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Cardinal Nichols will wear the vestment at a Mass for the repose of the king's soulCardinal Vincent Nichols will wear an ancient vestment believed to be from the royal wardrobe of King Richard III when he celebrates Mass for the repose of the soul of the monarch’s soul in Leicester on Monday. Known as the Westminster Vestment, the chasuble is part of the heritage collection of Ushaw College, the former Catholic seminary at Ushaw Moor, Durham. There is a tradition that it was worn by the Benedictine monks of Westminster Abbey during the reign of King Richard, who died at...

On planet earth there are about 70 million Orthodox Christians that are not in full communion with the Catholic Church (centered at Rome) or with the Eastern Orthodox (centered at Constantinople). These are the Oriental Orthodox Christians. They have all seven sacraments, revere the Mother of God and the saints, have a valid Eucharist, pray for the faithful departed, and have preserved a valid line of apostolic succession.Armenian Christians in the Miaphysite Tradition These Oriental Orthodox Christians do not accept the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451 which dogmatically defined that Christ is one divine Person with two natures (divine and human).Meet the...

Finding the International Museum of the Reformation is almost as complicated as explaining the historical movement it chronicles. You must first navigate the labyrinth of Geneva’s Old Town, down narrow, cobblestone streets and then up a long flight of stone stairs, skirting the shadows cast by a towering 13th-century cathedral. Finally you arrive at the tranquil courtyard of the Maison Mallet, the 14-room 18th-century mansion housing the museum, which opened in 2005. [SNIP] Given how practices have changed, museum officials set out to create a space that contemporary visitors, Protestant or not, would find appealing and meaningful, with creative high-...

Photo courtesy of Sgt. Dennis Jessick For the last 29 years, the faithful and the curious have braved the harsh Michigan winter on one Saturday in February or March to step onto the frozen surface of Little Traverse Bay, near Bayfront Park in Petoskey.There was a record crowd this year:  According to the Emmet County Sheriff’s Department, 2,021 viewers made the hike on the frozen lake March 7.  Sgt. Dennis Jessick of the Emmet County Sheriff’s Office Dive Team, who organizes the event each year, reported that many of the locals and international visitors stood in line for two and a half...

Counsel the DoubtfulDoubt can be the emotional equivalent of anything from a brief spring rain to a Galveston-destroying hurricane. People can feel doubt over whether to place two bucks on the Mariners to win (don’t) or about whether or not the God in whom they have believed all their life is a sham, a fraud, and a delusion. Doubt can be a healthy exercise in which we learn to put aside our tribal prejudices and think critically, or it can be a soul-shattering crisis that radically remakes or destroys us.The difficult thing about living the spiritual work of mercy...

Featured Term selected at random:UBIQUITY The presence of a being in all places at once. Omnipresence of God. All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

Concerns about Cremation: Some Very Strange Practices Are Emerging By: Msgr. Charles PopeSome years ago, the Church gave wider permission for cremation and also lifted traditional restrictions on having cremated remains present in the church for funeral Masses. All of this is pastorally understandable. Very few if any people these days choose cremation for the reasons it had traditionally been forbidden, namely as a denial of the resurrection of the body. Generally the reasons chosen are economic, due to the increasingly high cost of traditional burial and the difficulty, especially in urban areas, of finding room for large cemeteries. The basic norms from the church...

St. Patrick, as seen in C.E. Kempe's stained glass in St. John the Baptist parish, Burford, UK. Credit: Lawrence OP via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). Washington D.C., Mar 17, 2015 / 04:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Many know that Saint Patrick, bishop and missionary to Ireland, was once a slave – but few know of his heartfelt plea on behalf of girls and boys abducted into slavery. “The pathos of St. Patrick’s description of the fate of his victims is something I think we can identify with now,” said Jennifer Paxton, a history professor who teaches at Catholic University of America’s...

Featured Term selected at random:LATIN CHURCH The vast portion of the Catholic Church, which uses the Latin liturgies and has its own distinctive canon law. Synonymous with the Latin Rite are the Western Church and Western patriarchate. The expression Latin Church is ambiguous, however. It is sometimes used in an uncomplimentary way by the Eastern Orthodox to label all Catholics "Latins" because of their allegiance to the Pope. It is also used by some Anglicans to identify what they consider one third of the whole Catholic Church, along with the Anglican and Orthodox. It is finally used, at times, by...

