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Divine Mercy Sunday Faith April 13th, 2012 Gayle Somers Gospel (Read Jn 20:19-31)The celebration of our Lord’s Resurrection on Easter Sunday usually focuses on the sheer ecstasy of His victory over death.  All during Holy Week, we are absorbed with the details of His horrific Passion.  When we reach Easter, our hearts nearly burst with joy that Jesus is alive and vindicated as God’s Son.  In other words, it’s easy to dwell on the fact of the Resurrection and be so dazzled by it that we do not think much beyond that.  The mercy of Divine Mercy Sunday (yes, intended pun)...

Three Catholic churches and counting are refusing to be part of the petition drive to overturn the state's new marriage equality law. St. Joseph's parish is one of at least three local Catholic churches deciding they don't want the fight over gay marriage to have a place there during Sunday services, in spite of a strong message from the Seattle Archbishop. Earlier this year, Seattle Archbishop Peter Sartain testified against the gay marriage bill in Olympia. "I urge you to uphold the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman," he said then. And when...

April 14, 2012   Saturday within the Octave of Easter   Reading 1 Acts 4:13-21 Observing the boldness of Peter and Johnand perceiving them to be uneducated, ordinary men,the leaders, elders, and scribes were amazed,and they recognized them as the companions of Jesus.Then when they saw the man who had been cured standing there with them,they could say nothing in reply.So they ordered them to leave the Sanhedrin,and conferred with one another, saying,"What are we to do with these men?Everyone living in Jerusalem knows that a remarkable signwas done through them, and we cannot deny it.But so that it may...

 Abortionby Sebastian R. FamaThere are a variety of reasons given to justify an abortion. They include such things as I can’t afford a baby, a baby would interfere with my career, I have enough children, and the doctor said if we have this child it will be handicapped. We are told that every child should be a wanted child.But does any of this really matter? The real question is not whether a child is wanted; the real question is whether or not what is growing inside the mother is a living child. If it is not a living child, a...

The Priests Aboard Titanic Four Stories of Faith, Courage, and Providence By: Louise Perrotta April 15, 2012 marks the 100th anniversary of the sinking of RMS Titanic. The luxury liner hit an iceberg and sank five days into its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York. Only 700 people survived, out of 2,200 passengers and crew. Titanic, called the first disaster of the media global age, has been commemorated in countless books, dozens of movies and TV series, and even a Broadway musical. The fascination lives on, and this year’s anniversary is being marked by numerous productions, exhibits,...

COLUMBUS, Ohio, April 12, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Seminarians from the only Pontifical College in the U.S. have an awe-inspiring approach for confronting abortion head-on. Dressed in full regalia of a black cassock, a traditional red sash, and armed with a rosary, the seminarians descend in a powerful show of force every Saturday on a local abortion facility to confront with prayer what the seminary’s rector calls the “poison of abortion.” Father James Wehner, rector of the Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio, says he believes that seminarians need to “see visibly the forces of evil at work, and respond with an...

April 13, 2012 Friday within the Octave of Easter   Reading 1 Acts 4:1-12 After the crippled man had been cured,while Peter and John were still speaking to the people,the priests, the captain of the temple guard,and the Sadducees confronted them,disturbed that they were teaching the peopleand proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead.They laid hands on Peter and Johnand put them in custody until the next day,since it was already evening.But many of those who heard the word came to believeand the number of men grew to about five thousand. On the next day, their leaders, elders, and...

April 12, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Author Mary Eberstadt recently released her book Adam and Eve After the Pill, a study of the effects of the sexual revolution. LifeSiteNews recently spoke to Eberstadt about the book. You can also find a LifeSiteNews.com review of her book here. LSN: Your book, Adam and Eve After the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution, could not have come at a more opportune time. How did you manage to orchestrate the national debate on contraception to coincide with your book’s release? EB: If it is timely, it is probably the only timely thing I’ve ever...

Featured Term (selected at random):NONJURORS Name given to Anglican clergymen who refused to take the oath of allegiance to William and Mary and their successors under the Protestant succession Act of 1689. since they felt that their oaths bound them to the Stuart family, they considered William and Mary as mere regents. Suspended and deprived of office, they suffered greatly. Much later some rejoined the Anglican Church. The name has been given also the Catholic clergy of France who refused to take the oath of the Civil Constitutions in 1790. Their loyalty to the Church and the Holy See forced...

The chaplain of Vanderbilt Catholic, one of the largest student religious groups at Vanderbilt University, said their organization has been ordered by university officials to change their name. The order came after the Catholic group announced it was leaving campus rather than comply with the university’s new nondiscrimination policy. A spokesperson for Vanderbilt University confirmed that the Catholic group was told they could no longer use the Vanderbilt name.

