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Painting of St. Gemma Galgani, taken from St. Gemma Galgani blog "...I have...to believe that God...raised up this child of Heaven at a time of so much falling away in piety as an example and stimulus to Christians to venerate and love the most Holy Sacrament of the Altar..." ..."'Oh, what immense happiness and joy...my heart feels before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament! And if Jesus would allow me to enter sacred Tabernacle where He, Soul, Body, Blood, and Divinity is present, should I not be in Paradise?'..." "...We read in the lives of different Saints that, as sometimes they...

Featured Term (selected at random:TEN COMMANDMENTS  Also called the Decalogue, they are the divinely revealed precepts received by Moses on Mount Sinai. Engrave on two tablets of stone, they occur in two versions in the Bible. The earlier form (Exodus 20:1-17) differs from the alter (Deuteronomy 5:6-18) in tow ways. It gives a religious motive, instead of a humanitarian one, for observing the sabbath; and in prohibitin avarice, it classes a man's wife along with the rest of his possessions, instead of separately. With the exception of forbidding graven images and statues and the precept about the Sabbath, the...

Finally! Hey, you know I was thinking that it was almost Easter and there hasn't been some shocking new revelation that Jesus wasn't real or he was real but was actually just a plumber from Poughkeepsie (which oddly enough was the name of a small town in Israel.) ((Not really)) So a new study has come out saying that the proof that Jesus had a wife is kinda' old. Yeah, that's actually what the study said. A piece a parchment supposedly says "Jesus said to them my wife." That's old news. But the new news is that the parchment is...

Over the winter break, I spent several days shifting through the survey results in the diocese’s archive, located in St. Mary’s Seminary. The survey results could provide evidence for many articles, even books, but I was initially only interested in questions dealing with the liturgy. The simple answer to the laity’s reception of the liturgical changes can be found in question 19: “Changes in the Mass have harmed rather than helped me to worship” and 27% agreed and 68% disagreed. These results confirm the standard narrative that the majority of Catholics preferred the new Mass with its use of English...

How to Live in the Presence of Godby Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.The Closing Conference of a RetreatWe are first told to pray continually. The first time we meet this injunction of Christ is in the Gospel of St. Luke. Luke, by the way, is the evangelist of the Holy Spirit. The Savior is described by St. Luke as telling His followers to pray continually and never lose heart. Let us think seriously about what we are told. We need, that is we should, which means we are expected to, pray continually. It is a universal duty applying to...

Featured Term (selected at random:MARTYR A person who chooses to suffer, even to die, rather than renounce his or her faith or Christian principles. After the example of Christ one does not resist one's persecutors when they use violence out of hatred or malice against Christ, or his Church, or some revealed truth of the Catholic religion. (Etym. Greek martyros, witness, martyr.) All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

My two-and-a-half-year-old son has never liked to be still. Everywhere he goes, he runs. So taking this little rambunctious boy to Mass on Sundays has often been a chore. For months we never made it through an entire liturgy without someone having to take him outside to run. I hated being relegated to the cry room, so I engaged him in what was going on. I would whisper in his ear, drawing his attention to the statues, the candles, or the stained glass. “Is that Jesus? Look, there’s Mary and Joseph.” I would attempt to teach him the responses, whispering,...

PONTIUS PILATEHis name provides two valuable clues to his background and ancestry. The family name, Pontius was that of a prominent clan among the Samnites, hill cousins of the Latin Romans. They had almost conquered Rome in several fierce wars. The Pontii were of noble blood, but when Rome finally absorbed the Samnites, their aristocracy was demoted to the Roman equestrian or middle-class order, rather than the senatorial order. It is Pilate’s personal name Pilatus that proves almost conclusively that he was of Samnite origin. Pilatus means “armed-with-a-javelin”. The pilum or javelin was six feet long, half wooden and...

Featured Term (selected at random:PAPIST Opprobrious term used in English-speaking countries to designate a Catholic. Its origin goes back to the Protestant Reformation, when Martin Luther (1483-1546) and John Calvin (1509-64) wrote polemics against the papacy. All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

Confession Why Do We Go To Confession?"Catholics who started going to confession as children may recall that the major concern during preparation was not how you sinned - disobedience was a given - but how often you had sinned since your last confession. The Sacrament of Reconciliation, or Penance as it was once called, was never intended to be a numbers game. It is now and always has been a means to seek receive God's forgiveness and to renew our resolve, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to follow Jesus' commands to love God and to love one...

