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Which Do You Prefer: Melons and Leeks, or the Bread of Heaven? Msgr. Charles Pope • August 7, 2017 • The first reading for daily Mass on Monday (18th week of the year) was taken from the Book of Numbers. It features the Israelites grumbling about the manna in the wilderness:Would that we had meat for food! We remember the fish we used to eat without cost in Egypt, and the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. But now we are famished; we see nothing before us but this manna (Numbers 11:4-5).While it is easy...

Getting Unbound: A Reflection on Deliverance Ministry Msgr. Charles Pope • August 6, 2017 • There is wide interest today in the topic of exorcism. The publication in 2010 of Matt Baglio’s The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist and the subsequent movie and interviews with Fr. Gary Thomas have sparked some of this interest. Prior to this, books such as An Exorcist Tells His Story, by Fr. Gabriele Amorth, had paved the way.Frankly, another reason for the interest is that as our world becomes more secular, families disintegrate; the outright celebration of sinful practices spreads and there...

Learning to See - A Homily for the Feast of the Transfiguration Msgr. Charles Pope • August 5, 2017 • The Transfiguration, Raphael (1520)The Feast of the Transfiguration is ultimately about vision. The Lord brought Peter, James, and John up a high mountain in order that they might come to see. Even the word that describes this day bespeaks vision. It is from the Latin transfiguratione. Trans means “across,” and by extension, “change.” Figura means “shape” or “form.” The suffix -ation creates a noun from the underlying verb. Putting it all together, transfiguration was the process by which Christ...

Doctors of the Church Monsignor Charles PopeQ. What is the process for determining how someone is declared a Doctor of the Church? Sam, via social mediaA. The Doctors of the Church are teachers of the faith who have demonstrated exemplary holiness and have deepened the whole Church’s understanding of the Catholic faith. They must be officially declared doctors by a papal proclamation. Such men and women also are known particularly for the depth of understanding and the orthodoxy of their theological teachings. Though their teachings are not infallible, being a “doctor” means that they contributed significantly to the formulation of...

What Is It That Most Distracts Us? Msgr. Charles Pope • August 3, 2017 • credit: dydcheung, FlickrWe think of distractions as coming mostly from the world around us, but is that really true? Consider the following, drawn from the stories of the early desert Fathers and monastic experience:Sometimes there would be a rush of noisy visitors and the silence of the monastery would be shattered. This would upset the disciples; not the Abbot, who seemed just as content with the noise as with the silence. To his protesting disciples he said one day, “Silence is not the absence...

A talk with Fr. Job (Gumerov) on the new martyrs of the Russian ChurchFather Job, an experienced confessor of the Moscow Sretensky Monastery, speaks about the factors preventing some faithful from recognizing Nicholas II as a saint, the relationship between the Tsar’s abdication and the Russian people’s renunciation of the Church, how mass unbelief impedes the comprehension of the podvig [spiritual exploit] of the new martyrs, and the proper understanding of the people’s repentance for the sins of their ancestors.The Russian Revolution, with its “Red Terror” that ruined the lives of millions of families, is still an uninteresting event of...

The recently opened House of European History in Brussels offers an account of Europe described by one writer as “both typically modern and emphatically French and socialist.”Looking at things from this side of the Atlantic, it is easy to think of Europe as a single, united entity. Seen up close it’s not so clear. National identity keeps getting in the way. French, German, Italian, Polish, and so on—those ancient identities still matter to many people. As arguably they should. National identity bestows a sense of rootedness and continuity that the new European institutions apparently haven’t been able to supply up...

While it is extremely difficult to measure the extent to which religion impacts Americans, one polling organization has attempted to do so using four criteria. The poll was designed to acquire a sense of how the 50 states compare with each other on the matter of which has the most religious population. The four criteria used were the importance of religion in people’s lives, frequency of attendance at worship services, frequency of prayer, and absolute certainty of belief in God (“How Religious...?,” 2009). As one might expect, more Americans in the “Bible Belt” states indicate that religion is very important...

Training for Testimony is Missing in Many Parishes Msgr. Charles Pope • August 2, 2017 • 2 Comments credit – Jaclyn Lippelmann, Catholic StandardCatholicism has glorious liturgical and intellectual traditions, but because we have not excelled in training Catholics to give joyful witness to wonder of the Lord and our faith, they are among the best kept secrets around.In certain denominations, giving witness is a major focus, and congregants are well-trained for it both through personal testimony (witness talks are common in Protestant liturgies) and in their musical tradition. Pastoring in African-American parishes for most of my priesthood has...

(Photo: YouTube/Israel Antiquities Authority Official Channel)Artifacts dating from the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in the sixth century BC.A newly discovered archaeological find confirms the Old Testament's account of the taking of Jerusalem by the Babylonian Empire in the sixth century BC.Excavations conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority at the Jerusalem Walls National Park, as funded by the City of David Foundation, discovered strong evidence of fire damage from around the time when the city was conquered by the Babylonians.The IAA explained in a YouTube video from late July that various findings recently unearthed included "charred wood, grape...

