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Featured Term (selected at random):SOLLICITUDO OMNIUM ECCLESIARIUM Apostolic letter of Pope Paul VI setting forth the duties of official representatives of the Roman Pontiff. The focus of the document is on updating the role of the numerous delegates of the Pope in various countries of the world, and in the different commissions where the Holy See is represented (june 24, 1969). All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

Dark Night of the Soul DARK NIGHT OF THE SOULbySaint John of the CrossDOCTOR OF THE CHURCHTHIRD REVISED EDITION Translated and edited, with an Introduction,by E. ALLISON PEERSfrom the critical edition ofP. SILVERIO DE SANTA TERESA, C.D.NIHIL OBSTAT: GEORGIUS SMITH, S.T.D, PH.D.CENSOR DEPUTATUSIMPRIMATUR: E. MORROGH BERNARDVICARIVS GENERALISWESTMONASTER II: DIE XXIV SEPTEMBRIS MCMLIITO THE DISCALCED CARMELITES OF CASTILE, WITH ABIDING MEMORIES OF THEIR HOSPITALITY AND KINDNESSIN MADRID, AVILA AND BURGOS, BUT ABOVE ALL OF THEIR DEVOTION TO SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS CONTENTS PRINCIPAL ABBREVIATIONSINTRODUCTIONPROLOGUE BOOK THE FIRST CHAPTER I.—Sets down the first line and begins to treat of the imperfections of...

Many readers will rejoice - fittingly on this Gaudete Sunday - to learn that last Thursday, 10 December 2009, the Cause of Beatification of the Servant of God Zita, last Empress of Austria and wife of Blessed Emperor Charles, was solemnly opened by His Excellency Msgr. Yves Le Saux, Bishop of Le Mans, France. The process was opened in Le Mans, and not in the Swiss diocese of Chur, where the Empress died 20 years ago in 1989 in Zizers, with the consent of Msgr. Huonder, the Bishop of Chur, and the permission of the Congregation for the Causes of...

The Irish missionary priest savagely murdered in Kenya was due to retire home to Co Limerick next year. Shocking details of the murder of Fr Jeremiah Roche have emerged, as police in Kenya concentrate their investigations on two suspects. It is understood the priest was stripped naked, tied to a chair and was then stabbed in the throat and hit on the head with a blunt object. The robbers left the scene with Fr Roche's blood-stained clothes, a CD player and two mobile phones. His clothes were recovered a kilometre away. The killing took place close to Kericho, in the...

Dublin, Ireland, Dec 12, 2009 / 11:29 am (CNA).- Irish Catholics can expect "major reorganization" within the Church following the meeting between the Pope and Irish prelates on Friday regarding child sexual abuses by clergy in the Archdiocese of Dublin, according to an article published in the Irish Times. It is not yet known how far reaching these structural changes will be. Archbishop of Armagh Sean Cardinal Brady and Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin attended a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI, papal nuncio to Ireland Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, and other leaders from Vatican dicasteries to voice concerns and discuss solutions...

“Perfection is acquired through our efforts, and if we try to become saints, someday we will be saints.” — Father Emil Kapaun Chase Kear does not seem at first glance to be the poster boy for a Vatican investigation involving sainthood. He chews a little dip, hits targets at turkey shoots, listens to country music when he rolls. In his Facebook profile photo he dresses the part of a halfnaked bandito in a sombrero. He’s a self-described redneck; also foolish and drunk and stupid at times in the past, he says, though less so since his accident. He takes comfort...

December 14, 2009                                     Memorial of Saint John of the Cross,                                      priest and doctor of the Church       Reading 1Responsorial PsalmReading 2Gospel Reading 1Nm 24:2-7, 15-17a When Balaam raised his eyes and saw Israel encamped, tribe by tribe,the spirit of God came upon him,and he gave voice to his oracle: The utterance of Balaam, son of Beor,the utterance of a man whose eye is true,The utterance of one who hears what God says,and knows what the Most High knows,Of one who sees what the Almighty sees,enraptured, and with eyes unveiled:How...

