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Featured Term selected at random:NIGHT WATCH A sacred vigil or guard. One of the four ancient divisions of the night during which official prayers were offered in the early days of the Church. The later Matins and Lauds of the Divine Office probably represented those watches. All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

A Prayer for the Internet from the 1946 Roman Ritual? Sure, and It’s Wonderful! By: Msgr. Charles PopeThe old Roman Ritual was (is) a magnificent collection of blessings and prayers. It had some of the most amazing little blessings of things it would never occur to you to find in such a collection. For example, among other more common blessings of statues, religious medals, and so forth are blessings, often elaborately laid out, for things like a seismograph, a typewriter, a printing press, a fishing boat, a fire engine, a stable, medicine, a well, a bridge, an archive, a lime kiln,...

Chicanery, to be polite, is afoot in regard to the Synod next year. Father Z gives us the details. The outline of features for the next Synod of Bishops in October 2015, or Lineamenta, has been released. The Lineamenta is based on the last Synod’s final document, the Relatio Synodi. For the Relatio, the members of the Synod voted on each paragraph. According to the Synod’s own rules, established and approved by those appointed by Pope Francis to run the Synod, in order to be included in the Relatio each paragraph had to receive a 2/3’s majority of voting members....

Hollywood, still wet from the soaking it took from Noah, has headed for the desert with Moses in the new movie Exodus: Gods and Kings. Surely this time we have a foolproof crowd pleaser filled only with milk and honey? Or, instead, is it going to be a lot of grumbling at bitter herbs?The movie, which opens today, stars Christian Bale, best known for his Batman portrayal, and is directed by Ridley Scott, no stranger to big screen extravaganzas like his film Gladiator. In 3D, and costing an estimated $140, 000,000, this must have appeared a formidable proposition. I mean,...

Are You Man Enough to Take The NFP Challengeby Ellen RossiniMention Natural Family Planning (NFP) in a typical group of Catholic men and you can expect one of three responses:·    Silence. ("I don’t know what it is, but I am pretty certain I don’t want to talk about it.") ·    It’s too difficult. ("All that abstinence…")·    It doesn’t work. ("Joe uses NFP and he has six children!")There are myths and misunderstandings aplenty when it comes to the Church’s teaching on birth regulation. But according to the experts – the husbands who partner with their wives to use natural, moral...

In Part 1 (see below) of my defense of the Immaculate Conception, I presented Mary as the “woman” from Genesis 3:15 and Revelation 12 who is at enmity with the devil. I would like to turn now to the scriptural evidence that points to Mary as the “Ark of the New Covenant.” The Ark of the CovenantAnother indication of Mary’s sinlessness can be found in the parallel between Mary and the Ark of the Covenant from the Old Testament: Luke 1:28,31,42,45,48 (DRB) and Psalms 93:5: Mary was a house of the Lord, and the house of the Lord is forever...

Featured Term selected at random:GREAT PROMISE The twelfth of the traditional twelve promises made by the Sacred Heart to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-90). It declares: "I promise you in the excessive mercy of my Heart that my all-powerful love will grant to all who receive Holy Communion on the First Fridays of nine consecutive months the grace of final perseverance; they shall not die in my disgrace, nor without receiving their sacraments. My divine Heart shall be their safe refuge in this last moment." Along with the other promises, the Great Promise was implicitly approved by the Church in...

Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There! A Brief Consideration of the Importance of ExperienceBy: Msgr. Charles PopeI want to give two thumbs up for good old-fashioned experience, just experiencing life to its top … just having an experience! Too often in today’s hurried age and also in this time of 24×7 news, we rush past experience right to analysis. Too often we insist on knowing immediately what something “means” and what to think about it. This rush to think and analyze often happens before the experience is even over. And, of course, analyzing something before all the facts are...

The Treasure of Singleness Tyler Blanski It can be difficult to be a single Christian. I remember watching as one by one my friends would marry, start families, and settle down. The cards would come just before Christmas with news of another baby or a new home, and I would set them on the table in my empty apartment and sigh. As a Christian, my newsfeed was like one long drawn out toast to holy matrimony, and I was getting tired of holding up my glass. The Kingdom of God is like a wedding feast, and the baptized faithful had so...

Featured Term selected at random:CALIFORNIA MISSIONS The parish centers established among the American Indians by Catholic missionaries from Spain. Three sets of missions were founded, in sequence, by the Jesuits and Dominicans in Lower California (now Mexico), and by the Franciscans in Upper California (now the United States). The Jesuit missions and the years of their foundation, beginning from south to north, were: San José del Cabo (1730); Santiago de las Coras (1721); San Juan de Ligní (1705); Nuestra Señora de los Dolores del Sur (1721); Nuestra Señora del Pilar (1720); Santa Rosa or Todos Santos (1733); San Luis Gonzaga...

