Free Republic

How’s this for an unusual marketing gimmick: Red Robin is hoping to lure Catholics who are abstaining from meat during Lent by presenting its latest seafood menu — even inviting Pope Francis to lunch.And other fast food restaurants are jumping on the Lent wagon as well.Red Robin Gourmet Burgers Inc., based in Greenwood Village, Colorado, extended an invitation to the pope on Wednesday as it introduced its new “Wild Pacific” crab cake burger.The company released a statement “joyfully” extending an invitation to the pope to eat at Red Robin during the Lenten season.“If His Holiness accepts and visits any U.S. location between February 18 and...

On March 15, 1994, a virtual tsunami struck the Liturgy of the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church. Cardinal Antonio Ortas wrote a document to the Episcopal conferences announcing that the Vatican had, for the first time, permitted altar girls. Over 20 years later, many question the impact of this decision as the Church continues to reap a desperately meager harvest of young men responding to God’s call to the Priesthood.Born in 1997, I was blissfully unaware of the damage being wrought in the Eternal City. By the grace of God I was destined to remain ignorant of the fact for many years. Thinking...

Kudos to Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone who, in liberal San Francisco, instructed his Catholic schoolteachers last week to teach and to act publicly in harmony with Catholicism. Imagine: expecting Catholic institutions and their employees to behave as if they were Catholic. The pushback from the media and “concerned” politicians was predictable. But as you may have noticed, they’re pretty much all already off chasing the next ambulance, and the question is fading from view.There’s a crucial lesson here. The archbishop – or any Church prelate these days – should follow the playbook of the savvier sort of politicians (on this one...

The Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, a transformative figure in Catholic higher education who led the University of Notre Dame for 35 years and wielded influence with U.S. presidents on civil rights and other charged issues of his era, died Feb. 26 on the university campus. He was 97. A Notre Dame spokesman confirmed the death and said the cause was not immediately known. Father Hesburgh, president of Notre Dame from 1952 to 1987, was considered one of the most important university leaders of the past century. On his watch, the Midwestern school once known mainly for Fighting Irish football became...

Featured Term selected at random:LAST BLESSING After the administration of the sacrament of anointing, the apostolic blessing that gives a plenary indulgence to the dying person. The priest says, "By the power of the Apostolic See has given me, I grant you a plenary indulgence and pardon for all your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." To which the person, or the bystanders respond, "Amen." The indulgence is gained, not when the prayer is recited, but at the moment of death, i.e., in articulo mortis. All items in this dictionary...

By Dr. Robert Stackpole, STD (Sep 8, 2009)The following is part 11 of a 14-part series to help inspire parish cenacle and study groups who are looking for ways to make a difference in this troubled world. We invite you to view the entire series. Works of mercy can be directed not only toward the needs of the body, but the needs of the soul as well. Indeed, the most serious form of poverty of all can be the poverty of the spirit, not only because it drains life of all energy, joy, and sense of purpose, but also...

Down with the Struggle or Up with the Cross? A Word to Priests, Catechists, and Parents By: Msgr. Charles PopeSome forty years ago, the Venerable Bishop Fulton J. Sheen admonished the priests of his day with these words:We become real priests when we empty ourselves, and no longer seek our [own] identity, and where we are lifted up to the cross, not going "down to people" Too many of us today feel we have to be loved $B!D (J [thinking] the young will not love us unless we talk like them, eat like them, drink like them, clothe ourselves...

Both Kath.net and Edward Pentin are reporting that Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, head of secretariat of the synod of bishops, ordered the interception of over a hundred copies of the book Remaining in the Truth of Christ, which had been mailed to participants in last October’s Extraordinary Synod... ...Pentin further reports that the books were apparently destroyed after being taken... ...Third, it raises serious questions about the motives and leadership of Cardinal Baldisseri, who has already gone on record with some contentious statements apparently aimed at those defending Church teaching on marriage, divorce, remarriage, and Communion. A month ago, he made...

Helena Lobato, of the diocese of Setúbal (Portugal), has been invited by Pope Francis to be baptized at the Easter Vigil this year in the Vatican, after writing to him for answers she couldn’t find in advice columns. “I saw the great causes he had embraced, and the results in the lives of people who had been touched by him. Suddenly I put aside my paints and brushes and found myself writing a letter to the Pope,” the woman told the news agency, Ecclesia. Helena Lobato, an artist and painter, remembers that it all started at a time in...

WASHINGTON – For years, top Catholic bishops have argued for stronger federal oversight of the Internet superhighway. The alternative is intolerable, they said; big cable companies will force noncommercial religious speakers to pay more or assign them to slower lanes. On Thursday, the bishops saw their dream move one step closer to reality after the Federal Communications Commission voted for strict network neutrality or “open Internet” rules. Bishop John C. Wester, chairman of the communications committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), endorsed the FCC’s approval in a statement.  “From the inception of the Internet until the...

