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When we think of Saint Joseph we normally think of a grey - bearded old man as depicted in many medieval paintings. The Gospels say very little about Saint Joseph, only that he was a "Just Man". Joseph himself never speaks in the Gospel stories and so our knowledge of Saint Joseph is somewhat shrouded in silence. Yet, it is this silence that gives the greatest witness to the type of man that Saint Joseph was. He was a humble carpenter who didn't draw attention to himself but fulfilled his daily duties to the best of his ability with tremendous...

Counsel the DoubtfulDoubt can be the emotional equivalent of anything from a brief spring rain to a Galveston-destroying hurricane. People can feel doubt over whether to place two bucks on the Mariners to win (don’t) or about whether or not the God in whom they have believed all their life is a sham, a fraud, and a delusion. Doubt can be a healthy exercise in which we learn to put aside our tribal prejudices and think critically, or it can be a soul-shattering crisis that radically remakes or destroys us.The difficult thing about living the spiritual work of mercy...

Featured Term selected at random:UBIQUITY The presence of a being in all places at once. Omnipresence of God. All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

Concerns about Cremation: Some Very Strange Practices Are Emerging By: Msgr. Charles PopeSome years ago, the Church gave wider permission for cremation and also lifted traditional restrictions on having cremated remains present in the church for funeral Masses. All of this is pastorally understandable. Very few if any people these days choose cremation for the reasons it had traditionally been forbidden, namely as a denial of the resurrection of the body. Generally the reasons chosen are economic, due to the increasingly high cost of traditional burial and the difficulty, especially in urban areas, of finding room for large cemeteries. The basic norms from the church...

1/14/2015 8:04:57 AM Three Words Catholics Do Not Understand  It Is Finished - Three Words Catholics Do Not Understand The perfect, all-sufficient sacrifice of Christ that satisfied divine justice for all believers was accomplished 2000 years ago. Jesus cried out in victory - "It is finished." The work of salvation is done. The eternal debt for sin has been paid in full. No more offerings, no more sacrifices, no more priests! The Lord Jesus willingly died for man’s sins to pay the debt that we could never pay. “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree,...

In an incredible and shameless act of defiance to Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, Pope Francis preached a blasphemous sermon this morning at Mass. Here is the Italian text, from Radio Vaticana:

The Bible and Catholic tradition have various images for describing the essence of the church. At the center of Pope Francis’s understanding of the church, corresponding to the approach of the Argentine theology of the people, stands the image of the church as the people of God (Evangelii gaudium, 111–34). It is firmly anchored in the biblical, patristic, and liturgical tradition. The Second Vatican Council renewed that understanding and presented the church as the messianic people of God (Lumen gentium, 9–12). Before long, however reservations grew loud among European theologians.

“So Much Better Now” Are you Sure? by Jim Elliff     The pain has been excruciating, the hours and weeks arduous. The cost to the spouse and family who love her has been gladly expended, but jobs and daily responsibilities will necessarily decrease the hours for the daily vigil now. Added to it all of this is the treatment cost itself, sending up in smoke years of saving.“Mother is so ill,” they say to concerned friends. “We know it will be such a relief for her when she dies.”What? So much better when she dies? Not if she...

Featured Term selected at random:LATIN CHURCH The vast portion of the Catholic Church, which uses the Latin liturgies and has its own distinctive canon law. Synonymous with the Latin Rite are the Western Church and Western patriarchate. The expression Latin Church is ambiguous, however. It is sometimes used in an uncomplimentary way by the Eastern Orthodox to label all Catholics "Latins" because of their allegiance to the Pope. It is also used by some Anglicans to identify what they consider one third of the whole Catholic Church, along with the Anglican and Orthodox. It is finally used, at times, by...

What is Sloth? It is More Subtle and Devilish Than Mere Laziness By: Msgr. Charles PopeOne of the more misunderstood of the cardinal sins is sloth. This is because most see it merely as laziness. But there is more to sloth than that. Let’s take a moment and consider some aspects of the cardinal sin we call sloth.The Greek word we translate as sloth is ἀκηδία akedia (a = absence + kedos = care), meaning indifference or negligence. St. Thomas speaks of sloth as sorrow for spiritual good. By it, we shun spiritual good as too toilsome (cf ST...

The senior pastor and elders of City Church, the largest evangelical church in San Francisco will no longer require members to abstain from homosexual practice, so long as the homosexual activity occurs in the context of marriage. According to a letter written by senior pastor Fred Harrell on behalf of the Board of Elders, “We will no longer discriminate based on sexual orientation and demand lifelong celibacy as a precondition for joining. For all members, regardless of sexual orientation, we will continue to expect chastity in singleness until marriage.” “Our pastoral practice of demanding life-long ‘celibacy,' by which we meant...