A father has been hit with an unusual restraining order: Keep his daughter away from any religion that is not Jewish. After the girl's parents split up, the father went to a Catholic church and had the girl baptized, CBS station WBBM-TV reports. Joseph Reyes, 35, had his daughter baptized and sent his ex-wife a picture of the ceremony. Rebecca Reyes says she only learned of her daughter's Baptism when Joseph sent her the picture, and that he sent it out of malice. Joseph Reyes denies this. "I sent it because Rebecca asked me for pictures," he said. Rebecca Reyes...

In just a matter of days we will celebrate the Feast of the Nativity of the Lord. The Church as mother and teacher calls us on this third Sunday of Advent to pause from our Advent preparation. She proclaims in today’s liturgy, using the imperative case - “Rejoice!” In Latin,“Gaudete in Domino semper: iterum dico, gaudete : modestia vestra nota sit omnibus hominibus: Dominus prope est. Nihil solliciti sitis: sed in omni oratione petitiones vestrae innotescant apud Deum.” In English,“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near....

“He died because he loved and pitied us. He died that we might live.” — Father Emil Kapaun The legend of Father Kapaun and the quest to elevate him to sainthood began in September 1953 as soon as Communist guards released prisoners at the end of the Korean War. A little band of fierce-looking Americans, with balding and blunttalking Ralph Nardella at their head, carried Emil Kapaun’s gold ciborium and a rugged wooden crucifix, an inch shy of four feet tall. They had risked their lives in a final act of defiance to bring those items across the fence line;...

Proof of God's Existence 1. I am an atheist who wants his difficulties answered without being accused of moral depravity. I believe, in the ultimate analysis, with Pascal, that there are two classes of men, those who are afraid to find God, and those who are afraid to lose God. But, to spare you, I will admit that your fear that there might be a God may be perhaps unconscious. Of those who say that they are atheists some are merely unintelligent and do not think; others do think, but merely reject false ideas of God, without knowing how to...

December 13, 2009                                         Third Sunday of Advent   Reading 1Responsorial PsalmReading 2Gospel Reading 1Zep 3:14-18a Shout for joy, O daughter Zion!Sing joyfully, O Israel!Be glad and exult with all your heart,O daughter Jerusalem!The LORD has removed the judgment against youhe has turned away your enemies;the King of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst,you have no further misfortune to fear.On that day, it shall be said to Jerusalem:Fear not, O Zion, be not discouraged!The LORD, your God, is in your midst,a mighty savior;he will rejoice over you with gladness,and renew...

MELBOURNE, December 11, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In an address to a gathering sponsored by the World Parliament of Religions (PWR) last Friday, former US President Jimmy Carter has once again blamed traditional religion, particularly Southern Baptists and Roman Catholics, for "creating an environment where violations against women are justified."It is a theme that Carter has successfully used to garner media attention for several years.  Although in a July column in The Observer Carter admits to "not having training in religion or theology," in his address to the PWR Carter appeals to his authority as someone who has "taught Bible lessons...

Featured Term (selected at random):POVERTY OF SHARING The voluntary sacrifice of one's possessions for the common good of a community. All means of support and activity are provided by the group. Practiced in the Church since apostolic times, it is described by St. Luke as one of the effects of receiving the Holy Spirit: "The faithful all lived together and owned everything in common; they sold their goods and possessions and shared out proceeds among themselves according to what each one needed" (Acts 2:44-45). All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life....

This is indeed a difficult blog to write. Not only because my favorite book on the subject went missing, but I believe, if I write this story just right, millions of souls will convert to Christ ... "That's fantasy!" you may say, and yet that is EXACTLY what happened when Our Lady of Guadalupe first appeared. It happened in Mexico in December of 1531. Many Catholics have heard the story of how Mary suddenly appeared to the poor peasant Juan Diego on his way to daily Mass. Juan had already converted to Catholicism, and yet Her appearance, Her promise of...

Our Lady of Guadalupe: She Who Smashes the Serpent Written by Cesar Franco    Monday, 30 November 2009 11:59 Pope Pius XII gave Our Lady of Guadalupe the title of “Empress of the Americas� in 1945. Since December 12 is the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, this is a propitious moment to recall how she reigns over our nation from Heaven, protecting and guiding us with motherly solicitude and tenderness. The constant miracle memorialized on Saint Juan Diego’s tilma and the context of the apparitions remind us that Our Lady is victorious over the serpent, intervenes in history and...

