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The Treasure of Singleness Tyler Blanski It can be difficult to be a single Christian. I remember watching as one by one my friends would marry, start families, and settle down. The cards would come just before Christmas with news of another baby or a new home, and I would set them on the table in my empty apartment and sigh. As a Christian, my newsfeed was like one long drawn out toast to holy matrimony, and I was getting tired of holding up my glass. The Kingdom of God is like a wedding feast, and the baptized faithful had so...

December 11, 2014Thursday of the Second Week of Advent    Reading 1 Is 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 glory in the Holy...

Law: If there really is a "war on women," it's being waged against a group of nuns who seek to honor their call to serve the dying poor without being compelled to provide contraception coverage to those who help them. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver heard oral arguments Monday in the lawsuit by the Little Sisters of the Poor challenging the ObamaCare abortion-inducing drug mandate that threatens religious liberty. The case of the feisty nuns challenges a bizarre "accommodation" offered by the Department of Health and Human Services (DHS). Under its proposal, the Little Sisters can fill...

Featured Term selected at random:CALIFORNIA MISSIONS The parish centers established among the American Indians by Catholic missionaries from Spain. Three sets of missions were founded, in sequence, by the Jesuits and Dominicans in Lower California (now Mexico), and by the Franciscans in Upper California (now the United States). The Jesuit missions and the years of their foundation, beginning from south to north, were: San José del Cabo (1730); Santiago de las Coras (1721); San Juan de Ligní (1705); Nuestra Señora de los Dolores del Sur (1721); Nuestra Señora del Pilar (1720); Santa Rosa or Todos Santos (1733); San Luis Gonzaga...

  Service Birth     Name, state Assoc. Justice Chief Justice Yrs Place Date Died Religion Antonin Scalia, DC 1986–   — N.J. 1936 — Roman Catholic Anthony M. Kennedy, Calif. 1988–   — Calif. 1936 — Roman Catholic Clarence Thomas, DC 1991–   — Ga. 1948 — Roman Catholic Ruth Bader Ginsburg, DC 1993–   — N.Y. 1933 — Jewish Stephen G. Breyer, Mass. 1994–   — Calif. 1938 — Jewish John G. Roberts, DC   2005– — N.Y. 1955 — Roman Catholic Samuel A. Alito, Jr., N.J. 2006–   — N.J. 1950 — Roman Catholic Sonia Sotomayor...

Come Lord Jesus! A Meditation on the Stunning Glory of Being Gathered to Christ on the Last Day By: Msgr. Charles PopeIn Advent, as we continue to meditate on the Parousia (the magnificent Second Coming of the Lord), we do well to allow our imaginations to be engaged in contemplating the glory that awaits those who are faithful, to meditate on the joy and ecstasy of the culmination of all things!Though we have soberly meditated on the need to be ready and on the great danger that many who are not serious may be lost, for those who ARE ready, what glories...

December 10, 2014Wednesday of the Second Week of Advent    Reading 1 Is 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 not heard?The LORD is the eternal God,creator of the ends...

St. Juan Diego: Ordinary Son of Mary Daniel StewartJuan Diego was born in 1474 in a place called Cuautitlán. Once a part of the Aztec Empire, Cuautitlán was conquered by the Spanish and is now in present day Mexico City. Born before the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, Juan Diego was an indigenous Mexican who was given the name Cuauhtlatoatzin at birth. When Franciscan missionaries arrived, Cuauhtlatoatzin and his wife were some of the first indigenous people to convert. At baptism, they were given the names Juan Diego and Maria Lucia. Juan Diego was not a slave but...

The Synoptic Problem The order of the Gospels in our printed Bible is that sanctioned by Tradition. The first three Gospels are frequently called the Synoptics (from the Greek terms syn "together," and opsis "view"). When placed side by side and brought under one view, these three Gospels present a striking resemblance and appear as one narrative. Not only are many of the same events and speeches recorded in each, but the order and manner in which they are narrated is nearly the same. The problem as to the origin and relation of the first three Gospels, presented by...

Milwaukee, Wis., Dec 9, 2014 / 04:03 am (CNA/EWTN News).- An anti-harassment training presentation at a Catholic college encourages employees to report critics of “gay marriage” – and could reflect recent federal decisions that the belief in marriage as a union of a man and a woman is discriminatory. Part of the employee anti-harassment training at the Wisconsin-based Marquette University includes a presentation with a comic strip-style story about a fictional employee named “Harassed Hans,” a man in a wheelchair. The training encourages Hans to report to the university human resources his co-workers Becky and Maria who “have been talking...

Featured Term selected at random:THREE CHAPTERS A sixth-century controversy involving Pope Vigilius and Emperor Justinian. The emperor had condemned three subjects: 1. the person and writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia; 2. certain writings of Theodoret against St. Cyril of Alexandria; and 3. the letter of Ibas of Edessa to Maris. Since all three were pro-Nestorian, the Emperor hoped in this way to conciliate the Monophysites. The Pope at first refused to ratify the Emperor's condemnation, but under compulsion later approved it. This was interpreted in the West as an act of weakness, and the Pope withdrew his approval. Soon after,...

The “Great Gettin’ Up Morning” as Described in an Unlikely Advent Hymn By: Msgr. Charles PopeHere in the heart of Advent, we are considering how prepared we are for the Lord to come again. Either He will come to us or we will go to Him, but either way we must prepare. In today’s post I’d like to consider some teachings about the Day of Judgment, from an Advent hymn that most do not know is an Advent hymn. Tomorrow I would like to consider the great Parousia, wherein the saved enter into glory with the Lord.Regarding the “Great and...

December 9, 2014Tuesday of the Second Week of Advent    Reading 1 Is 40:1-11 Comfort, give comfort to my people,says your God.Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to herthat her service is at an end,her guilt is expiated;Indeed, she has received from the hand of the LORDdouble for all her sins. A voice cries out:In the desert prepare the way of the LORD!Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!Every valley shall be filled in,every mountain and hill shall be made low;The rugged land shall be made a plain,the rough country, a broad valley.Then the glory of...

A GROUP OF pro-choice campaigners placed a banner advertising abortion pills on Galway Cathedral yesterday morning. The recently-formed Díobháil group placed the banner, which advises women on where they can procure pills which induce miscarriages, on the cathedral yesterday at 7am. It remained there until after 11am. PICTURES ON LINK A spokesperson for the group today told TheJournal.ie that they are aiming to spread the word on the pills. “The main aim was to spread the message of Women on Web. They are a really good women’s organisation that help women in countries with oppressive abortion laws. “Otherwise, women are...

Featured Term selected at random:HOLY GRAIL The legendary cup identified with the chalice used by Christ at the Last Supper from which the Apostles received the Precious Blood. The quest for it has been the basis of many popular stories. One of the most popular was the legend that Joseph of Arimathaea brought the Holy Grail to England. This became the theme of numerous Arthurian romance. All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

Queen Fabiola of the Belgians, who has died aged 86, had one of the most unlikely royal courtships of modern times when an Irish nun was sent on a secret mission in the 1950s to find a suitable bride for King Baudouin I. The only unmarried child of a wealthy Spanish aristocrat, Fabiola was working as a nurse in Madrid and living in her own apartment when Sister Veronica O’Brien arrived in Spain at the behest of the future Cardinal Suenens, then auxiliary bishop of Malenes. Suenens was concerned that the King, who had been on the throne for nine...

Matrimony or Bust – Another Glimpse at the Why and How of Traditional Marriage’s Demise By: Msgr. Charles PopeAll the way back in 1973, George Guilder published a book called Men and Marriage. He expanded and republished it in 1986. In his book, Guilder argued that our culture was marginalizing men, to its great peril. He articulated the critical role that marriage has in helping men focus their sexual energies in a creative and beneficial way. Women have their nurturing role rather clearly defined in the very design of their bodies. But men’s role in the raising of children and in society...

December 8, 2014Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin MaryPatronal Feastday of the United States of America    Reading 1 Gn 3:9-15, 20 After the man, Adam, had eaten of the tree,the LORD God called to the man and asked him, “Where are you?”He answered, “I heard you in the garden;but I was afraid, because I was naked,so I hid myself.”Then he asked, “Who told you that you were naked?You have eaten, then,from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat!”The man replied, “The woman whom you put here with meCshe gave me fruit from...

Investigate the Abortion Industryby Eve TushnetMarla Cardamone smiles shyly from her photograph. Christi Stile is laughing in hers. But beneath their pictures, their mothers testified to the pain and grief of having a daughter killed or gravely injured by abortion. Cardamone died at age 18. Stile, 26, has been in a coma for eight years following a botched abortion. They are two of the reasons Priests for Life President Father Frank Pavone called for a "full investigation of the abortion industry," in full-page advertisements that ran in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. The advertisement charged that abortion...

So much for the seventh commandment. Unholy crooks better pray the big man upstairs wasn’t watching when they swiped a 5-by-3 foot crucifix from a Bronx church during services on Wednesday. The $5,000 German-made wooden cross was lifted from the lobby of Padau Roman Catholic Church — near a sign proclaiming, “Jesus wants all of us to come to him” — between 6:30 p.m. and 8 p.m., police sources said. “I’m distressed. That crucifix means so much to the people here … I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Josu Iriondo, 75, pastor of the church on East 166th Street...