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Social media has enabled communication between friends like never before. It’s also enabled lies to be spread (and debunked more quickly) than ever before. The lies Mormons tell are typically hold-overs from before Snopes was invented, and most Mormons may not realize they are lying, or simply justify the lie because the church is too good and you, their neighbor, would “make such a good member!” Next time a member sends you one of these lies, feel free to send them a link to this list. Also, to you members, before your blood begins to boil on my definition of...

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis has made a surprise visit to one of Rome's main parks to participate in an Earth Day event. Francis, who wrote an encyclical decrying the exploitation of the Earth's environment and resources often at the expense of the poor, went to Villa Borghese, a park filled with Sunday strollers.

At The Catholic Thing Fr. Jerry Pokorsky has a good piece about being non-judgmental, particularly about non-judgmental priests.  I think we have all met that sort, right?  These pathetic, flexi-spined cowards who would be, were Dante in charge, consigned to chase the pointless ever-whirling banner on the empty plain, pursued by stinging flies, treading upon hideous worms.Two snips: Non-Judgmental Shepherds[…]Someone recently told me about a Catholic religion teacher who was called by a concerned parent. The teacher was presenting the Catholic faith in a methodical fashion. An upcoming topic was to be love and marriage. The parent wanted assurances that his...

On 22 April, Cardinal Walter Kasper gave yet another interview about Pope Francis and his reforms. This time, he spoke with the German regional newspaper Aachener Zeitung. In this interview, the German cardinal made some candid — indeed, bold — statements which are very important in the context of the current situation of the Catholic Church. Kasper speaks about the further Church-reform plans of Pope Francis and his intention “not to preserve everything as it has been of old.” With Pope Francis, “things are not any more so abstract and permeated with suspicion, as it was the case in earlier...

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis surprised thousands of teenagers in St. Peter’s Square by personally hearing confessions for more than an hour Saturday morning. The Holy Father administered the Sacrament of Reconciliation to 16 teenage boys and girls gathered in St. Peter’s Square for the Jubilee for Teens. With the Jubilee for Teens in full swing in the Vatican and around Rome, the Holy Father made the surprise visit to participate in the event. He was joined by more than 150 other priests who offered the Sacrament of Reconciliation to thousands of teens throughout the day.

Dear Friends in Jesus and Mary, Greetings again from Mumbai, India. I am back @ FR mostly because of Friends and only because of Catholic Posters like Salvation, NYer, Marshmallow, Grateful2God, Slyfox, TaxChick, Kolokotronis, and a Poster whose "Real Name" I know but whose username I have forgotten. I have a solid devotion to the Divine Mercy, To the Sacred Heart, and to Our Lady. I have a deep- rooted "Eucharistic Spirituality". I was born a "Cradle Catholic" but I am now a "Catholic by Conviction" rather than a Catholic by Custom or by Circumstance. One of the main Objectives...

Aggie and director of Breakaway Ministries, Ben Stuart, will be stepping out of his role after 11 years of ministering to students at Texas A&M. The announcement was made Tuesday night on Breakaway's website. Stuart will be joining the Passion Movement by becoming a Leadership Resident at Passion City Church in Atlanta, GA. He then plans to start another Passion City Church in another city. Breakaway started as a group of friends talking about the Bible in a small apartment back in 1989, but as it continued to grow, a bigger venue was needed. It has since been held at...

Mother Teresa at the National Prayer Breakfast, on 3 February 1994.

In a question-and-answer session with reporters who accompanied him on his April 16 visit to the Greek island of Lesbos, Pope Francis acknowledged that his apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia has changed the Church’s approach to the reception of Communion by Catholics who are divorced and remarried. But he stressed that the question was by no means the most important issue covered in his apostolic exhortation. The Pope remarked that the media coverage of the Synod did not reflect the reality of the discussion. He said: When I convoked the first Synod, the great concern of the majority of the media...

Moscow, April 19, Interfax - Head of the Synodal Department for External Church Relations Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk draws a parallel between the USSR and present-day Europe. "It is surprising that today Russian and European civilizations have exchanged their roles in a certain sense. The Soviet Union was the country of the official state atheism, while all of us perceived the West as the Christian region," the hierarch said on air of his program Church and the World on Rossiya 24 television. According to him, now it is quite the contrary: faith and the Church are revived in Russia, new...

+Metropolitan Constantine (Papastephanou), 1924 – 2016 It was with great sadness that we learned of the falling asleep in our Lord Jesus Christ of His Eminence Metropolitan Constantine (Papastephanou) on Sunday April 17th, 2016. I was personally blessed to know Metropolitan Constantine during my time in Damascus, and I can certainly testify to his holiness, and prayerfulness. It can truly be said that he was a man of God. Metropolitan Constantine was born in 1924 in Damascus, Syria where he was educated in the city's parochial schools. Desirous of entering upon an ecclesiastical career, His Eminence was blessed to study...

Cardinal Walter Kasper said that Amoris Laetitia "changes everything," but other prelates stressed that the apostolic exhortation by Pope Francis has not wrought any major change, in comments appearing in the press a week after the release of the papal document. Cardinal Kasper, who had encouraged the Synod of Bishops to approve a way by which divorced and remarried couples could receive Communion, told The Tablet that the document "doesn't change anything of Church doctrine or of canon law-- but it changes everything." He said: "It seems clear to me as to many other observers, that there can be situations...

April 16, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – On the flight returning from Greece, Pope Francis was asked if the Apostolic Exhortation contained a "change in discipline that governs access to the sacraments" for Catholics who are divorced and remarried. The Pope replied, "I can say yes, period." The Pope then urged reading the presentation of Cardinal Schönborn for the final answer to the question, calling Schönborn a “great theologian who knows the doctrine of the Church.” Schonborn’s presentation boiled down Pope Francis’ more than 60,000 words in the exhortation to 3000, but in that short space made sure to include the “smoking...

Pope Francis has affirmed that his recent apostolic exhortation on family life has opened up "new concrete possibilities" for Catholics who divorce and remarry without first obtaining annulments. In a press conference on his way back from a one-day visit to Lesbos, Greece, a reporter told the pontiff that some had interpreted the language in his exhortation to mean that there were no specific changes to the church's pastoral practice for remarried Catholics while others thought there were. "Are there new concrete possibilities that did not exist before the publication of the exhortation, or no?" asked the journalist. "I can...

That's right. Judas experienced the worst evil that anyone could suffer. He was not warmly welcomed! No one embraced him after he betrayed the Savior. No one had pity on him. He was treated harshly and…without knowing what to do, he sought the gibbet. This is the great evil of our times: the lack of welcome offered to sinners. And Francis has made this clear regarding the supreme sinner. The “poor man”, Judas, hung himself because he was not welcomed, for he was truly repentant, according to Francis. Once more Francis condemns those who, according to his peculiar concept, “clutch...

Norway's Lutheran Church voted on Monday in favor of allowing same-sex marriage, becoming the latest of a small but growing number of churches worldwide to do so. Last year the French Protestant Church allowed gay marriage blessings, while the U.S. Presbyterian Church approved a change in the wording of its constitution to include same-sex marriage. In a vote at the annual conference of the Norwegian Lutheran Church on Monday 88 delegates out of 115 in total backed same-sex marriage. "Finally we can celebrate love independently of whom one falls in love with," said Gard Sandaker-Nilsen, leader of the Open Public...

Father Antono Spadaro, the Italian Jesuit who was an influential figure in the meetings of the Synod on the Family, now writes that Pope Francis has removed all restrictions on the access of divorced and remarried Catholics to the sacraments. Father Spadaro's controversial interpretation of Amoris Laetitia-- which appears to contradict the claims that the Pope made no major changes in Church teaching or discipline-- appears in Civilta Cattolica, the Jesuit journal that Father Spadaro edits. Civilta Cattolica is regarded as a semi-authoritative source because its contents are approved in advance by the Vatican Secretariat of State. Father Spadaro has...

On Saturday, 9 April, Cardinal Walter Brandmuller explicitly commented on the pope's Apostolic Exhortation on the Family and warns against a dilution of the Catholic Church's teaching. The cardinal spoke to the German tabloid newspaper, Die Bild, as reported by the German Bishops' website, katholisch.de. While many of the statements that are quoted here seem identical with the statement which had been published by Cardinal Brandmuller two days before the publication of the pope's Exhortation on 8 April, it is significant that he now emphatically repeats some of these statements to a widely distributed newspaper in Germany after the release...

In the city of angels a day for praise, worship, asking forgiveness and declaration of the Lord's goodness to America and the nations...in the way of thy will be done on earth (now, today)as it is in heaven. A coliseum of believers from many nations joining in spiritual warfare for good. 7:30 AM to 10:30 PM Pacific Time.

Last week, under heavy pressure from powerful corporations, Georgia's Governor Nathan Deal vetoed legislation that would have protected religious institutions from being required to approve same-sex marriages or to hire openly homosexual employees. In his veto statement the governor implicitly adopted the rhetoric of the homosexual lobby, suggesting that any resistance to same-sex unions is intolerable. "I do not think that we have to discriminate against anyone to protect the faith-based community in Georgia," he said. With that veto and that public statement, Governor Deal implicitly accepted the argument that any group which refuses to endorse homosexuality is engaged in...