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Featured Term selected at random:TANTUM ERGO The last two verses of the hymn Pange Lingua, composed by St. Thomas Aquinas and long prescribed for singing at Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. A modern English version reads: Down in adoration falling, Lo, the sacred host we hail. Lo, o'er ancient forms departing Newer rites of grace prevail; Faith for all defects supplying Where the feeble senses fail. To the everlasting Father, And the Son who reigns on high. With the Holy Spirit proceeding Forth from each eternally, Be salvation, honor, blessing, Might and endless majesty. Amen. All items in this dictionary...

Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen, Nobody Knows but Jesus: A Meditation on a Grief Observed By: Msgr. Charles PopeAs a follow-up to the recent post on comforting the sorrowful, I was led to consider the grief of my parents and the difficulties they faced in raising a daughter with serious mental illness.My father died eight years ago, and except for essential papers related to his estate, I simply boxed up most of his papers and stored them in the attic of my rectory for future attention. At long last I am sorting through those boxes. Among his effects were also many...

Pope Francis’ appointment of Fr. Timothy Radcliffe to the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace this past weekend was most disconcerting. Any openly dissident priest who advocates for Catholic acceptance of gay relationships and identity, women’s ordination, and the “Eucharistic” nature of sodomy — a sin that cries out to heaven for vengeance — should not be given a platform of any kind. In a sane world, they would be disciplined. Since the Radcliffe appointment, I’ve spent a good bit of time looking at the reaction of Catholics on various websites and social media. Many are perplexed. Some are outraged....

Why many Catholic Tibetans have maintained the faith despite decades of persecutionOpening the church door in Baihanluo reveals a large portrait of Pope Francis — something of a paradox in an ethnically Tibetan area of Communist China. The village is only reachable on foot or by horse, and surrounded by snow-capped Himalayan peaks. But despite its remoteness, French missionaries built the church — with a curved, Chinese-style roof — at the end of the 19th century. Pope Gregory XVI assigned Tibet to the Foreign Missions Society of Paris, shortly after China was forced to open its doors following its defeat...

A jurist and father of 14 children demolishes Cardinal Kasper’s ideas of in favor of communion for the divorced and remarried, not approved by the synod fathers but already put into practice in many places ROME, May 19, 2015 – He was just stating the obvious when during the synod last October South African cardinal Wilfrid Napier he said that “the message has gone out and whatever we say hereafter is going to be as if we're doing some damage control.” The “message” was the one issued by proponents of a change in pastoral practice in the matters of homosexuality...

Glenn Hinson urges fellow Baptists to emulate the late Catholic monk Thomas Merton’s belief that contemplative spirituality is not limited to monasteries.The late Catholic monk, author and interfaith pioneer Thomas Merton is far more than a distant historical figure because the body of his work can actually improve the spirituality of Baptists even today, Baptist scholar E. Glenn Hinson says. Hinson knows because that’s what happened to him through the relationship he developed with Merton during the 1960s. “Little by little, I gained more confidence that I understood what Thomas Merton was trying to do,” Hinson told some 60 ministers...

May 22, 2015Friday of the Seventh Week of Easter    Reading 1 Acts 25:13b-21 King Agrippa and Bernice arrived in Caesareaon a visit to Festus.Since they spent several days there,Festus referred Paul’s case to the king, saying,“There is a man here left in custody by Felix.When I was in Jerusalem the chief priests and the elders of the Jewsbrought charges against him and demanded his condemnation.I answered them that it was not Roman practiceto hand over an accused person before he has faced his accusersand had the opportunity to defend himself against their charge.So when they came together here,...

Speaking at the Rome Life Forum earlier this month before a crowd of 300, including Cardinals Raymond Burke and George Pell, LifeSiteNews co-founder John-Henry Westen lamented the communications failures at the Vatican that he said have led to widespread and serious confusion about the Church's teachings. Pointing to the chaos in the wake of last year's Extraordinary Synod on the Family, and the ubiquitous misinterpretations of some of Pope Francis' remarks, Westen said, “There is a lack of clarity and communications even from the offices here that require that clarification, so that we can understand what is happening." For decades...

Christian Browne’s excellent critique of how receiving Communion-in-the-hand while standing are practices that might be reconsidered to strengthen American Catholics’ understanding of the Eucharist properly notes that these ideologically driven changes were required in no way by Vatican II or even the Holy See. Let me add three additional Eucharist-related phenomena bedeviling the “American Church” that also lack much of a doctrinal or theological base but which have become, for ideological reasons, part of the landscape of “American” Catholicism: extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist, blessings in the Eucharistic procession, and the disconnect between the Sacraments of Penance and the...

Trappist Brother Jonah Pociadlo prepares to pour Spencer ale (CNS) Two members spent six months learning the art in BelgiumA Trappist brewery has opened for the first time in the United States.The new brew, Spencer Trappist Ale, is made at St Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, by Cistercian, or Trappist, monks who wear the distinctive black and white habit.Brother Jonah Pociadlo told Catholic News Service: “It’s got a wonderful smell to it. I hesitate to describe it, because it’s something I think is pretty subjective. But I can almost taste it without it even touching my lips.”The association requires...