Who is Really on Trial in Our Life? Msgr. Charles Pope • August 1, 2017 • Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI possesses a keen ability to summarize the ideas and problems of our times both cogently and succinctly. Consider the following assessment of our age that he made during a 2015 interview:For the man of today…. things are, in a certain sense, inverted, or rather, man no longer believes he needs justification before God, but rather he is of the opinion that God is obliged to justify himself because of all the horrible things in the world and in the...

There was a spate of headlines last week claiming that new scientific discoveries disproved the historical narrative of the Bible. Headlines included, "DNA vs the Bible: Israelites did not wipe out the Canaanites" and "Study disproves the Bible's suggestion that the ancient Canaanites were wiped out." The problem is that the reverse is actually true: The discoveries confirm what the Scriptures explicitly state.Not surprisingly, these headlines didn't come from obscure, Bible-bashing websites. Instead, they came from Cosmos Magazine, Yahoo.com, New Scientist (claiming that the discovery helped unravel the "true fate" of the Canaanites), and others. As stated in the New York...

Finding the Church in a Bach Fugue Msgr. Charles Pope • July 31, 2017 • credit: Jaclyn Lippelmann, Catholic StandardMany of you have likely read the classic description of the Church from the 1951 novel Dan England and the Noonday Devil, by Myles Connolly. It is a wonderful reminder that the Church is not an institution, but a Body, made up of members who, each in his own unique way, give witness to the one Body, which is Christ. Here is an excerpt from the book: What is the Church?The Church to me is all important things everywhere. It...

ROME, July 26, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) – Sources inside the Vatican suggest that Pope Francis aims to end Pope Benedict XVI’s universal permission for priests to say the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM), also known as the Extraordinary Form of the Mass. While the course of action would be in tune with Pope Francis’ repeatedly expressed disdain for the TLM especially among young people, there has been no open discussion of it to date. Sources in Rome told LifeSite last week that liberal prelates inside the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith were overheard discussing a plan ascribed to the Pope to...

The authority of Scripture holds supreme importance in a Christian worldview, especially for Protestant evangelicals who believe that their faith and the way they live depend upon Scripture. Other branches of Christendom and skeptics, such as the convert to Roman Catholicism Peter Kreeft, sometimes raise objections to this crucial distinction. (1) They suggest that this principle is incoherent or unworkable. Responses to seven common objections explain how sola scriptura impacts Christian theology. Objection #1: Scripture itself does not teach the principle of sola scriptura; therefore, this principle is self-defeating. Response: The doctrine of sola scriptura need not be taught formally...

Heaven is an Acquired Taste Msgr. Charles Pope • July 30, 2017 • There is a tendency today to forget that Heaven is an acquired taste; not everyone wants what God offers. While everyone wants to be happy, often happiness is conceived of in an egocentric way. Heaven is thought of as a personally designed paradise where we will be happy on our own terms.But that is not what Heaven is. Heaven is the Kingdom of God in all its fullness. Its values and qualities are manifold but include many things that are not immediately desirable to those who...

On Sunday, the day before the 99th anniversary of the brutal murder of the holy Royal Martyrs which the Church celebrates today July 17, a monument to Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarevich Alexey was consecrated on the territory of the St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Novosibirsk, according to the site of the Novosibirsk Diocese. The entire square in front of the cathedral was filled with Orthodox Christians. People were also gathered across the street for the youth cross procession, dedicated to the holy Right-Believing Peter and Febronia and the Day of Family, Love, and Loyalty, which was to begin...

orge Bergoglio is the first Jesuit to become pope and may end up the last Jesuit to be pope, in light of the havoc that he is wreaking upon the Church. But who knows? After all, he is stacking the college of cardinals with liberal appointees in the hope that they will elect a modernist clone in the next conclave. In any case, it was exceedingly reckless that the cardinals chose a Jesuit to lead the Church at the very moment that that religious order was at its most corrupt and theologically flaky. This fact alone will give Gibbonian historians...

Give Me Jesus – A Sermon for the 17th Sunday of the Year Msgr. Charles Pope • July 29, 2017 • Scots’ Church, MelbourneThe Gospel today asks a fundamental question: “What is it that you value most?” In other words, He’s asking us what we want most. We tend to answer questions like this the way we think we should, rather than genuinely. When we’re with the doctor (and Jesus is our doctor) our best bet is to answer honestly so that we can begin a true healing process. The fact is, we all need a heart transplant; we...

CAT scans reveal that the Sudanese woman bore the image of the Archangel Michael on her leg. The mummified remains of an Egyptian woman, discovered in a cemetery near the bank of the Nile. revealed a surprising discovery: she bore a tattoo of the Archangel Michael.The Telegraph | YouTubeCAT scans performed by the British Museum revealed that the woman, who lived in Sudan around 700 AD, had the tattoo on her inner thigh (whether it was meant to be seen remains unknown).The tattoo features a cross on top of a symbol representing the Archangel Michael. It combines in one...