and his auxiliary, Bishop Grosz.  The linked article states that the priest witnessing the potential miracle, Father Loeb, promptly informed both Malone and Grosz, and that both told...

Four Reasons That the Incarnation was Fitting, According to St. Thomas Aquinas Msgr. Charles Pope • December 9, 2018 • Incarnation of Jesus, Piero di Cosimo (1505)As we approach the Christmas feasts, it is good for us to ponder aspects of the Incarnation. In this post, I would like to consider what St. Thomas Aquinas teaches about its fittingness. God was not radically “required” to do everything as He did. We do well to ponder why the manner of the Lord’s incarnation is “fitting,” why it makes sense.St. Thomas, referencing St. John Damascene, gives four reasons for the fittingness...

Franciscan Media Image: Detail | Saint Juan Diego | photo by Lawrence OP | flickr Saint Juan Diego Saint of the Day for December 9 (1474 – May 30, 1548)  Saint Juan Diego’s Story Thousands of people gathered in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe July 31, 2002, for the canonization of Juan Diego, to whom the Blessed Mother appeared in the 16th century. Pope John Paul II celebrated the ceremony at which the poor Indian peasant became the Church’s first saint indigenous to the Americas.The Holy Father called the new saint “a simple, humble Indian” who accepted...

Bishop Malone Orders Possible Bleeding Host Destroyed Claims 'Christ was no longer present' in Host Anger is rising in western New York, as the embattled Catholics of Buffalo learned that just days ago, their bishops may have denied them an avenue of grace by refusing to investigate a possible eucharistic miracle.   On Friday, Church Militant spoke with one disaffected Catholic of the diocese, Mary Ellen Sanfilippo, about extraordinary events that began unfolding in late November at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church in Springbrook, New York.  Sanfilippo said that a consecrated host was accidentally dropped on the floor of the church during Mass. Retrieving the host,...

THIS IS NOT A VERY ENCOURAGING PICTURE OF AMERICAN CATHOLICISIM The below Study has now been completed. The data was collected from April 1 through November 30, 2018. All told, there are samples from 15 states located all over the USA map. I have someone helping me from a statistical view to help break down the findings in a more analytically approved method. To the layman, the differences are quite striking. In 1960 about 80% of Catholics were going to weekly Mass and now it is 99% for the TLM and 22% for the Novus Ordo. Most of my numbers...

Bishop Bambera protects the scandalous while punishing the orthodox. In 2017, homosexual activists celebrated Bishop Joseph Bambera of Scranton, Pennsylvania, for allowing a heretical priest to speak at a Catholic university in his diocese. “A Catholic college and Pennsylvania bishop are the latest public supporters of Fr. James Martin, SJ, after they refused to concede to right-wing activists who wanted the priest disinvited from a scheduled speaking appearance,” burbled a press release from New Ways Ministry, an LGBT group that seeks to change the Church’s moral teachings. “Conservative activists had targeted Misericordia University for inviting Martin speak at the winter...

I Wanna Be Ready to Put on a Long White Robe – A Homily for the Second Sunday of Advent Msgr. Charles Pope • December 8, 2018 • Preaching of John the Baptist, Baciccio (1690)But who may abide the day of his coming and who shall stand when he appeareth? This is the cry that goes up from the final pages of the Old Testament (Mal 3:2). The Lord himself gives the answer:See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to...

Franciscan Media Image: The Immaculate Conception | Giovanni Battista Tiepolo The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary Saint of the Day for December 8  The Story of the Immaculate Conception of Mary A feast called the Conception of Mary arose in the Eastern Church in the seventh century. It came to the West in the eighth century. In the 11th century it received its present name, the Immaculate Conception. In the 18th century it became a feast of the universal Church. It is now recognized as a solemnity.In 1854, Pius IX solemnly proclaimed: “The most Blessed Virgin Mary,...

Woe Unto Edom By Philip Cottraux When it comes to Bible prophecy, end-times study is the most popular subject among Christians. However, we miss out by not looking more at prophecy that’s already been fulfilled. If you want to see God’s fingerprints in history, it’s worth examining predictions from the Old Testament that were fulfilled within ancient times, in some cases even before the New Testament age. Daniel is the best example. This prophet lived during the reign of king Nebuchadnezzar all the way through the occupation of Babylon by the Medo-Persians, in the time span of 620-538 BC. But...

Fontgombault Sermon for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception: In the School of Mary Sermon of the Right Reverend Dom Jean Pateau Abbot of Our Lady of Fontgombault (Fontgombault, December 8, 2018) Ave Maria, gratia plena.Hail Mary, full of grace. Dear Brothers and Sisters, My dearly beloved Sons, IN THIS SATURDAY, a day traditionally dedicated to Mary, the Church celebrates a great mystery, the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Among all the mysteries of the faith, this one is assuredly one of the most unfathomable. How might we approach it? We shall be helped by the readings of the Mass....

Franciscan Media Image: Statue of Saint Ambrose | Luigi Scorzini | photo by G.dallorto Saint Ambrose Saint of the Day for December 7 (337 – April 4, 397)  Saint Ambrose’s Story One of Ambrose’s biographers observed that at the Last Judgment, people would still be divided between those who admired Ambrose and those who heartily disliked him. He emerges as the man of action who cut a furrow through the lives of his contemporaries. Even royal personages were numbered among those who were to suffer crushing divine punishments for standing in Ambrose’s way.When the Empress Justina attempted to wrest...

The Sweet Life of Cardinal Maradiaga’s Right Hand Tegucigalpa) In late July, at about the same time as  Cardinal Theodore McCarrick had to renounce his cardinalatial dignity, a suffragan Bishop was also lost. The two cases have many parallels and also a similarity refarding how Rome deals with them. In both cases, the problem could not be eliminated, because the will for real purification seems to be lacking. In the context of the McCarrick case, the dossier of former Apostolic Nuncio to the US, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, is putting pressure on Pope Francis. The head of the Church...

Births and Religious Marriages Collapse in Italy. After Two Synods on the Family On the very same day on which the Pontifical Urban University was opening an exhibit (see photo) dedicated to the heroic Ulma family of Poland - “this big family,” Pope Francis said, “shot by Nazi Germans during the second world war for having hidden and given aid to Jews” - in Italy the National Institute of Statistics released the figures on births and marriages in the year 2017.Anything but “big” families, like that of those Polish martyrs or like many in Italy a century ago. The collapse...

A Shocking Loss of Faith: Reflecting on the Closing of So Many Churches Msgr. Charles Pope • December 6, 2018 • Lincoln Congregational Temple in Shaw, credit: NCinDC, FlickrAs I walk or drive through my Capitol Hill neighborhood here in Washington, D.C., I pass by more than twenty churches (all of them Protestant) that have been closed in the past decade. Many of them are grand and prominent buildings. (Click here to see four of them.) Most of the them have been converted to condominiums, likely due to historic preservation norms that seek to retain the exterior appearance of...

African Cardinal: It’s ‘better to die of hunger’ than accept homosexuality December 5, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Cardinal Polycarp Pengo of Tanzania has refused to welcome international aid programs that are linked with the promotion of homosexuality, insisting that “it is better to die of hunger than to receive aid and be compelled to do things that are contrary to God’s desire.” The German bishops' news website Katholisch.de and the Catholic Information Service for Africa have picked up on a November 30 blog entry of the Eastern African Bishops' Conferences' Association AMECA, according to which Cardinal Polycarp Pengo has asked the government...