What is Sloth? It is More Subtle and Devilish Than Mere Laziness By: Msgr. Charles PopeOne of the more misunderstood of the cardinal sins is sloth. This is because most see it merely as laziness. But there is more to sloth than that. Let’s take a moment and consider some aspects of the cardinal sin we call sloth.The Greek word we translate as sloth is ἀκηδία akedia (a = absence + kedos = care), meaning indifference or negligence. St. Thomas speaks of sloth as sorrow for spiritual good. By it, we shun spiritual good as too toilsome (cf ST...

The sixteenth-century papacy never succeeded in setting fire to Martin Luther, much to its chagrin. Support from a string of Saxon princes and political events in the Holy Roman Empire combined to keep Luther from Rome's grasp until he succumbed, aged 62, to a natural death. Intriguingly, there was much speculation in Luther's day and for several centuries afterwards about what would have happened if Rome had succeeded in sending the reformer to the stake -- speculation, that is, about whether he would have actually burned or not. From rather early in Luther's reforming career the opinion circulated that Luther...

Saint Patrick, the Enlightener of Ireland was born around 385, the son of Calpurnius, a Roman decurion (an official responsible for collecting taxes). He lived in the village of Bannavem Taberniae, which may have been located at the mouth of the Severn River in Wales. The district was raided by pirates when Patrick was sixteen, and he was one of those taken captive. He was brought to Ireland and sold as a slave, and was put to work as a herder of swine on a mountain identified with Slemish in Co. Antrim. During his period of slavery, Patrick acquired a...

I was recently given a fascinating little book called American History You Never Learned; it contains much information showing that the discovery of the New World, and the founding of our nation, occurred within a direct context of divine guidance and blessing. In particular, Our Lady (who, under the title of the Immaculate Conception, is still today our national patroness) played an important role in the establishment of the United States. For instance: The earliest explorers of North America—sent by the Catholic king of Norway in the 14th century—left behind a carving in modern-day Minnesota in what became known as...

Featured Term selected at random:ZION One of the hills on which Jerusalem stood. Used as a fortress, it was captured by David and renamed the Citadel of David (II Samuel 5:7). It assumed a sacred character when he brought the Ark to Zion. Gradually the name spread until it was applied to all of Jerusalem (II Kings 19:21; Psalms 125, 126). Indeed, increasingly it was used to mean the Jewish faith (Isaiah 33:20); hence, the term Zionism for the modern movement to make Palestine the Jewish homeland. Also spelled Sion. All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's...

I intend to offer, over the next several weeks, a four part series on Calvin's response to Rome's doctrine of Scripture as discovered in the fourth session of the Council of Trent. It's my impression that very few Protestants today -- even the confessing kind -- have informed views on what Rome actually says about the most important theological issues of every age (namely, how we know anything about God and his ways, and how we sinners can be reconciled to the God whom we have offended by our sins). The first and foremost purpose of this brief series, then,...

Do You Fear the Right Thing? Let’s See … A Meditation on the Story of Chicken Little By: Msgr. Charles PopeFear is a very complex passion. On the one hand, there are things that we ought rightly to fear such as grave physical and spiritual dangers. The fear of being near the edge of a cliff might well save our life. The fear of serious sin and the punishment we might experience or the offense to God (who loves us) is appropriate and holy. Sadly, more people lack this holy fear rooted in the possible loss of what is most precious to us:...

On September 11th 1683, Vienna was besieged by Islamic Ottoman Turks. Christians throughout Europe prayed the Rosary in the midst of a desperate situation. At Vienna, vastly outnumbered European Christian forces miraculously and wonderfully delivered a crippling blow to Muslim expansion into Europe, preventing a grim invasion of the continent by Muslim forces. 41,000 Christian forces (including 30,000 troops of Polish King Jan III Sobieski that Pope Innocent XI had called upon) defeated a 140,000 man strong Turkish army the night of September 11th over three centuries before the 9/11 attacks on the United States that were also caused by...

Your Love is Lifting Me Higher – A Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Lent By: Msgr. Charles PopeThe readings in today’s Mass speak to us of our desperate condition, and how God’s abiding love has not only set us free, but also lifted us higher. God was not content to restore us to some earthy garden, paradise though it was. No, he has so loved the world that he sent his Son who has opened heaven itself for us and given us a new, transformed and eternal life.Let's look at some of the themes and ponder that God works...

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← What will you gain? Visiting is BETTER than Preaching → St Patrick the (almost) Protestant Missionary 17 Mar I am a servant of Christ to a foreign nation for the unspeakable glory of life everlasting which is in Jesus Christ our Lord. – Patrick Aside from being more Protestant* than Catholic, and being British, not Irish, Patty was also a bit of a maverick when it came to methodology and practice – according to Mark Driscoll. I wonder how those that have a slightly pietistic view of St Patrick would receive his like today? I think I, and you, already know...