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PHILADELPHIA, April 7, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – The University of Notre Dame's decision to give Vice President Joe Biden their highest award is scandalous and undermines the Church's teaching on life and marriage, Cardinal Raymond Burke said in an interview published today. Speaking with Catholic Action for Faith and Family's Thomas McKenna, Cardinal Burke said the invitation represents what Pope Saint John Paul II, in his apostolic exhortation on the laity, called "one of the greatest evils of our time" - that is, the tendency of Catholics to separate their faith from their daily living. "And this is exactly what we...

The promulgation of the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia by Pope Francis marks the conclusion of a synodal process that has been dominated by attempts to undermine Catholic teaching on matters relating to human life, marriage and the family, on questions including, but not limited to, the indissolubility of marriage, contraception, artificial methods of reproduction, homosexuality, "gender ideology" and the rights of parents and children. These attempts to distort Catholic teaching have weakened the Church's witness to the truths of the natural and supernatural order and have threatened the well-being of the family, especially its weakest and most vulnerable members. The...

Erbil, Iraq, Apr 7, 2016 / 03:30 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Six hundred Christian children whose families fled ISIS violence in 2014 have lost their homes, schools, sometimes friends, sanitary living conditions and the stability of a normal life. However, despite their many losses, there's one thing they never left behind and which continues to grow stronger everyday: their faith. When it comes to the question of how to persevere in the faith - and pass it on with terrorists just a few miles away - one woman named Carin has developed a unique form of catechesis that she is teaching...

Archbishop Henryk Hoser, a synod father at the two Synods on the Family, gives his assessment of the meetings ahead of the publication of 'Amoris laetitia'. On Friday, the Vatican will publish Pope Francis' summary document on the Synod on the Family — 'Amoris laetitia' (the Joy of Love). Ahead of the post-synodal apostolic exhortation's release, and to gain a sense of what some bishops are thinking about the synod outside the anglosphere, here below is the full text of an interview that Polish Archbishop Henryk Hoser of Warsaw-Praga gave last week to EWTN Germany's Robert Rauhut. During their discussion,...

"It is true that Jesus always goes before us and waits for us with open arms," Cardinal Robert Sarah said in an interview published today in Polish. "But it is up to us to also move towards Him!" Rorate Caeli has posted a translation of the interview, in which the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments discusses mercy and forgiveness, the Church in Africa, and love for God as the starting point for holiness, among other subjects. A Polish edition of Cardinal Sarah's book God or Nothing: A Conversation on Faith was recently...

The head of the Church in Wales has apologised "unreservedly" to gay couples for prejudice in the church. Archbishop of Wales Dr Barry Morgan spoke at a meeting of the governing body in Llandudno on Wednesday. The church tweeted "Archbishop of Wales offers a pastoral letter on same-sex relationships apologising unreservedly for prejudice within the church." Last year, Dr Morgan said it would be "foolish" to bring forward a bill for same-sex marriages in church. A statement released by the church said although it was not ready to allow or bless same-sex marriages, "the debate is not over". It went...

The following interview, which first appeared today in PCh24.pl, was conducted by the great Izabella Parowicz, Phd. Miss Parowicz asked us to share this interview with our readers, and we are very pleased to do so.Q: It is a great honour for me to be allowed to carry out this interview with Your Eminence, especially in view of the recent release of the Polish edition of His beautiful interview book entitled "God or Nothing. A Conversation on Faith". While expressing my great joy about the fact that this book has been made available to Polish readers, I would like to...

Part II: Reform of the Vatican's operations has been a central priority of the Holy Father's papacy, but concerns have arisen over some of his picks.VATICAN CITY — As well as episcopal appointments, other useful indicators of this pontificate's direction are Pope Francis' choices of cardinals, his appointments to the Roman Curia and those he chose to participate at the recent synod on the family. So far, after two consistories, the Holy Father has purposely chosen not to award so many red hats to traditional cardinalatial sees, especially in Italy. The Patriarchate of Venice, for instance, for centuries headed by...

The murders of four translators working to bring the Bible to obscure languages in the Middle East earlier this month won't stop the charity behind the effort from its work, officials said. The four unidentified translators, who worked secretly for Wycliffe Associates, a Florida non-profit dedicated to bringing the gospel to hundreds of obscure languages, were killed by suspected Islamist militants at an undisclosed location,Wycliffe officials said in a statement. “They shot and destroyed all the equipment in the office,” read the statement. “The invaders burned all the books and other translation materials in the office." The work is so...

The Church of England has nearly 16,000 buildings, three times more than Tesco, but they are empty most of the time. With their maintenance now an urgent issue, radical reinvention may be required We Britons are famously obsessive about our heritage. Our attachment to stately homes, castles and cathedrals sometimes verges on the fanatical. And yet almost half of all the Grade I listed buildings in England are in the hands of a single organisation - the Church of England, which is mildly bemused as to what it should do with them. It has 15,700 buildings in all, compared with,...

The Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) will broadcast the funeral of Mother Angelica live on Friday.A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated at 11am on Friday at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament, Hanceville, and interment will immediately follow in the Shrine’s Crypt Church.Mother Mary Angelica died on Easter Sunday at the age of 92 at her order’s Our Lady of Angels Monastery in rural Alabama. Mother Angelica was born Rita Rizzo in Canton, Ohio, in 1923. She entered the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration monastery in Cleveland at age 21 and joined other nuns in moving...

Vatican City, Mar 28, 2016 / 02:54 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Benedict XVI had a special response to Mother Angelica's death falling on Easter Sunday: "it’s a gift." Archbishop Georg Ganswein, Benedict's personal secretary, told CNA about the Pope emeritus' comment March 28. Mother Angelica, an Ohio-born Poor Clare nun, founded EWTN Global Catholic Network in Alabama in 1981. It has since become the largest religious media network in the world. She passed away March 27, Easter Sunday, at the age of 92. Her death prompted memorials, eulogies and remembrances from around the world. In Rome, Monsignor Dario Vigano, prefect of...

Mother Angelica. Credit: EWTN. Irondale, Ala., Mar 27, 2016 / 06:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Catholic Church in the United States has lost the Poor Clare nun who changed the face of Catholicism in the United States and around the world. Mother Mary Angelica of the Annunciation, foundress of the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), passed away on March 27 after a lengthy struggle with the aftereffects of a stroke. She was 92 years old.“Mother has always and will always personify EWTN, the network that God asked her to found,” said EWTN Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Michael Warsaw. “Her...

A Turkish-Islamic Center in Maryland, which features a double-minaret mosque, will be opened in the US during Turkish President Erdogan's official visitThe $100 million mega-mosque in Maryland, US will soon be open in the Washington, DC area, as Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan is expected to open the mosque during his official visit to the US between March 29 and April 2. America's largest mosque complex, officially known as the Turkish-American Culture and Civilization Center, was built with Turkish funding under the supervision of the Turkish religious foundation (Diyanet). Almost all $100 million for the mosque was funded by the Religious...

This morning the Pope presided over a solemn Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica for the celebration of Holy ThursdayPope Francis began the global Catholic church's celebration of the days leading to Easter with a call Thursday for people to "break out of our set ways" to be more merciful towards others and telling priests they have sometimes become blind to God’s will "because of an excess of complicated theology." In a solemn Mass at St. Peter's Basilica for the celebration of Holy Thursday, the Pontiff said Jesus had fought not for his own glory but to break down walls...

The Catholic Church grew faster than the global population in past decade St. Peter's Square. Credit: nomadFra via www.shutterstock.com. By Ann Schneible Vatican City, Mar 9, 2016 / 12:25 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The number of Catholics has increased at a faster rate than the rest of the population, newly released statistics by the Vatican reveal.Over the course of nine years, the number of Catholics worldwide has increased by 17.8 percent, compared to the global population, which increased by 17.3 percent.From 2005-2014, the number of Catholics grew from 1.12 billion to 1.27 billion. These and other statistics, released by the Vatican...

VOL is publishing this story because the UCC is even more progressive than The Episcopal Church and therefore says a lot about the future of The Episcopal Church. The UCC is making big staff cuts, and there is an internal report forecasting an 80 percent decline in membership by 2045! The average age of an Episcopalian is now in the mid-Sixties. There are no millennials coming along to fill either pulpits or pews. Nearly half of all pulpits now cannot afford a full time priest. David Virtue If times are tough for oldline Protestant denominations, they are dire for the...

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a group of cases challenging the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that non-profit employers offer health-care coverage that includes contraception, abortifacients, and sterilization. The challengers in the consolidated cases, captioned Zubik v. Burwell, include Little Sisters of the Poor, Priests for Life, and a variety of religious non-profits. Many of the arguments that have been put forth in support of the plaintiffs involve conscience rights. These are important arguments that certainly deserve attention. However, in the amicus brief I filed in on behalf of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, I emphasized public-health...

Rome (AFP) - Pope emeritus Benedict XVI is "slowly, serenely fading" but remains "very lucid", his personal secretary said in an interview published Thursday. Joseph Ratzinger is "an old man, of course, but very lucid. Unfortunately, it's become difficult for him to walk and he needs to use a walking frame," Georg Gaenswein said in an interview with the Italian magazine BenEssere. In 2013, Benedict became the first head of the Catholic Church to resign in seven centuries, amid speculation he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, unable to cope at the top of an institution beset by...

Men to study at Belmont Abbey CollegeBELMONT — The Diocese of Charlotte is establishing a college seminary in response to growing interest in priestly vocations. The St. Joseph College Seminary will be what the Church calls a "minor" seminary, as its focus is undergraduate men considering the priesthood, one step before enrolling in a "major" seminary where they receive more specific priestly formation. It will give these men the opportunity to live closer to home, continue their college studies while in community together, and interact regularly with diocesan vocations staff. On March 19, the feast of St. Joseph, Bishop Peter...