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A cargo ship connected to Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell was recently stopped and searched before departing from Colombia. During the search, Colombian Coast Guard agents seized roughly 90 pounds of cocaine.

I saw this movie a couple of days ago and am still reeling from its presentation. It is the story of a family torn apart by the Korean war and how they work from being dirt poor to successful. It is a story of a family losing and finding its loved ones. It has the sweetest scene I have seen in ANY movie, but it's not staged or recorded. It's a real recording from history, which has a tremendous effect on those watching. It really happened. This movie is worth watching

Focused on the Dysfunctional? A Consideration of the Need for the Synod on the Family to Refocus ON the Family By: Msgr. Charles PopeMany breathed a sigh of relief when the summary document of the extraordinary Synod on the Family was much improved and the seriously flawed sections (which no one seems to know who wrote!) were removed.  But in this case we cannot allow the better to become the enemy of the best. And frankly the relatio, though improved, ought not escape sober scrutiny by those who seek to allow the upcoming (Ordinary) Synod to become what it really...

The divorce rate isn't 50% - and the divorce rate has been falling for two decades.

Vatican’s first list of 2015 Synod bishops includes some strong voices for life and family  By Hilary White  ROME, February 2, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Vatican has published its first list of bishops who will attend the next Synod of bishops in October 2015. For those who were closely following the controversies surrounding the October 2014 Extraordinary Synod of Bishops, at least some of the names on the list will look heartening.The US list includes some of the more notable American defenders of Catholic orthodoxy, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia and Los Angeles Archbishop José Horacio Gómez and the...

My daughter will turn 19 this month. She is our fifth child. She has also been the most worrying to us as she started using drugs a long time ago. She said she first smoked weed at age 12. Since then she has gone on the try many other drugs to include meth, cocaine, pills and LSD and a few others I can’t name. Last year she was in intensive care for 8 days. She has also been in jail about seven or eight times and gone through rehab twice. She is currently living with her mother and I at...

"What do you think you missed not having a dad around?" Marshawn Lynch, the grumpy, often-fined National Football League star for the defending Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks, was asked that question. Lynch, raised on the mean streets of Oakland, California, by a single mother, said: "Nothing. My mama played both parts." When asked, however, why he finds it difficult to "trust" people, Lynch tells a story about his father: "I think it started earlier, when Mom would (take me over to my dad's) house. And when I get there, my dad like, 'Oh, OK, I be right back,' and...

resident Obama's disrespect for motherhood has manifested itself in policies ranging from support for same-sex marriage to defense of a form of abortion that involves forcing a baby into a drug-induced premature delivery and then leaving that little one to die. When it comes to the most vulnerable and innocent human beings -- those for whom great mothers have great hearts -- Obama has a heart of stone. It is demonstrably true that he does not believe a child has a right to a mother or a need for a mother. If he did, he could not support same-sex marriages...

FR CANTEEN MISSION STATEMENT Showing support and boosting the morale of our military and our allied military and the family members of the above.Honoring those who have served before. FReeper Canteen Just Hangin' Cafe Come on in, we're open Need a place just to hang out? This is it. Got a hankering for pizza? We serve coffee, tea, conversation and music. How about a tall brew? No worries in the FReeper Canteen Just Hangin' Cafe. Grab a glass and start a conversation. You never know who you might meet in the Cafe. Glad you could join us. Enjoy your...

My "Aha Moment" happened because of a package of hamburger meat. I asked my husband to stop by the store to pick up a few things for dinner, and when he got home, he plopped the bag on the counter. I started pulling things out of the bag, and realized he'd gotten the 70/30 hamburger meat - which means it's 70% lean and 30% fat. Read more at http://www.sunnyskyz.com/blog/610/I-Wasn-t-Treating-My-Husband-Fairly-And-It-Wasn-t-Fair#EY4FIxGCmr92Qrb1.99

How big a problem is family fragmentation? "Immense," says Mitch Pearlstein, head of the Minnesota think tank Center of the American Experiment. "The biggest domestic problem facing this country." So big he went out and interviewed 40 experts of varying ideology across the nation and relayed their answers in his book "Broken Bonds: What Family Fragmentation Means for America's Future." That's the good news. The bad news is that none of the experts is confident he has an answer, and neither is Pearlstein. What is family fragmentation? The facts are easy to state. About 40 percent of babies born in...

One of the nicest things about this video is the honest affection and love happening in the Riquelme house even before the parents open their amazing gift. But it’s obvious that the parents of Joe Riquelme have done it right — not only did they raise a successful man, but they also managed to raise one who appreciated them enough to want to pay it backwards, rather than forwards, and gift the people who gave him his start in life. See Joe Riquelme story and video here.

If media headlines are to be believed, 2014 was the year in which Catholics, having been “consulted” about their adherence to Catholic teaching, firmly rejected traditional doctrine on sexual morality. “Poll: Catholic Beliefs at Odds With Vatican Doctrine” ran one headline. “German, Swiss Catholics Reject Many Church Teachings on Family,” claimed another. The supposedly official “survey” in question was described by some bishops as an “unprecedented questionnaire” and even as an “opinion poll,” creating the unfortunate perception that the Vatican was “polling” members of the Church on future pastoral priorities and perhaps even on doctrine itself. The remarkable thing about...

Focused on a Functional Family: A Homily for the Feast of the Holy Family By: Msgr. Charles PopeHere in the middle of the Christmas Octave, the Church bids us to celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family. On the old calendar, the Feast of the Holy Family falls on the Sunday after Epiphany, which makes a little more sense since the gospels appointed for the feast often take us far forward in time mere days after He is born. The gospel this year is only forty days into the future  (unlike other years when the gospel takes us twelve years into the...

To Dad--who knew how to keep Christmas well Candle wicks, like memories, flicker faintly at times, and burn brightly at others. Dickens could have been writing about my father, William Christian Stoos, when he said of Scrooge that he knew how to keep Christmas well. Dad was the Spirit of Christmas in our household. Each year he anticipated the holiday with a childlike glee. Although a stoic man, and deeply spiritual, he became a child at Christmas time—his favorite time of the year. Whether it was the gaudy Christmas tree with its 2,000 lights that warmed our cozy house, the...

Many parents undoubtedly think they are doing the best for their children by having them bring lunch from home instead of eating the lunches served in school. But recent studies clearly prove them wrong. Home-packed lunches, the research showed, are likely to be considerably less nourishing than the meals offered in schools that abide by current nutrition guidelines for the National School Lunch Program. That program is, distressingly, increasingly under attack. But the program must not continue to be undermined, and more schools should be encouraged to participate. Nearly 32 million of the more than 50 million children in public...

A few days ago, I reported that the Ebola air ambulance (one of them) was en route to the Canary islands. Today, we find that the plane somehow jumped over to Portugal without filing a flight plan, and is now scheduled to arrive at Joint Base Andrews. The plane’s twin, N173PA, has also visited the same airport in Portugal in recent weeks.

Around this time of year I can get a little blue or down. (The events of 9-11 – and the last two presidential “elections” have made the blue this year a little deeper and darker.) When that happens, I drag this out and reread it until I again remember what this season is REALLY all about. I hope that it also helps you to drift back to those special people and times now gone and what THEY meant to us all. Merry Christmas -- and God bless us every one! ********** In a few days, much of the Christian world...

This is my second Christmas season without my mother, and so far it's been harder than the first. I had known that the first year would be hard, and all I really cared about was surviving it. Activity was my friend: My sister Kathy and I spent the fall wrapping up her estate, selling her house, sharing her prized possessions with family and friends. We talked every day. Much of our connection was activity-based: Was her account closed? Were the papers signed? It was hard, but I had known that it was going to be hard -- so I accepted...

(Photo: CNS) The III Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops met for several weeks in October 2014 and issued the document, “Pastoral Challenges to the Family in the Context of Evangelization.” There has been much commentary about the ill-conceived interim report, Relatio post Disceptationem, which implied that homosexuality had inherent positive gifts and that divorced and remarried people who were in a state of perpetual adultery could somehow be accommodated to be able to receive communion. The scandalous nature of these ill-conceived paragraphs created great public confusion. Thankfully, in the final Relatio Synodi, the scandalous language was removed....