I have sometimes offered that, were I Pope, I would create two new dicasteries (while axing a bunch of others). Firstly, there would be a Sacred Congregation for the Dusting of the Holy Doors. After all, the major basilicas all have Holy Doors, to be opened in Jubilee years. They get dusty. This would be a great role for prelates from around the world who have proven their worth in their previous posts. Secondly, We would create a Sacred Congregation for Thinking Stuff Through Before Doing It. The brief of this SCTSTBD is pretty straight forward. You will remember the...

The annual “Status of Global Christianity” survey published by the International Bulletin of Missionary Research is a cornucopia of numbers: some are encouraging; others are discouraging; many of them are important for grasping the nature of this particular moment in Christian history. This year’s survey works from a baseline of 1900 A.D., and makes projections out to 2050. Within that century and a half there’s some good news about the global human condition that ought to be kept in mind when remembering the bad news of the 20th century and the early 21st. For example: in 1900, 27.6 percent...

February 27, 2015Friday of the First Week of Lent    Reading 1 Ez 18:21-28 Thus says the Lord GOD:If the wicked man turns away from all the sins he committed, if he keeps all my statutes and does what is right and just,he shall surely live, he shall not die. None of the crimes he committed shall be remembered against him;he shall live because of the virtue he has practiced. Do I indeed derive any pleasure from the death of the wicked?says the Lord GOD. Do I not rather rejoice when he turns from his evil waythat he may...

Rome, Italy, Feb 26, 2015 / 07:13 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The number of ISIS hostages in Syria has increased to at least 250 after continued attacks on Christian villages, and civilians fleeing to the Turkish border have been stranded when not allowed to cross. “There are 200 families who were running away and trying to escape to Turkey, but the border is closed for Syrians. No Syrian can cross into Turkey,” Archbishop Jacques Behnan Hindo told CNA Feb. 26. Archbishop Hindo oversees the Syrian archdiocese of Hassake, which is located in the Al-Hasakah region of Syria. The region sits between...

The German Bishops Conference addressed itself to a long process of talks about marriage and family by giving plenty of room for the local church. The chairman of the German Bishops' Conference, Cardinal Reinhard Marx (Munich-Freising) underlined in the context of the Family Synod in autumn the efforts of the bishops for "new approaches" and to "help ensure that doors are opened". In the universal Church, there is "a certain expectation" of Germany. He hoped that some issues would be addressed before the Synod, Marx told journalists n Hildesheim on Tuesday. The Archbishop of Munich and Freising assumes after the...

Family of Bishop Shi Enxiang, who spent more than half a century in detention for refusing to renounce Pope's authority, told by a village official last month that he had died, aged 93In a living room plastered with pious images, the Shi family flicked through timeworn pictures of a wizened man with tortoiseshell glasses and bright eyes, the oldest bishop of China’s underground Catholic church. Almost a month ago, they were passed word that Bishop Shi Enxiang – who spent more than half a century in detention for refusing to renounce the authority of the Pope – had died, aged...

From Crux:  Pope Francis was not involved in an early January decision to bury a homeless man in a Vatican cemetery, a spokesman said Wednesday; however, he would likely be pleased because it corresponds with his desire to make the poor a priority.Known by Vatican personnel for spending his days approaching pilgrims around St. Peter’s Basilica to tell them to go to confession and to pray daily, Willy Herteller, who was Flemish, died in Rome on Dec. 12 at the age of 80.He was buried in the Vatican’s small German cemetery, which is more commonly a final resting place for...

Last week, His Beatitude Sviatoslav Shevchuk, Major Archbishop of Kiev-Halych, led an “ad limina” visit of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic hierarchy, of which he has been the head since March 2011. In the course of their stay in Rome, he and the other bishops celebrated the Divine Liturgy in a number of churches, including Saint John in the Lateran, the Pope’s own cathedral, St Paul’s outside-the-Walls, and St Mary Major. The Pontifical Ukrainian Institute of the Protection of the Holy Mother of God, (Папський Український Iнститут Покрова Пресвятої Богородиці) has posted a large number of photographs of these liturgies to...

When Christians boldly hold up an image of the humiliated, tortured Jesus to the world, they are saying: "We are not afraid.” (Photos: CNS) Last week, the attention of the world was riveted to a deserted beach in northern Libya, where a group of twenty one Coptic Christians were brutally beheaded by masked operatives of the ISIS movement. In the wake of the executions, ISIS released a gruesome video entitled “A Message in Blood to the Nation of the Cross.” I suppose that for the ISIS murderers the reference to “the Nation of the Cross” had little sense beyond a...

St. Gregory is the first Doctor of the Church to have lived outside direct communion with the Bishop of Rome. Left: Icon of St. Gregory of Narek Matenadaran, in Yerevan, Armenia. Right: The 10th century Armenian monastery of Narekavank (now destroyed), Lake Van, Vaspurakan (modern Turkey). (Photos: Wikipedia.org) On February 21, Pope Francis announced his decision to make St. Gregory of Narek (950-1003) a Doctor of the Church. Once again, Pope Francis has caught us off guard and now many people are scrambling to figure out who St. Gregory was and what the implications of the new honor bestowed upon...