Justin Fivecoat, a parishioner at St. John The Apostle Catholic Church in Terrell, is one of the honorees who will be recognized Feb. 7 during a Mass for the annual Bishop’s Awards for Service to the Church. (DON JOHNSON/Special Contributor) TERRELL — A local diner, some thoughtful questions and a priest willing to listen led Justin Fivecoat to take a leap of faith three years ago that set him on a path to become an impactful parishioner at St. John the Apostle Catholic Church.“One thing I’ve always sensed about Justin is that I see him as a man after God’s...

I was recently given a fascinating little book called American History You Never Learned; it contains much information showing that the discovery of the New World, and the founding of our nation, occurred within a direct context of divine guidance and blessing. In particular, Our Lady (who, under the title of the Immaculate Conception, is still today our national patroness) played an important role in the establishment of the United States. For instance: The earliest explorers of North America—sent by the Catholic king of Norway in the 14th century—left behind a carving in modern-day Minnesota in what became known as...

"If you read [the gospel] accounts, you see that over and over again they’re saying, "We saw this. This isn't a legend. We saw this." You're going to have to come to the conclusion that a group of first-century Jews who had been trained all their lives that human beings are not God came up with an incredibly elaborate, very conscious, and very deliberate system of lies, wrote it up, and sent it out there. Then they went out into that world and they died for those lies and lived lives of such attractive power that the whole Roman world...

Featured Term selected at random:ZION One of the hills on which Jerusalem stood. Used as a fortress, it was captured by David and renamed the Citadel of David (II Samuel 5:7). It assumed a sacred character when he brought the Ark to Zion. Gradually the name spread until it was applied to all of Jerusalem (II Kings 19:21; Psalms 125, 126). Indeed, increasingly it was used to mean the Jewish faith (Isaiah 33:20); hence, the term Zionism for the modern movement to make Palestine the Jewish homeland. Also spelled Sion. All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's...

I intend to offer, over the next several weeks, a four part series on Calvin's response to Rome's doctrine of Scripture as discovered in the fourth session of the Council of Trent. It's my impression that very few Protestants today -- even the confessing kind -- have informed views on what Rome actually says about the most important theological issues of every age (namely, how we know anything about God and his ways, and how we sinners can be reconciled to the God whom we have offended by our sins). The first and foremost purpose of this brief series, then,...

Do You Fear the Right Thing? Let’s See … A Meditation on the Story of Chicken Little By: Msgr. Charles PopeFear is a very complex passion. On the one hand, there are things that we ought rightly to fear such as grave physical and spiritual dangers. The fear of being near the edge of a cliff might well save our life. The fear of serious sin and the punishment we might experience or the offense to God (who loves us) is appropriate and holy. Sadly, more people lack this holy fear rooted in the possible loss of what is most precious to us:...

The 'Gospel of Judas' 4/6/2006 Interview With Father Thomas Williams, Theology Dean ROME, APRIL 6, 2006 (Zenit) - The National Geographic Society has announced its intentions to publish an English translation of an ancient text called "The Gospel of Judas" later this month. The 31-page manuscript, written in Coptic, purportedly surfaced in Geneva in 1983 and has only been translated now. We asked Legionary Father Thomas D. Williams, dean of theology at the Regina Apostolorum university in Rome, to comment on the relevance of the discovery. Q: What is the "Gospel of Judas"? Father Williams: Though the manuscript still must...

There is extraordinary disagreement among Christians about eschatology, that is, Bible prophecy. One concept among many about eschatology is the so-called “last days” or “end times.” The end of time seems to hold a particular fascination for American Evangelicals who are wrapped up in rapture theology. They curiously find hope in an expected destruction of the planet and its replacement with a utopia in which even carnivorous animals will take up vegetarianism. It is simply taken for granted that the Bible predicts and explains an end of time, and that there is no number of elapsed centuries spent waiting for...

On September 11th 1683, Vienna was besieged by Islamic Ottoman Turks. Christians throughout Europe prayed the Rosary in the midst of a desperate situation. At Vienna, vastly outnumbered European Christian forces miraculously and wonderfully delivered a crippling blow to Muslim expansion into Europe, preventing a grim invasion of the continent by Muslim forces. 41,000 Christian forces (including 30,000 troops of Polish King Jan III Sobieski that Pope Innocent XI had called upon) defeated a 140,000 man strong Turkish army the night of September 11th over three centuries before the 9/11 attacks on the United States that were also caused by...