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Naomi Phillips, 85, sat in the shade outside Village Crossroads II watching the community’s formal dedication May 19. She moved to the new Catholic Charities affordable senior housing community in March after living most of her adult life in Latrobe Homes, subsidized city housing in East Baltimore. Village Crossroads, she said, is “real nice” and reminds her of her childhood home in North Carolina. “I love it because I was born in the country,” she said. “There’s nice country air and peace and quiet.” The 180-unit community includes two buildings, Village Crossroads I and II, near the intersection of Belair...

The Pope should not visit the Mufti Sheikh Muhammad Hussein unless the latter retracts his hateful diatribes.

A funny thing happened on the way to Michael Sam just wanting to play football -- and on being judged by his performance on the field and not his sexual orientation. After all, we were told ad nauseam, by Sam and his promoters in the sports media, that this is what Sam is about. If you Google “Michael Sam just wants to play football,” some 67 million results pop up. He also flatly stated that he "wanted to stop talking about his sexual orientation" and "let (his) work on the field speak for itself” in a radio interview, among other...

When Pope Francis highlights his upcoming pilgrimage to the Holy Land by meeting with the leader of the Orthodox Church, the papal delegation will include Cardinal Edwin F. O’Brien, a most interested observer. Since May 2012, the archbishop emeritus of Baltimore has served as grand master of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulcher, which promotes the support and protection of Christians in the Holy Land. The pope is scheduled to meet May 25 in Jerusalem with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, according to Catholic News Service, “considered first among equals by Orthodox bishops.” According to an official itinerary, the...

Q: I have a question about preaching: what happens in times and places where there is no priest or deacon available to hold Mass, and a communion service or another form of liturgical prayer is held? –Mark A: While the scenario that Mark describes is not the norm, there’s no denying that in some parts of the world it’s unfortunately becoming increasingly common. Let’s see first what the code says about preaching in general, and then look at what the Church has to say about preaching in those particular situations where, due to a shortage of clergy, no priest or...

When considering the suppression of parishes or the closing of church buildings, bishops should hew closely to canon law not simply because it’s a legal requirement of the church, Cardinal Raymond L. Burke said, but because it helps foster unity. In a May 7 interview with the Catholic Review, the prefect of the Supreme Court of the Apostolic Signature, the Vatican’s highest court, said following proper procedures helps ensure legitimate decisions. “When we don’t follow the requirements of the law, then people rightly claim that they’ve been aggrieved by this,” said Cardinal Burke, who was a featured speaker at the...

There are childhood memories so penetrating they run like movie reels in the mind’s eye, molding our character. My vintage 8mm features my European-born grandmother turning tearful and tongue-tied upon mention of her family, lost in the Holocaust. Her heartbreak, and the gruesome photos I ogled in my parents’ edition of “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” were literally mind-boggling. When I was 13, Holocaust survivor Gerda Klein appeared in my biopic, helping me Think Again about the unfathomable. Like a narrator, she recounted her death-defying odyssey from an idyllic childhood through ghettos, slave-labor camps and a three-month...

Q: If God established marriage for the procreation of children, does it affect the validity of a marriage if one spouse is infertile? What if you know for sure that you can’t have children, can you get married in the Church anyway? How does that work? –Donna A: As we’ve seen before in this space, the Church holds that marriage is, by its very nature, ordered to the well-being of the spouses and the procreation and upbringing of children (c. 1055.1). As Vatican II’s Constitution on the Church in the Modern World stated nearly 50 years ago, “By its very...

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Over the winter break, I spent several days shifting through the survey results in the diocese’s archive, located in St. Mary’s Seminary. The survey results could provide evidence for many articles, even books, but I was initially only interested in questions dealing with the liturgy. The simple answer to the laity’s reception of the liturgical changes can be found in question 19: “Changes in the Mass have harmed rather than helped me to worship” and 27% agreed and 68% disagreed. These results confirm the standard narrative that the majority of Catholics preferred the new Mass with its use of English...

Wind Shield radar to be carried into enemy territory, track the sources of incoming rocket, missile and mortar fire.

Are you 18-29 years old? Do you care about the constant attacks on religious liberty in America? Then, participate in our new video project about religious liberty. To receive instructions, you must fill out everything present in the below submission form. Submission forms that contain false and inaccurate information or don't fulfill our requirements will not be considered. To fill out a submission form, please go to this link: http://www.counterculturedusa.com/23/post/2014/04/speak-out-about-religious-liberty-video-project.html This was originally posted on Counter Cultured's "Video Projects" tab.

Q: Recently, a Catholic priest in our area left to become “pastor” of an Episcopal church. If we assume for a moment that the Episcopal liturgy contains the valid words of Institution, and if we assume that valid matter was used, does he confect the Eucharist? –Patrick A: Sad to say, the case cited by Patrick is far from unique. In certain countries with a sizeable Episcopal community, one far too frequently encounters priests who have left the Catholic Church to join the Church of England—often in order to get married while still remaining in some sort of ministry—and who...

The U.S. branch of the evangelical humanitarian aid organization World Vision announced this week that it will no longer bar its employees from being in same-sex marriages. Employees are still barred from having sex outside of marriage, but “marriage” will now include marriages between people of the same sex. World Vision U.S. president Richard Stearns tells Christianity Today the change is “not an endorsement of same-sex marriage,” but it’s hard to read it any other way. It’s certainly a disappointing loss for supporters of traditional marriage, but I’m not surprised, and here’s why. "I think you have to be neutral...

The left loves to cry racism whenever someone disagrees with them. They love to cry racism even more when conservatives dare to attempt to speak to minorities or try to fix problems that disproportionately affect minorities. Crying racism deters conservatives from trying to work with minorities or fix problems, thus perpetuating the leftist lie that conservatives don’t care about minorities. In fact conservatives care a great deal about minorities and are troubled by the problems facing them. Our solutions are obviously different from the left’s. We’re nearly fifty years into President Johnson’s Great Society welfare program and poverty isn’t down...

Q: My fiancée and I attended a marriage-prep class in our diocese, and one of the speakers said something we didn’t fully understand. First he urged us to be open and honest with each other about our past lives, not hiding anything from one another, which made basic sense to us. But then he mentioned that we need to do this because otherwise our marriage could be null. We’ve known each other since childhood anyway, so it’s a moot point for us. Later on, though, we were wondering if telling your future spouse every single little thing about you is...

“Like Pope Francis? You’ll love Jesus.” It was a well-circulated Washington Post headline in December, but it could have been the tagline for the March 18 Francis Factor event held at Loyola University Maryland in Baltimore. As a cardinal, archbishop and four Catholic expert panelists shared insights from Pope Francis’ first year, they repeatedly shifted the attention away from the pope and onto the Son of God. Pope Francis would have done no less. “The pope is a true companion of Jesus,” said Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley, a Capuchin Franciscan and archbishop of Boston, in the evening’s keynote address. Speaking...

In an article which may be found here, Dr. William Oddie notes that, "Pope Francis has now once again (though to judge by the so far sparse coverage, you’d think he’d never said or done anything before) expressed his abhorrence of clerical sex abuse. Previous popes—indeed most senior clergy—are normally too reticent, however, to do what he has now done as well, that is to say, he has defended the Catholic Church’s record on tackling the sexual abuse of children by priests, by declaring what is now the simple truth: that “no one else has done more” than the Church...

Fourteen year old Leonard Robinson, III, a GOP precinct canvass leader, recently surprised a Democratic Party door knocker in Prince George’s County. Leonard tells the story: