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A Brief Reflection on Mortal Sin Msgr. Charles Pope • July 18, 2018 • The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches,[M]ortal sin destroys charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of God’s law; it turns man away from God, who is his ultimate end and his beatitude, by preferring an inferior good to him. In mortal sin the will sets itself upon something that is of its nature incompatible with the charity that orients man toward his ultimate end. As such, the sin is mortal by its very object whether it contradicts the love of God,...

Illinois bishop openly rejects USCCB position on Supreme Court's Janus v. AFSCMESPRINGFIELD, Ill. (ChurchMilitant.com) - An American bishop is voicing his disagreement with an official statement from the American bishops' conference. On June 27, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that public sector employees cannot be required to pay fees for labor unions that they don't want to be a part of. The case, Janus v. AFSCME, had an Illinois state employee arguing that he should not be forced to pay union dues on the grounds that the union was giving money to political organizations with agendas contrary to his own...

Fr Mark Morris held a Rosary and Benediction service to atone for the 'gross offence' of Glasgow PrideA priest who offered a service of reparation for the “gross offence against God” of Glasgow Pride has been removed as a university chaplain. Fr Mark Morris offered a Rosary, Litany and Benediction at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Balornock, Glasgow on Monday night. Glasgow Caledonian University sacked him as Catholic chaplain the following day, saying his views were at odds with those of the educational institution. University Principal Professor Pamela Gillies said: “Following due consultation Father Mark Morris will not return...

July 19, 2018 Thursday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time Reading 1 Is 26:7-9, 12, 16-19 The way of the just is smooth;the path of the just you make level.Yes, for your way and your judgments, O LORD,we look to you;Your name and your titleare the desire of our souls.My soul yearns for you in the night,yes, my spirit within me keeps vigil for you;When your judgment dawns upon the earth,the world's inhabitants learn justice.O LORD, you mete out peace to us,for it is you who have accomplished all we have done. O LORD, oppressed by your punishment,we...

White Double VINCENT WAS A MAN OF FAITH that worketh by charity. At the time he came into the world, viz., at the close of the same century in which Calvin was born, the Church was mourning over many nations separated from the faith; the Turks were harassing all the coasts of the Mediterranean. France, worn out by forty years of religious strife, was shaking off the yoke of heresy from within, while by a foolish stroke of policy she gave it external liberty. The Eastern and Northern frontiers were suffering the most terrible devastations, and the West and...

Franciscan Media Image: Saint Camillus de Lellis in facade of church Santa Maria Maddalena | photo by Livioandronico2013 Saint Camillus de Lellis Saint of the Day for July 18 (1550 – July 14, 1614) Saint Camillus de Lellis’ Story Humanly speaking, Camillus was not a likely candidate for sainthood. His mother died when he was a child, his father neglected him, and he grew up with an excessive love for gambling. At 17, he was afflicted with a disease of his leg that remained with him for life. In Rome he entered the San Giacomo Hospital for Incurables as...

We buried my beloved Father today. John Henry Walsh went home to our Dear Lord early Saturday morning after a long illness. I was with him at the time. It was the hardest thing I have ever done but something that I would never trade for anything.

Penny Mordaunt spoke after meeting the President of the Pontifical Academy for LifeA British minister has called on the Church to permit artificial contraception after a meeting with senior Vatican officials last week. Penny Mordaunt, the International Development Secretary, said 800 girls and women lose their lives every day due to pregnancy and childbirth complications, and claimed that wider access to contraception would help alleviate the problem. Faith leaders should help change “deeply held beliefs and attitudes” in order to allow women greater access to “reproductive healthcare”, she said. Ms Mordaunt disclosed her words to the Daily Telegraph after meeting...

I will never forget what happened in May of 1993 when the then-archbishop of Newark, Theodore McCarrick, visited my home parish to preside at a special Mass. I had just graduated from college, and given that I was planning to enroll in the seminary later that year, my pastor decided to showcase me by assigning me as lector for the ceremony. The Archbishop arrived, we met, and after Mass we had another brief discussion before he departed. I asked one of our priests how he thought things went. "I can see that he really liked you," he said. "In fact,...

How to preserve architecture without disrespecting sacred groundsVATICAN CITY (ChurchMilitant.com) - An international conference discussing the rash of closed churches and how to dispose of them is scheduled at the Vatican for November. On Tuesday, Vatican officials announced they were planning a two-day conference to address the many parishes being shuttered around the world and sold off for profane use. They explained that the purpose of the conference is not "whether or when to dispose of or sell a church — the ultimate choice is that of the bishops and sometimes it is an obligatory choice — but rather to...

Australian Catholics protested a pro-gay priest because their bishop refused to speak out.   Father Frank Brennan, a Jesuit priest who supports gay marriage, spoke at a conference for Catholic school principals over the weekend and Bp. James Foley of the diocese of Cairns did nothing to stop him.   During Australia's same-sex marriage vote last year, Fr. Brennan promoted same-sex so-called marriage for the common good, saying, "I'll be pleased when marriage equality is recognized by Australian law."    Father Frank Brennan is also the president of Catholic Social Services of Australia and used that platform to make an announcement after...

The campaign that is underway to demolish “Humanae Vitae” - the 1968 encyclical of Paul VI that said no to artificial contraceptives - has in recent days met with an unexpected obstacle in a book that reconstructs the genesis of that text, thanks to access, for the first time, to the secret documents concerning it, personally authorized by Pope Francis: > Gilfredo Marengo, "La nascita di un'enciclica. 'Humanae vitae' alla luce degli archivi vaticani", Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Città del Vaticano, 2018.The obstacle is all the more serious in that the proponents of a “paradigm shift,” meaning a liberalization of contraceptives...

The official website of the Austrian bishops under Cardinal Christoph Schönborn’s watch, as well as his own diocesan website, has published a series of articles in light of the 50th anniversary of the promulgation of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae. These articles present a major undermining of essential Church teachings as they were laid out in Humanae Vitae, even putting into doubt the abiding unlawfulness of contraception. Cardinal Schönborn is the “media bishop” of the Austrian Bishops’ Conference and, as such, officially the editor of Kathpress, the news website of the bishops’ conference. He is also responsible, as the...

The shockwaves after Ireland voted to repeal their pro life legal protections for unborn children are still being felt. A new report indicates a pro-life Catholic priest is being disciplined for telling his congregation that if they voted to repeal the pro-life law they should go to confession. The vote in Ireland to repeal the 8th Amendment left pro-life people, and specifically members of the Catholic Church around the world, stunned. Ireland had long been a pro-life nation that valued its women and unborn children but it paved the way for legislation to legalize abortion when it removed its Eighth...

The Pruning of the Church and Our Response to It Msgr. Charles Pope • July 17, 2018 • As we go through the Book of the Prophet Isaiah at Mass this week, we read of Israel’s painful purifications as well as the subsequent punishment of the surrounding nations.God permitted the nations to persecute Israel in order that she be purified, but the iniquity and sin of the nations and of this world cannot go on forever; wickedness must be ended. The Lord did not just purify Israel, He will also judge the nations.In a complex passage, God says (through...

"Catholic Priest Apologized to Trump for Catholic Bishops The Reverend I.M.A. PatriotSaint Athanasius ChurchThe United States of AmericaThe Honorable Donald J. TrumpPresident of the United StatesJuly 4, 2018Dear Mr. President:I am writing you as a patriotic American, a military Veteran and a Roman Catholic Priest to thank you for the things you have done to Make America Right Again and to apologize on behalf of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Bishop of Rome, aka Pope Francis. The failure of these bishops to acknowledge the good that you have done as well as their unjust criticism of...

July 18, 2018 Wednesday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time Reading 1 Is 10:5-7, 13b-16 Thus says the LORD:Woe to Assyria! My rod in anger,my staff in wrath.Against an impious nation I send him,and against a people under my wrath I order himTo seize plunder, carry off loot,and tread them down like the mud of the streets.But this is not what he intends,nor does he have this in mind;Rather, it is in his heart to destroy,to make an end of nations not a few. For he says:“By my own power I have done it,and by my wisdom, for...

White Double THE HOLY SPIRIT, who desires to raise our souls above this earth, does not therefore despise our bodies. The whole man is his creature and his temple,a nd it is the whole man he must lead to eternal happiness. The Body of the Man-God was his masterpiece in material creation; the Divine delight he takes in that perfect body he extends in a measure to ours; for that same Body, framed by him in the womb of the most pure Virgin, was from the very beginning the model on which ours are formed. In the re-creation which...

Red Commemoration FOR THE SECOND TIME in July a constellation of seven stars shines in the heavens. More fortunate than Felicitas, Symphorosa preceded into the arena the Seven Sons she was offering to God. From the throne where he was already reigning crowned with the martyr’s diadem, Getulius, the tribune, father of this illustrious family, applauded the combat whereby his race earned a far greater nobility than that of the patrician blood, and gave to Rome a grander glory than was ever dreamed of by her heroes and poets. The Emperor Adrian, corrupt yet brilliant, skeptical yet superstitious like...

The latest of a series of articles on Vatican-China talks* posted on the Vatican News site tackles the question of how the Holy See could recognize bishops who were ordained without Vatican approval, and thus subject to excommunication: The path to the legitimisation of the Chinese Bishops ordained without the mandate of the Pope is not and cannot be, then, a cold bureaucratic act; rather, it must be a journey of genuinely and profoundly ecclesial discernment, whereby particular cases are evaluated in order to determine whether the essential conditions exist, such that a given Bishop could be readmitted into full...