December 12, 2009                                     Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe       Reading 1Responsorial PsalmGospel Reading 1Zec 2:14-17 or Rv 11:19a; 12:1-6a, 10ab Sing and rejoice, O daughter Zion! See, I am coming to dwell among you, says the LORD.Many nations shall join themselves to the LORD on that day,and they shall be his people,and he will dwell among you,and you shall know that the LORD of hosts has sent me to you.The LORD will possess Judah as his portion in the holy land,and he will again choose Jerusalem.Silence, all mankind,...

"In order to win the crown of heavenly glory, the saints were expected first to carry a heavy cross in life." -- Father Emil Kapaun Over the next six weeks, the POWs in the Pyoktong prison camp began a cloaked and daring effort to save Emil Kapaun’s life. On a rise above them stood the remains of a Buddhist monastery; the guards called it a hospital, but POWs called it "The Death House." The Chinese sometimes killed prisoners by isolating them there from food and help. The POWs knew that’s where Kapaun might end up. In April, weeks after his...

I ran across this post today from an Evangelical Protestant commentator named Michael Spencer. He described how he spent the better part of a day recently listening to and thinking about Catholic radio and the greater and lesser degrees of effectiveness of the men and women who host shows on Catholic radio networks like EWTN. Though I don't agree with all his observations (in response to one particular remark, for example, I'd assert that Scott Hahn is every bit the "intellectual heavy-weight Protestants make him out to be"), I found myself agreeing with some and, on a few points, agreeing...

More than 1,000 Buddhist extremists armed with clubs, swords and stones ferociously attacked a Catholic church in the town of Crooswatta, Sri Lanka on December 6, destroying the altar, statues and pews. L’Osservatore Romano reported that Father Jude Denzil Lakshman, pastor of Our Lady of the Mystical Rose, said “I still can hear their shouts in my ears, ‘Cut him to pieces, kill him’.” The attack took place after the 7 p.m., Sunday Mass, leaving several parishioners wounded. “It is obvious that the attack was well-planned and that the mob waited for us to come out after Mass,” Father Lakshman...

Featured Term (selected at random):GYÖR Marian shrine in Hungary, west of Budapest. Its main object of devotion is a picture of the praying Madonna looking at her sleeping Child. In 1649, when Oliver Cromwell went to Ireland, the Bishop of Clonfert, in the diocese of Tuam, was arrested and exiled to the island of Innisboffin. He took with him a picture that had hung in the cathedral. In 1652 he escaped and finally reached Hungary, where he was cordially received. In the city of Györ he was made auxiliary bishop for the Hungarian diocese. After his death he willed the...

To a Catholic boy like Tim Dolan, growing up in the heartland when Protestant neighbors still made casual jokes about the “papists” next door, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen rode into town in the 1950s on the new main street of the United States, the television set, like a true-blue American hero.

www.catholicnewsagency.com Fifteen Catholic Senators voted against Nelson Amendment Sen. Barbara Mikulski Washington D.C., Dec 11, 2009 / 06:29 am (CNA).- A total of fifteen self-described Catholic Senators voted to table the Nelson-Hatch-Casey Amendment, which would have significantly restricted abortion funding from the Senate health care bill.The Amendment failed by a 54-45 vote on Tuesday. It was co-sponsored by Democrats Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Sen. Bob Casey, Jr. of Pennsylvania, who were joined by Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah. Senator Nelson is a Methodist, Sen. Hatch is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter...

Several years ago I had the privilege of being given a tour of the grounds of what would later become the campus of “Ave Maria University”. I was given this tour by its President, Nick Healy. The College was already in operation, utilizing the buildings which now house the Law School in Naples, Florida until the campus was built. The tour was of vacant, undeveloped land in what was then a part of the town of Immokalee, in Collier County, Florida. During the tour and over lunch afterward I heard the hopes, the vision and the dynamic mission of this...

