Free Republic

Link

F r. Benedict Groeschel, whose death we all mourn, lived at Trinity House in Larchmont, a hundred yards from my late mother-in-law. Coming from Cologne, Germany, where Jews had good relationships with the Catholic Church, my late mother-in-law chose to continue that tradition. Whenever she cooked for the Jewish holidays, a portion was sent down the block to Fr. Benedict. Whenever objects had to be disposed of, they went to Fr. Benedict. In this way, everything, from used clothing to used cars, was recycled to the poor through Fr. Benedict. We always visited him on the days before Christmas with...

By Fr. Benedict Groeschel, CFR from First Things Magazine (June/July 2007) It was a truism—universally accepted until the last decades of the twentieth century—that, wherever the Catholic Church was present, there would be representatives of the religious life: communities of vowed men and women living a frugal common life, praying and working together in Christian service, and offering a witness to the kingdom of God. They belonged to congregations that explicitly took on the responsibility of answering the gospel’s call to leave family, lands, and ownership to follow Jesus Christ. Similar religious communities existed in smaller numbers in the...

A photograph that accompanied the top headline on the Drudge Report at one point Monday looked very familiar to me. It showed two tiny feet peeking through the fingers of a hand, and I thought at first that it was a typical anti-abortion photo that marchers carry at pro-life marches. In fact, it was a photo of Amilia Taylor, born four months ago at 22 weeks gestation, weighing only 10 ounces. She is believed to be the only baby born at less than 23 weeks to have survived. Amilia now weighs four pounds, and doctors are preparing to release...