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Pope Francis met privately with a Spanish transgender man this weekend, according to new report featured in the Washington Blade. Diego Neria Lejárraga told the Spanish newspaper Hoy that he and his fiancée met with the pontiff at his official Vatican residence on Saturday, in what would mark the first meeting of a pope with a transgender person.

Clint Eastwood's "American Sniper" had another jaw-dropping weekend, reaching an impressive $200 million at the domestic box office. Despite the film's colossal success, liberals like former DNC chairman Howard Dean and director Michael Moore just won't let "American Sniper" go. Over the weekend, Moore invoked Jesus in a slew of incendiary tweets aimed at dishonoring American soldiers and the Iraq war. One tweet stated "Tomorrow's Sunday School (1 What Would Jesus Do? Oh, I know what he'd do --hide on top of a roof and shoot people in the back!" He followed that tweet with: Sunday School: (2) But What...

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church has called upon MPs to begin a campaign against abortions, starting with canceling state sponsorship for the procedure and aiming at a total nationwide ban. “If we manage to cut the number of abortions by 50 percent we would have stable and powerful population growth,” Patriarch Kirill said, speaking before the Lower House on Thursday. This was the first ever speech of the head of the Russian Orthodox Church before the State Duma. “The argument that a ban would cause an increase in the number of underground abortions is pure nonsense. People have...

Featured Term selected at random:RELIQUARY Any repository in which a relic is sealed and kept. Reliquaries vary in size, according to the relic, from very small ones that can be easily carried to larger caskets for whole parts of a saint's body. Relics are never exposed for public veneration unless enclosed in a reliquary. Some reliquaries are famous for their exquisite design and value. All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

A man has interrupted the consecration of the Church of England's first female bishop. The unidentified man said that "it was not in the Bible", when Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu asked the congregation if it was their will that Mrs Lane should be ordained. The man asked to speak to Dr Sentamu about the "absolute impediment" before walking off. VIDEO ON LINK

Does Christianity call for human sacrifice?When you put the question like that, the instinctive response of any given Christian would tend toward a resounding “no.” After all, human sacrifice is a barbaric act which no rational person could condone. We believers like to regard ourselves as rational.Yet, a cursory examination of popular Christian doctrine suggests that human sacrifice – to one degree or another – stands as a central tenet of the faith. In his book Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It, author Craig Biddle cites “religionists” – including many prominent Christian theologians –...

If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, Even there shall thy hand lead me. A Meditation on the Story of Jonah. By: Msgr. Charles PopeAs a followup to yesterday’s (Sunday 3rd Week) reference to Jonah the Prophet, I would like to sketch a fuller portrait of his life. Yesterday’s reading dropped us into the middle of the story. Let’s look at the backstory and see how the Lord does not give up on Jonah, nor on the people whom He has sent Jonah to deliver. God keeps calling until we are ready, until our last...

One illustration of how religion and politics were interwoven, especially the religion and politics of strongly Scottish Calvinist sentiment, can be seen from the experience of Ulster Presbyterian missionary Francis Makemie (b. 1658). Makemie had been reared on tales of the Scottish rebellion that adopted the Solemn League and Covenant, and he was educated at the University of Glasgow one generation after Samuel Rutherford. Commissioned by the Presbytery of Laggan, a fiercely Calvinistic stronghold, the first Presbyterian minister on the North American continent landed on the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay in 1683. Over time, he earned a reputation as...

When Jesus stood before Pilate, just prior to going to His execution, Pilate asked Him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” After some discussion, Pilate concluded, “You are a king, then!” Jesus replied, “You are right in saying that I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this reason I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” Sounding much like a modern-day graduate of Harvard’s divinity school, or the Dean for Religious Life at Stanford University (who both probably have about the...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem Character Studies From The Bible Moses New International Version (NIV) 2 Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman, 2 and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. 3 But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket[a] for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. 4 His sister stood at a...

“Fr. McBrien was an able and indefatigable proponent of the Catholic revolution that never was and, now, never will be,” said George Weigel, widely seen as America’s leading conservative Catholic commentator.

January 26, 2015Memorial of Saints Timothy and Titus, Bishops    Reading 1 2 Tm 1:1-8 Paul, an Apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of Godfor the promise of life in Christ Jesus,to Timothy, my dear child:grace, mercy, and peace from God the Fatherand Christ Jesus our Lord. I am grateful to God,whom I worship with a clear conscience as my ancestors did,as I remember you constantly in my prayers, night and day.I yearn to see you again, recalling your tears,so that I may be filled with joy, as I recall your sincere faiththat first lived in your grandmother...