Come Lord Jesus! A Meditation on the Stunning Glory of Being Gathered to Christ on the Last Day By: Msgr. Charles PopeIn Advent, as we continue to meditate on the Parousia (the magnificent Second Coming of the Lord), we do well to allow our imaginations to be engaged in contemplating the glory that awaits those who are faithful, to meditate on the joy and ecstasy of the culmination of all things!Though we have soberly meditated on the need to be ready and on the great danger that many who are not serious may be lost, for those who ARE ready, what glories...

St. Juan Diego: Ordinary Son of Mary Daniel StewartJuan Diego was born in 1474 in a place called Cuautitlán. Once a part of the Aztec Empire, Cuautitlán was conquered by the Spanish and is now in present day Mexico City. Born before the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, Juan Diego was an indigenous Mexican who was given the name Cuauhtlatoatzin at birth. When Franciscan missionaries arrived, Cuauhtlatoatzin and his wife were some of the first indigenous people to convert. At baptism, they were given the names Juan Diego and Maria Lucia. Juan Diego was not a slave but...

The Synoptic Problem The order of the Gospels in our printed Bible is that sanctioned by Tradition. The first three Gospels are frequently called the Synoptics (from the Greek terms syn "together," and opsis "view"). When placed side by side and brought under one view, these three Gospels present a striking resemblance and appear as one narrative. Not only are many of the same events and speeches recorded in each, but the order and manner in which they are narrated is nearly the same. The problem as to the origin and relation of the first three Gospels, presented by...

Modern philosophy is full of all sorts of absurd theories about the illusory nature of existence and the unreliability of everything we know to be true. But the boots on the ground, living, breathing, day to day philosophy of even the most angst-ridden German nihilist or the most wild-eyed French existentialist has to be common sense realism. Even German and French philosophers must eat, sleep and conduct themselves in civil society.There’s great consolation in the reliability of the law of gravity and the fact that it means something specific to me or anyone else when you say dog, cat,...

G.K. Chesterton had a knack for anticipating future trends but when, in his 1914 novel The Flying Inn, he anticipated the Islamization of England, it seemed so far out of the realm of possibility that it was difficult to take it as anything but a flight of fancy.True enough, the book has a whimsical, Pickwickian quality. It follows the rambling adventures of two British stalwarts, Patrick Dalroy and Humphrey Pump, as they try to stay one step ahead of the law, dispensing free liquor as they go in an England where alcohol has been banned. The “Flying Inn” is...

Your Eminence, Metropolitan Joseph, Brother hierarchs and beloved clergy, Your Excellencies, and beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, I address you with the peace of Christ. I address you with the word of the Word who lived among us. "My peace I leave to you, my peace I give to you" (John 14:27). The enthronement of a bishop in the church is the enthronement of peace and love in her midst. Now, the Church expresses her full essence within a community governed with love. O Sayedna, Joseph, in the name of all your brothers in the Antiochian Orthodox Church, I...

Featured Term selected at random:THREE CHAPTERS A sixth-century controversy involving Pope Vigilius and Emperor Justinian. The emperor had condemned three subjects: 1. the person and writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia; 2. certain writings of Theodoret against St. Cyril of Alexandria; and 3. the letter of Ibas of Edessa to Maris. Since all three were pro-Nestorian, the Emperor hoped in this way to conciliate the Monophysites. The Pope at first refused to ratify the Emperor's condemnation, but under compulsion later approved it. This was interpreted in the West as an act of weakness, and the Pope withdrew his approval. Soon after,...

The “Great Gettin’ Up Morning” as Described in an Unlikely Advent Hymn By: Msgr. Charles PopeHere in the heart of Advent, we are considering how prepared we are for the Lord to come again. Either He will come to us or we will go to Him, but either way we must prepare. In today’s post I’d like to consider some teachings about the Day of Judgment, from an Advent hymn that most do not know is an Advent hymn. Tomorrow I would like to consider the great Parousia, wherein the saved enter into glory with the Lord.Regarding the “Great and...

...When ushered into the master bedroom of the Mormon patriarch Brigham Young at his winter home in St. George, Utah, a few years ago, I felt duty-bound to ask an obvious question: Where did the other women sleep? Other women? The church tour guide blushed, and laser-stared me as if I’d blasphemed the Mormon Moses. I wondered about arrangements and jealousies, the conjugal timing of a man who was married to 55 women, by most accounts. I didn’t ask about the sexual acrobatics of the great pioneer, just the spreadsheet logistics of managing all those spouses. ...The Church of Jesus...

December 8th is the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception.It celebrates an important point of Catholic teaching, and in most years it is a holy day of obligation.Here are 8 things you need to know about the teaching and the way we celebrate it. 1. Who does the Immaculate Conception refer to? There’s a popular idea that it refers to Jesus’ conception by the Virgin Mary.It doesn’t.Instead, it refers to the special way in which the Virgin Mary herself was conceived.This conception was not virginal. (That is, she had a human father as well as a human mother.) But it was special...