December 11, 2009                                     Friday of the Second Week of Advent   Reading 1Responsorial PsalmGospel Reading 1Is 48:17-19 Thus says the LORD, your redeemer,the Holy One of Israel:I, the LORD, your God,teach you what is for your good,and lead you on the way you should go.If you would hearken to my commandments,your prosperity would be like a river,and your vindication like the waves of the sea;Your descendants would be like the sand,and those born of your stock like its grains,Their name never cut offor blotted out from my presence. Responsorial PsalmPs 1:1-2,...

Part Four:   Lord, Teach Us To Pray Seventh Petition:  “ Deliver Us from Evil. Amen” Table of Contents     The closing petition of the Lord’s Prayer is a compendium of everything from which we want God to deliver us, in this life and in the life to come. St. Cyprian, who wrote the first extensive commentary on the Pater Noster, teaches that we are here praying to be freed from the consequences of sin. The Church follows this teaching, which places our dread of evil into proper perspective.So far, in the Our Father, we have prayed for God’s mercy on our sins,...

"No sincere prayer is ever wasted." -Father Emil Kapaun At sunrise on Easter Sunday, March 25, 1951, Father Emil Kapaun startled POWs by donning his purple priest’s stole and openly carrying a Catholic prayer missal, borrowed from Ralph Nardella. He had talked atheist guards into letting him hold an Easter service, a favor they soon regretted. No one there would ever forget this day. The most moving sight the POWs ever saw. At sunrise, 80 officers — bearded, dirty and covered with lice — followed Kapaun up a little rise, to the cold steps of a bombed-out church. They gathered...

Canada’s Macleans news site recently published an article titled “Darwin movie too evolved for U.S. audiences”. The article refers to the decision of US film distributors to “pass” on the film “Creation”—the dramatized story of Charles Darwin’s struggle while writing the Origin of Species. The refusal to distribute a film premiered and acclaimed at the Toronto Film Festival seems to have again roused the Canadian media’s scorn of the “backward Americans” of which—according to Gallup—only 39% believe Darwin and his evolutionary theory. It is interesting how very differently the Canadian and world media treated America during WW II when far...

Vatican Paper Urges Obama to Remember War on Life Notes Reservations on Criteria for Peace Prize Selection VATICAN CITY, OCT. 13, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Upon accepting the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, U.S. President Barack Obama should remember not only the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also the war being waged against the unborn, according to an article in L'Osservatore Romano. The semi-official Vatican newspaper published an article in Sunday's Italian edition that responded to Obama's peace prize win. The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced the news Friday, saying it recognized the president's "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between...

At National Review Online, conservative curmudgeon John Derbyshire has weighed in on the Climategate scandal by encouraging conservatives not to jump on the anti-science bandwagon. I share his worry and find his advice is good so far as it goes; but I think Derbyshire’s defense of science might actually encourage the skepticism he wants to prevent. Most of the trouble comes from his invocation of the word “science,� and his claim that science has a magisterium.His article is called “Trust Science.� I’m not sure what that means. What is “science,� and how do we “trust� it? Imagine if someone said:...

The Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Vatican Observatory recently brought together a group of scholars who study astrobiology, that is, the possibility of some kind of life existing elsewhere in the universe.The media immediately seized on the convocation as a sign that the Pope was affirming the existence of intelligent extraterrestrials. This notion was given an unfortunate nudge forward by statements from Jesuit Father Jose Gabriel Funes, an astronomer who now directs the Vatican Observatory. “How can we rule out that life may have developed elsewhere?” Father Funes has said before, in an interview in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore...

Last February I mentioned the events that would commemorate the life and work of Charles Darwin in 2009. I had no idea at the time that I would be invited to participate in one of these events. But there I was, precisely 150 years after On the Origin of Species first appeared, seated with other scientists in front of a packed room that featured, among other interesting things, a life-sized model of a baleen whale. The venue was the National Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart, Germany, and the occasion was a panel discussion titled Design without a Designer? [1]...