Bill Donohue comments on last night’s show, “Unsealed: Alien Files,” that aired on the Science Channel: The program speculates that “new evidence may prove the Vatican is hiding actual aliens from the public.” Either that or the channel will rename itself the Sci-fi Channel. The priest who directs the Vatican observatory, Dr. Jose Funes, was interviewed for the program, and he made the rather unexceptional remark that the universe is so huge that “it would be possible that life could evolve the way we know it on Earth.” This is soon followed by a voiceover that says, “Vatican officials have...

Featured Term (selected at random:COMMUNION OF SAINTS The unity and co-operation of the members of the Church on earth with those in heaven and in purgatory. They are united as being one Mystical Body of Christ. The faithful on earth are in communion with each other by professing the same faith, obeying the same authority, and assisting each other with their prayers and good works. They are in communion with the saints in heaven by honoring them as glorified members of the Church, invoking their prayers and aid, and striving to imitate their virtues. They are in communion with the...

Late last week on the blog the I made mention of the sins that “cry to heaven for vengeance.” The traditional list, is summarized in the Catechism which states The catechetical tradition also recalls that there are “sins that cry to heaven”: the blood of Abel, the sin of the Sodomites, the cry of the people oppressed in Egypt, the cry of the foreigner, the widow, and the orphan, injustice to the wage earner (# 1867). It probably does not surprise you that I got push-back from certain homosexuals who wrote in to “remind” me that the sin of Sodom...

The story of the Catholic church in the United States has become a tale of two churches: In the Northeast and upper Midwest, the church is shrinking, and in the South and West, the church is flourishing and membership is increasing, in some cases dramatically. That's the conclusion demographers presented at a conference titled "The Catholic Parish in the 21st Century: Challenges and Opportunities [1]," held at Villanova University in early March. The conference was a joint venture of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University and Villanova's Center for Church Management and Business Ethics....

Bill Donohue comments on the Travel Channel’s “Greatest Mysteries: Vatican”; it premiered last night:Lies about Catholicism abound, and the intentional distortion of the truth is also commonplace. We’re used to it at the Catholic League. But there are times when the source astounds us. This happened today when John Mulvey, a policy analyst, watched the recklessly inaccurate portrayal of Catholicism that aired Sunday night on the Travel Channel. At times the material seemed straight out of the annals of sci-fi.Yes, there were rogue popes, none more disgraceful than Rodrigo Borgia, Alexander VI. But if the goal was to promote skepticism...

Easter and the Holy Eucharistby Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.We do not usually associate Easter and the Holy Eucharist. But we should. Our faith tells us that God became man in order that, by His death on the Cross, He might redeem the world. But this same faith tells us that, when Christ died on Calvary, the Church came into existence. We may therefore say that we were delivered from sin by the Savior’s death, and receive the blessings of His grace through the Mystical Body which came into being the moment Jesus expired on Good Friday.But our Catholic...

Featured Term (selected at random:GIFT OF COUNSEL One of the special gifts of the Holy Spirit; it perfects the virtue of prudence. Its function is to enable a person to judge promptly and rightly, as by a sort of supernatural intuition, what should be done, especially in difficult situations. With the gift of counsel, the Holy Spirit speaks, as it were, to the heart and in an instant enlightens a person what to do. It corresponds to the promise made by Christ to his followers, "When they hand you over, do not worry about how to speak or what to...

"Catabaptists" is Calvin's term for "Anabaptists" - the sixteenth century radicals who basically wanted nothing to do with the earthly state, and did not encourage concern for the office of a magistrate or (in this case) the monarch. Calvin is keen to demonstrate to the King that Protestants, whilst critical of religious matters, are of a different stripe. Protestants prove loyal citizens, regularly pray for the King, demonstrate courage and fortitude as both citizens and soldiers and are the salt of the earth. Calvin is speaking of himself in these closing lines of the preface; speaking, let it be said,...

The Real Presence and SanctityFr. John A. Hardon, S.J.In speaking about Holiness it is remarkable how we can overlook the obvious.  For example it is obvious that we cannot become holy unless we obtain the extraordinary graces needed to reach sanctity.  Hearing about holiness;  reading about it;  even seeing holiness, does not make one holy.  We need grace.   It is equally obvious that the graces we need must come to us from Christ since as He told us, "Without Me you can do nothing".  If that nothing refers even to salvation, it most certainly refers to sanctification. Photo...

Bill Donohue issued the following statement today:Former President Jimmy Carter made the rounds on CNN over the weekend, championing women’s rights and criticizing the Catholic Church. Perhaps some gutsy reporter will ask him about his own record (click here for the sources we used).Carter has been a volunteer and supporter for Habitat for Humanity since 1984. Habitat was founded by Millard Fuller in 1976. In April 1991, Fuller was forced to resign as president. Why? He was accused of sexually harassing five female employees. He was accused of hugging, kissing them on the mouth, touching their buttocks, and making inappropriate...