Featured Term selected at random:NEOLOGY In theology the introduction of new doctrine, contrary to the Church's teaching but expressed in traditional terms or phrases. (Etym. Greek neos, new + logos, discourse.) All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

What Is the Deepest Root of Sin? It’s Not in Your Wallet and It’s Much Closer Than You Might Think By: Msgr. Charles PopeIn polling friends as to what they think is the deepest root of all sin, I got three main answers. One was a shrug indicating no answer at all (i.e., “I dunno”). Another was to refer to Scripture: For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils (1 Tim 6:10). I’ll discuss below why this is an inadequate answer. The third main response was that original sin (and the concupiscence that followed) is the source of all of our other...

For the Rev. Pádraig Standún, a Catholic priest in western Ireland, voting “yes” is a matter of what’s right. To another Irish priest, the Rev. Iggy O’Donovan, it’s about creating an inclusive state. To the Rev. Martin Dolan, Ireland’s upcoming referendum on same-sex marriage is deeply personal. “I’m gay myself,” he announced to his Dublin congregation in January. It was a surprise ending to Dolan’s homily, in which he urged his congregation to vote “yes” in the referendum. But his parishioners took it in stride — they gave him a standing ovation, according to the Belfast Telegraph. As the Friday...

One rarely finds, among German churchmen today, a sobered openness, born of the recognition that something has gone terribly wrong and that another approach to evangelization and catechesis must be found The 21st-century Church owes a lot to 20th-century German Catholicism: for its generosity to Catholics in the Third World; for the witness of martyrs like Alfred Delp, Bernhard Lichtenberg, and Edith Stein; for its contributions to Biblical studies, systematic and moral theology, liturgical renewal, and Catholic social doctrine, through which German Catholicism played a leading role in Vatican II’s efforts to renew Catholic witness for the third millennium. At...

Members of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart pray in their motherhouse chapel in Fushun, China, in this 2007 photo. The community of nuns was founded in the 1930s by Maryknoll. (CNS file/Nancy Wiechec) By Laura Ieraci Catholic News ServiceVATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Francis asked Catholics worldwide to show solidarity through their prayers for Catholics in China and for persecuted Christians over the Pentecost weekend.The World Day of Prayer for the Church in China is observed each year on the feast of Our Lady Help of Christians, May 24, which this year falls on Pentecost.Catholics in China invoke Mary,...

May 21, 2015Thursday of the Seventh Week of Easter    Reading 1 Acts 22:30; 23:6-11 Wishing to determine the truthabout why Paul was being accused by the Jews,the commander freed himand ordered the chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin to convene.Then he brought Paul down and made him stand before them. Paul was aware that some were Sadducees and some Pharisees,so he called out before the Sanhedrin,“My brothers, I am a Pharisee, the son of Pharisees;I am on trial for hope in the resurrection of the dead.”When he said this,a dispute broke out between the Pharisees and Sadducees,and the...

BALTIMORE, MD, May 19, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- Breaking a month of silence on the scandal created by one of its high-level executives living in a homosexual “marriage,” the head of Catholic Relief Services (CRS) said the organization has yet to decide whether it should employ someone who violates Church teaching in this manner. The US Bishops’ international relief agency is working on it, CRS President and CEO Carolyn Woo told Aleteia’s John Burger in an interview published May 18. “CRS has a senior person who is in a civil gay marriage,” Woo said, “and the question is, ‘Is that a...

The new Vatican Has support of only 20% of bishops. Enthusiasts, enemies and silent dissenters colour Francis’s fraught relationship with Curia. Bond with ordinary people and harshness with Church hierarchy criticised “There’s depression. Heads are cowed. When he speaks about bishops, this Pope who shows great compassion to everyone else is inclined to use a stick”. On rereading it the following day, the Pope’s address to the opening of the Italian bishops’ conference (CEI) left a deep impression, provoking some bitter reflections. The address was received as confirmation of severity that has been perceived with pained surprise over the past...

Canadian broadcaster and commentator Michael Coren has left the Catholic Church again...Currently, he is affiliating with the Anglican church, where he says he feels very comfortable. Why did Coren leave the Catholic Church? In an interview with Canada’s National Post, he says that it was because of the Church’s teaching on homosexuality... [long snip] He says that although the Church’s teaching on homosexuality was the main reason he left, “there’s more than that — some teachings on contraception and on life. There seemed to be an obsession with issues that Jesus never mentioned.” Dude, really? The Gospels are limited documents...

From a reader…QUAERITUR: I have noticed at the Traditional Latin Mass I attend that the women cover their heads with their veils once their sit down in their pews. [?!?] I was told by a friend that the norm years ago was that women veiled their heads before their entered the church and took off their veils once they stepped out of church, not once they sat down in their pews. [!] Which is the proper way for women who veil their heads? Are the women who veil once they enter their pews doing anything wrong? Should the priest(s) address...