The web site of a Catholic college in Montana advises students who wish to obtain an abortion to contact Planned Parenthood. “How can I obtain an abortion?” asks an anonymous "ask-a-nurse" advice column for Carroll College students. The response-- “thoughtfully prepared by Health Services”-- is "Carroll College does not offer abortion counseling based on its Catholic Tradition. There is a Planned Parenthood in Helena or you can talk with any health care provider concerning your options." In addition, the college’s official “Summer Job Finding Guide” asks students to consider applying for employment at Planned Parenthood. In 2005, a controversy erupted...

The newest ambassador to the Holy See, Cuba's Eduardo Delgado Bermudez, renewed nearly 75 years of continuous relations with the Vatican today when he delivered his credentials to Pope Benedict XVI in a private audience. The Pontiff expressed to the ambassador his hopes for the future of the Cuban people and for seeing continued “concrete signs” of the acceptance of the exercise of religious freedom. In his address, Pope Benedict highlighted the importance for governments around the world not to forget about the basic needs of the people, despite the current economic crisis. "The Catholic Church in Cuba, that in...

I ran across this post today from an Evangelical Protestant commentator named Michael Spencer. He described how he spent the better part of a day recently listening and thinking about Catholic radio and the greater and lesser degrees of effectiveness of the men and women who host shows on major Catholic radio networks like EWTN and Ave Maria. Though I don't agree with all his observations (Scott Hahn is indeed the intellectual heavy-weight Protestants make him out to be), I found myself agreeing with some them and, on one or two points, agreeing wholeheartedly. But even in the areas where...

Featured Term (selected at random):TOSEFTA Part of the Jewish Talmud, as a kind of supplement, containing passages from various Judaic schools of thought. Some scholars believe that the Tosefta is really the original Mishnah, or legal code assembled in Palestine. All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

For all their protestations to the contrary, liberals have an awful habit of trying to tell people of faith, notably the Catholic Church, what their faith means and how it should apply in the political sphere. If you can stomach the irony, let’s take a look at the latest example of this genre, an opinion piece in the Politico by Robert Kennedy’s daughter, former Maryland Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. Kennedy (I use her maiden name because it’s the only thing that gets her published) starts off well enough, with the title “On health care, the bishops have lost their...

David Queller and Joan Strassmann, evolutionary biologists at Rice University, recently proposed a new way to describe what makes an organism a unified whole. They defined an organism as an entity made up of parts that cooperate well for an overall purpose, and do so with minimal conflict. But how do parts like these get together, and where does purposeful behavior come from?...

December 10, 2009                                Thursday of the Second Week of Advent       Reading 1Responsorial PsalmGospel Reading 1Is 41:13-20 I am the LORD, your God,who grasp your right hand;It is I who say to you, “Fear not,I will help you.”Fear not, O worm Jacob,O maggot Israel;I will help you, says the LORD;your redeemer is the Holy One of Israel.I will make of you a threshing sledge,sharp, new, and double-edged,To thresh the mountains and crush them,to make the hills like chaff.When you winnow them, the wind shall carry them offand the storm shall scatter them.But you shall rejoice in the LORD,and...

Part Four:   Lord, Teach Us To Pray Sixth Petition:  “ Lead Us Not into Temptation” Table of Contents     Temptation is an invitation to sin. The source of the temptation may be the attractive, sinful conduct of other people, called the world; or the disorderly desires of our own fallen nature called concupiscence; or the malicious urging of the evil spirit, whom we call the devil. When we pray not to be led into temptation, we are not asking to be freed from the testing of all human beings to prove their loyalty to God. Temptation as a test of our fidelity...

“People whose ambitions are confined to the limits of earthly things would be confounded at the beatitude on meekness.” — Father Emil Kapaun By February 1951 the Allied prisoners at Pyoktong, North Korea, were dying so fast on ground frozen so solid that unburied bodies lay in stacks three to four feet high, 30 to 40 yards long. Men hoarded food or stole it from the weak, and left sick men to die in their own defecation. Many soldiers were in their teens and early 20s, not mature enough to deal with that level of suffering. Father Emil Kapaun never...

“Darwin’s finches” are a variety of small black birds that were observed and collected by British naturalist Charles Darwin during his famous voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle in the early 1800s. Years later, Darwin argued that subtle variations in their beak sizes supported his concept that all organisms share a common ancestor (a theory known as macroevolution). The finches, whose technical name is Geospiza, have since become classic evolutionary icons...

