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Full Question Until recently, I always thought Catholics worshiped on the Sabbath, and that the early Church moved the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. Is this true? Answer This is a common misunderstanding. Catholics do not worship on the Sabbath, which according to Jewish law is the last day of the week (Saturday), when God rested from all the work he had done in creation (Gen. 2:2-3). Catholics worship on the Lord’s Day, the first day of the week (Sunday, the eighth day); the day when God said "Let there be light" (Gen. 1:3); the day when Christ rose from...

Bl. John Henry Newman said it best: “To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.” History paints an overwhelming picture of St. Peter’s apostolic ministry in Rome and this is confirmed by a multitude of different sources within the Early Church. Catholic Encyclopedia states, “In opposition to this distinct and unanimous testimony of early Christendom, some few Protestant historians have attempted in recent times to set aside the residence and death of Peter at Rome as legendary. These attempts have resulted in complete failure.” Protestantism as a whole seeks to divorce Christianity from history by rending Gospel...

An Archaeologist has discovered what he believes to be the ruins of a buried Christian empire in the highlands of Yemen. The find has led to theories that there may have once been a Christian church in Mecca. A stone carving of a Christian figure was found in Zafar, some 581 miles south of the Holy City, and is thought to have been made in the era of the Prophet Muhammad. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2254657/Was-church-Mecca-Chiselled-stonework-Christian-figure-discovered-holy-site-Yemen.html#ixzz2GmL9IgsA Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Archaeologists have discovered the ruins of a buried Christian empire in the highlands of Yemen, leading to theories that there may have once been a church in Mecca. A stone carving of a Christian figure was found in Zafar, some 581 miles south of Mecca, and is thought to have been made in the era of the Prophet Muhammad. Paul Yule, an archaeologist from Heidelberg in Germany, has dated the 5feet 7inch tall relief which shows a man with chains of jewellery, curls and spherical eyes to around 530AD. ... The figure is barefoot, which was typical of Coptic saints....

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Is Christmas Pagan? A Jewish Star of David Tops This Christmas Tree   THE CATHOLIC KNIGHT:   About this time every year we hear the usual misnomer that Christmas is a Pagan celebration whitewashed by the medieval Catholic Church. We hear this from all corners. Secularists just accept it as fact. Catholics, rather embarrassingly, often try to gloss over it. While Protestant Fundamentalists frequently rail against it, usually calling for either a boycott of the holiday, or else a return to the Jewish festival of Hanukkah. (For some ridiculous reason, some Fundamentalists subscribe to the notion that if a certain...

Tintoretto’s painting of the ascetic and acerbic St Jerome Jerome (c 347-420), the greatest scholar among the Church Fathers, made the Latin translation of the Bible which became known as the Vulgate.He was, however, a contentious individual, with a penchant for sarcasm which readily created enemies. “If he will only conceal his nose and hold his tongue,” he wrote of one opponent, “he might yet be taken as handsome and learned.”Jerome was born at Stridon, near Ljubljana in modern Slovenia. He was not baptised until he went to study in Rome as a teenager.His early propensity for idleness and amusement...

A Jewish class on why Jews do not accept Christianity. I post for Jews to self-educate and for Christians to understand the Jewish point of view--not that it matters (that they do.)

In doing research for an Our Sunday Visitor column (my regular Q and A column), I found it necessary to comb through some of the early Church sources regarding the teaching against abortion. I thought it might be helpful here, by way of a resource, to post some of those teachings here. While I have seen a quote here and there, I was actually quite pleased to find several quotes I had not seen or read before on the question of abortion and to assemble in one place a good number of quotes. I also ask your help in adding...

For centuries the alleged ideal of communism had come to the world as a messianic and millennial creed. Various seers, notably Joachim of Fiore, had prophesied the final state of mankind as one of perfect harmony and equality, one where all things are owned in common, where there is no necessity for work or need for the division of labor. In the case of Joachim, of course, problems of production and property, indeed of scarcity in general, were "solved" by man no longer possessing a physical body. As pure spirits, men as equal and harmonious psychic entities spending all their...