Sound familiar? All clichés. They may sound nice, but clichés are often just like Band-Aids on cancer…useless. ... What do you do about your past? Let’s check out lessons from the Apostle Paul in Acts 9:21-31. To say that Paul had a bad past is a gross understatement. As Saul, Paul lived the worst kind of sinful life you could imagine—persecuting, killing and binding up the saints of God. In fact, at this point in Acts, Paul had just participated in the stoning of Stephen, the first martyr of the Christian church. What did Paul do about his past? What...

SOUTH BEND, Ind. - The Rev. Richard McBrien, a University of Notre Dame theology professor known for his popular books on Catholicism and unabashed liberal stands on various church teachings, has died. He was 78. Notre Dame spokesman Dennis Brown says McBrien died Sunday in Connecticut after a lengthy illness. McBrien was often a critic of the church, speaking in favor of the ordination of female priests and optional celibacy for priests. He also had liberal stands on artificial contraception.

The Absurdity of Separated Brethren Before Protestants were "separated brethren"... Q. Does the Lord make use of apostate Catholics, such as Martin Luther, Calvin, John Knox, Henry VIII., King of England, to reform the manners of the people? A. The thought is absurd. The lives of those men were evil, and it is only the devil that makes use of them to pervert the people still more. The Lord makes use of His saints, such as a St. Francis of Assisium, a St. Dominick, a St. Ignatius, a St. Alphonsus, to convert the people and reform their evil manners...

He (Francis) has backpedaled, I know. He has backpedaled in pretty much as much of a clear and unmistakeable way as can be normally expected by a Pope. But there is no doubt in my mind that this backpedaling is not the fruit of him realising that he has inadvertently expressed himself in, say, an unlucky way. On the contrary: he says very clearly what he means, and his body language makes the point all the way. The backpedaling is therefore, without the shadow of a doubt, an exercise in damage control meant to distract the faithful from what the...

On January 20, 2015, Cardinal Oscar Andres Maradiaga Rodriguez, the Coordinator of Pope Francis' Council of Cardinal Advisors gave a talk at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics of the Santa Clara University in Silicon Valley. His remarks were drawn from an essay he had written, The Church of Mercy with Pope Francis. The following passage from this essay reveal just how far-reaching the "Franciscan reform" is intended to be. (His talk, as delivered, can be found here: The Meaning of Mercy - Reflections by Cardinal Oscar Andres Maradiaga Rodriguez on a Central Theme of Pope Francis.) We walk as...

Both in anecdotes and “exit polls,” former Catholics frequently cite the Church’s teachings on sexuality as a reason for leaving the Faith. But these same countercultural teachings have also been the door into the Catholic Church for believers seeking a consistent morality grounded in the Gospel. Converts have benefited from both the gift of the teaching as well as their entry into the Catholic Church.Krista Millegan is one such convert. She read Blessed Pope Paul VI’s landmark encyclical Humanae Vitae (“Of Human Life”) with her then-fiancé, Brantly, while they were undergraduates at the evangelical Wheaton College in Illinois. “The...

Bill Mefford, Director of Civil and Human Rights at the UMC’s Washington office, used the March for Life last week to mock the event with a sign, and picture he posted on Twitter, saying “I march for sandwiches.” Many are upset a church leader used a solemn event to liken an unborn baby to a sandwich. The next day, UMC Rev. Dr. Susan Henry-Crowe General Secretary General Board of Church & Society, issued a statement about Mefford’s “march”: “Affirming human dignity is central to the witness of Jesus Christ. Christians are called to watch over with care the lives of...

The Church Fathers held an unwavering belief that the Second Person of the Trinity appeared frequently in the Old Testament in a variety of forms: the Angel of the Lord, the Burning Bush, the Son of Man, and the one like a Son of God in Daniel.Today we’ll look at a debate regarding the Angel of the Lord. Is he are isn’t the Pre-Incarnate Son of God? There are various positions in early Christianity.The Greek Church Fathers (for example, Saint Athanasius) are convinced that “the Angel of the Lord” is the pre-incarnate Christ. They posit that the Angel of the Lord is categorically different from lower...