LONDON (CNS) -- The Catholic bishops of England and Wales said they could be at risk of prosecution under a proposed law unless they accept women, sexually active gays and transsexuals as candidates to the priesthood. They made their claims in a briefing for Catholic members of the House of Lords, Britain's upper political chamber, ahead of a scheduled Dec. 15 debate on the Equality Bill, which aims to stamp out discrimination in the workplace. The bishops said the bill defines priests as employees rather than officeholders. Under the terms of the bill, the church would be immune from prosecution...

Wednesday December 9, 2009 Pro-Life Leaders Launch Opposition to Senate Health Bill Following Nelson Amendment Demise By Kathleen GilbertWASHINGTON, D.C., December 9, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Following the defeat of the Nelson/Hatch/Casey amendment Tuesday evening,  pro-life leaders are calling on senators to oppose the Senate health care bill as it heads towards a final vote, which lawmakers expect will happen before the end of the year.The Senate voted 54-45 Tuesday evening to table the Nelson/Hatch/Casey amendment, effectively killing the language that would have applied Hyde-amendment restrictions on federal funding of abortion to the health care overhaul.  The "tabling" vote allowed...

By a 54-45 vote, the United States Senate has rejected the Nelson-Hatch-Casey Amendment to health care legislation. The amendment would have kept in place “the longstanding and widely supported federal policy against government funding of health coverage that includes elective abortions,” as the US Conference of Catholic Bishops stated before the vote. With the failure of the amendment, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, who chairs the US bishops' pro-life committee, said: "The Senate should not approve this bill in its current form." However leaders of the US bishops' conference held out some hope that the bill might still be amended...

Featured Term (selected at random):OUR LADY PROTECTRESS OF ROME See: SALUS POPULI ROMANI All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission. SALUS POPULI ROMANI Shrine of Our Lady Protectress of Rome, also called Santa Maria Maggiore. The original basilica of the Blessed Virgin was built about A.D. 350 and was called Santa Maria ad Nives because of the legend that the location of the church was determined by the appearance of snow on the Esquiline Hill on a summer day. The first treasure of the present church is...

Dublin, Ireland – As the United States engages in a heated debate over gay marriage, European Union countries are rapidly striding toward total recognition of same-sex civil unions, if not marriage. The most recent example is Ireland.Last Thursday saw Ireland become the latest country to edge toward marriage equality for homosexual couples. The Irish parliament read and debated the Civil Partnership Bill 2009, introduced by Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern.Despite Ireland’s socially conservative image, opposition to the bill is virtually non-existent and will likely pass into law this month with widespread support from opposition parties Fine Gael and Labour as...

This may be the most disturbing thing you read all day.A Catholic nun said that the defeat in the Senate of the pro-life Nelson amendment on the feast of the Immaculate Conception was "providential" and that Mary was the first woman in the bible to express "choice."As you have probably heard by now the Nelson amendment to the health-care bill, which would have restricted federal funds from being used to fund abortions, has been defeated 54-45. This should be a sad day for all Catholics, but it is not. In fact, one Catholic nun is downright giddy over the defeat....

December 9, 2009                                    Wednesday of the Second Week of Advent   Reading 1Responsorial PsalmGospel Reading 1Is 40:25-31 To whom can you liken me as an equal?says the Holy One.Lift up your eyes on highand see who has created these things:He leads out their army and numbers them,calling them all by name.By his great might and the strength of his powernot one of them is missing!Why, O Jacob, do you say,and declare, O Israel,“My way is hidden from the LORD,and my right is disregarded by my God”? Do you not knowor have you...

"Christ's works testified to what he was; our works will testify as to what we are." -Father Emil Kapaun -- Three weeks after their capture, after 75 miles of marching, the starving survivors of the 8th Cavalry and 19th Infantry straggled into a mud-hut village called Pyoktong, on the banks of the Yalu River, two miles from Manchuria. They’d barely set foot in the village when American bombers roared in overhead and firebombed it. Horrified villagers spat at the prisoners, threw rocks. Guards took them south again, 12 more miles. Men and discipline broke down in the snow and ice;...