Why was there a sudden need to recover the city where Jesus Christ lived and was crucified? The answer, writes Peter Frankopan, lies in the imperial capital of Constantinople. On November 27, 1095, Pope Urban II stood up at the Council of Clermont in central France to make an important announcement. Persians (by whom he meant the Turks), “a people rejected by God,” had risen up against the Christians in the East, he said. It was imperative for the knighthood of Europe to rush to defend their brethren. Take up arms, he urged, and defend the faithful who were suffering...

EWTN Live - hosted by Fr. Mitch Pacwa with Professor Sharon Davies, author of "Rising Road, A True Tale of Love, Race, and Religion in America," 7-20-2011

In the early 1900s, many Americans — from ordinary citizens to those in high office — were frightened by the perceived threat from the Roman Catholic Church. Their fear had tragic consequences.The mind-set is all too familiar: A radical religious group, lurking inside the country, owing loyalty to a foreign power, threatens America. No one denies that its members have a right to worship as they please, but good Americans, patriots, feel compelled to call for curbs against the menace they present. Because of the number of Americans sharing these fears, calls for restrictions on the religion are voiced openly...

.....The guidelines I used in interpreting Scripture seemed simple enough: When the plain sense of Scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense. I believed that those who were truly faithful and honest in following this principle would achieve Christian unity. To my surprise, this “common sense” approach led not to increased Christian clarity and unity, but rather to a spiritual free-for-all! Those who most strongly adhered to believing “only the Bible” tended to become the, most factious, divisive, and combative of Christians-perhaps unintentionally. In fact, it seemed to me that the more one held to the Bible as the...

This year, the most influential book you may never have read is celebrating a major birthday. The King James Version of the Bible was published 400 years ago. It's no longer the top-selling Bible, but in those four centuries, it has woven itself deeply into our speech and culture. Let's travel back to 1603: King James I, who had ruled Scotland, ascended to the throne of England. What he found was a country suspicious of the new king. "He was regarded as a foreigner," says Gordon Campbell, a historian at the University of Leicester in England. "He spoke with a...

Expropriation of Monastery Land Seen as Effort to Squash Syriacs ROME, FEB. 18, 2011 (Zenit.org).- Not even the Mongols of the 14th century, when they killed 40 monks and some 400 faithful, succeeded in making one of the most ancient Christian convents in the world disappear, but perhaps Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan of Turkey, can. This appears to be the case of the Syro-Orthodox monastery of Mor Gabriel or "Dayro d-Mor Gabriel," called "Deyrulumur" in Turkish. It is located in the region of Turabdin in the southeast of Anatolia. The convent bears the name of Mor Gabriel (634-668), bishop...

From Christianity’s beginnings, the Church has been attacked by those introducing false teachings, or heresies. The Bible warned us this would happen. Paul told his young protégé, Timothy, "For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths" (2 Tim. 4:3–4). What Is Heresy? Heresy is an emotionally loaded term that is often misused. It is not the same thing as incredulity, schism, apostasy, or other sins against faith. The...

If you ask people who Saint Patrick was, you're likely to hear that he was an Irishman who chased the snakes out of Ireland. It may surprise you to learn that the real Saint Patrick was not actually Irish—yet his robust faith changed the Emerald Isle forever. Patrick was born in Roman Britain to a middle-class family in about A.D. 390. When Patrick was a teenager, marauding Irish raiders attacked his home. Patrick was captured, taken to Ireland, and sold to an Irish king, who put him to work as a shepherd. In his excellent book, How the Irish Saved...

By decoding the inscription on a 3,000-year-old piece of pottery, an Israeli professor has concluded that parts of the bible were written hundreds of years earlier than suspected. The pottery shard was discovered at excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa near the Elah valley in Israel -- about 18 miles west of Jerusalem. Carbon-dating places it in the 10th century BC, making the shard about 1,000 years older than the Dead Sea scrolls. ...... English translation of the deciphered text: 1' you shall not do [it], but worship the [Lord]. 2' Judge the sla[ve] and the wid[ow] / Judge the orph[an] 3'...