April 12, 2012   Thursday within the Octave of Easter   Reading 1 Acts 3:11-26 As the crippled man who had been cured clung to Peter and John,all the people hurried in amazement toward themin the portico called "Solomon's Portico."When Peter saw this, he addressed the people,"You children of Israel, why are you amazed at this,and why do you look so intently at usas if we had made him walk by our own power or piety?The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesuswhom you handed over...

I Miss Women Wearing Hats and Veils in Church. A brief reminiscence of days gone by.By: Msgr. Charles Pope I know, I know, I am so hopelessly old fashioned. But I want to say, I miss women wearing hats. I have written before (HERE) of how I miss them wearing the veil in Church. But even before the veil, the hat was more commonly worn by women in 1940s and before (See photo  below left, of my parish taken in the early 1950s, click photo for a larger view). Veils became popular in the later 1950s and 1960s before...

April 11, 2012 (C-FAM) - On Holy Thursday Melinda Gates publicly professed her Catholic faith and then personally attacked her Church over its position on contraception. I could not help but be reminded of Judas and his mysterious betrayal of Christ that night, sealed with a kiss. In fairness to Mrs. Gates, her speech wasn’t expressly about the Church. It was about her foundation’s new “NoControversy” initiative to promote universal access to contraception. Her message was simple: Contraception is not controversial.  And to convince people of this, she argued that population control, abortion, and forced sterilization have nothing to...

Peter Paul Kaspar, Academic Chaplain in Linz, author, musician, executive member of the Parish Priest Initiative helped to formulate the "Call to Disobedience" and now writes an open letter to Cardinal Christoph Schönborn THE OPEN LETTER Dear Cardinal! We - the executive of the Parish Priest Initiative - have issued at Pentecost 2011 a "Call to Disobedience," because we wanted our urgent demands for reform to be made public. This has succeeded worldwide even being cited in the Holy Thursday homily of the Pope. The decades-long internal proposals and suggestions put forward were so far always put politely in the...

Featured Term (selected at random):MALABAR RITES The customs and practices of the natives of South India, which the Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth century permitted their converts but which the Holy See afterward prohibited. Robert de Nobili (1577-1656) initiated these rites in order to pave the way for the hoped-for conversion of the Brahmins. Among those who observed the Malabar Rites was St. John de Britto (1647-93). All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

April 11, 2012   Wednesday within the Octave of Easter   Reading 1 Acts 3:1-10 Peter and John were going up to the temple areafor the three o'clock hour of prayer.And a man crippled from birth was carriedand placed at the gate of the temple called "the Beautiful Gate" every dayto beg for alms from the people who entered the temple.When he saw Peter and John about to go into the temple,he asked for alms.But Peter looked intently at him, as did John,and said, "Look at us."He paid attention to them, expecting to receive something from them.Peter said, "I have...

 Annulmentby Sebastian R. FamaQuite often you will hear an annulment described as a Catholic divorce. But an annulment and a divorce are two different things. Divorce dissolves a marriage while an annulment is a recognition that a sacramental marriage (valid in the eyes of the Church) never existed. The Church does recognize, however, that a civil marriage (valid in the eyes of the state) did exist. In order for a marriage to be valid in the eyes of the Church, both parties must be aware of what constitutes a sacramental marriage. They must also be free, willing and capable of...

Cardinal Burke: Catholic Employers Cannot Provide Contraceptive Coverage! FaithApril 10th, 2012 Jenn Giroux The upcoming episode of Catholic Action Insight hosted by Thomas McKenna to air on EWTN on Wednesday, April 11 at 2:30pm and April 13 at 9:00pm EST will surely ignite discussion among Catholics on the impending mandate which is an attack on religious liberty.  In this interview, Cardinal Raymond Burke speaks out for the first time in a public interview on matters of faith, religious liberty, and culpability in relation to this threatened mandate for employers.Cardinal Raymond Burke, Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura (photo credit: abbey-roads.blogspot.com) “We...

When the Archbishop Met the President Cardinal Dolan thought he heard Barack Obama pledge respect for the Catholic Church's rights of conscience. Then came the contraception coverage mandate. JAMES TARANTO The president of the U.S. Conference of Bishops is careful to show due respect for the president of the United States. "I was deeply honored he would call me and discuss these things with me," says the newly elevated Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York. But when Archbishop Dolan tells me his account of their discussions of the ObamaCare birth-control mandate, Barack Obama sounds imperious and deceitful to me....

Featured Term (selected at random):PALM SUNDAY The Sunday before Easter and the sixth and last of Lent, and the beginning of Holy Week. On this day the Church commemorates Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem, when olive and palm branches were strewn in his path. In the liturgy the memorial of this event is included in every Mass, with the procession or solemn entrance before the principal Mass, and with the simple procession before the other Masses on Palm Sunday. All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.