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Pope Francis on Friday told Bolivian inmates that he too is a sinner who has experienced the merciful love of God, and encouraged them not to fall into despair but to accept forgiveness and to sustain themselves with prayer. “You may be asking yourselves: Who is this man standing before us?’” the Pope reflected with prisoners during his July 10 visit to Bolivia’s Palmasola Rehabilitation Center in Santa Cruz de la Sierra. “I would like to reply to that question with something absolutely certain about my own life. The man standing before you is a man who has experienced forgiveness....

A Study of Sloth in the Life of Lot Msgr. Charles Pope • July 1, 2015 •   In daily Mass this week (the 13th week of the year) we have been reading through Genesis. Tuesday’s reading highlights a significant spiritual problem: sloth, one of the seven deadly sins. Sloth is a sorrow, sadness, or aversion to the good things God offers. Rather than being joyful and zealous to obtain these gifts, the slothful person sees them as too much trouble to obtain and is averse to the changes such gifts might introduce into his life. This is clearly the...

One measure of the decline of mainline social justice activism can be found in a recent Facebook exchange between the Methodist civil rights leader Maxie Dunnam and the Methodist civil rights official Bill Mefford. Dunnam was a heroic opponent of Jim Crow as a young pastor in Mississippi and went on to become the president of Asbury Theological Seminary. He also happens to believe in the historic Christian understanding of marriage, so in response to Obergefell v. Hodges, he made the following post on his Facebook wall:To which Mefford, the “Director of Civil and Human Rights” for the United...

We are the modern-day Nineveh which was the most corrupt and immoral city of its day. The prophet Jonah, against his will, went to Nineveh under orders from God and warned the citizens that they had forty days until their utter destruction at the hands of God. To their credit, they repented and wearing sackcloth and ashes, cried out to God begging His forgiveness. In His mercy, He spared them.

For those genuinely interested in understanding Given the nature of the discussion following the gay marriage ruling last week, one thing that’s clear to me as a Christian who opposes gay marriage is that very few secular people - and sadly, by no means all Christians - really understand why Christians take the position we do. That’s why there is so much being said that doesn’t really reflect what Christians think. Some say we hate or we judge. Others say we are against love. Some think we’re threatened by homosexuals. Some think we object too vociferously because we secretly want...

President Obama is calling the Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage a "victory for America," but the Rev. Franklin Graham warns Obama is leading the nation on a sinful course and "God will judge him and us as a nation if we don't repent." At a Gay Pride event in the White House prior to the court ruling this week, Obama said, "There has been an incredible shift in attitudes across the country," and he was right, Graham wrote in a post on his Facebook page. "But it is definitely not a shift for the good of America. The shift...

Take up this Lamentation for the Land of the Free,America, once the liberator of others, who will liberate you? Are you really free? Free of what? You have set your self free alright, By your social revolution, you are now free from Marriage, commitment, family, and fruitfulness Yours is the freedom of the madman,who observes no conventions, who wears no clothes, and who breaks all chains, (He will NOT be restrained) and who now lives among the tombs crying and cutting himself… Yours is the Freedom of Adam and Eve, Who broke away from God, and from Eden, and from...

Nikki Brooks, a Black woman who claims to be a Christian and to have held leadership rolls in several churches, has published an astonishing video stating she has no sympathy for the unborn black baby targeted for abortion. “What I am about to say, I am a Christian, I’ve served in a Pastoral capacity in three churches, I uh, I am an active minister, and um, I don’t make apology for what I am about to say,” Brooks states in her video. She is apparently upset that the Black community, which is being targeted for abortion by racist eugenics groups...

Cigarettes are legal in the U.S., but a black market is alive and thriving, generating crime and imposing costs on residents and businesses. To witness this in action one need only cross the state's southern border and see the busy parking lots of Indiana tobacco shops filled with cars from Michigan, whose occupants are stocking up on smokes that cost a dollar less per pack. One South Bend store even offers drive-thru service. “It doesn’t matter to me, just don’t get caught,” said the clerk when asked if she could sell several cartons to a Michigan resident. “There was always...

To utterly despair of oneself is infinitely more difficult for a man than to invent some kind of good works.generated self-salvation project. Human beings irresistibly gravitate toward a works or karma-based system because it gives man the false hope that his redemption is within his own reach. But a salvation that is all of grace, a gift earned by Someone else, is so utterly offensive to human nature, so humbling to our pride, that only a supernatural work of grace will bring a person to yield to it.Contrary to popular and cultural concepts of God, the Bible declares that...

Can Fallen Man Do Anything to Please God? Question: Can fallen man do anything to please God? Can the natural man make choices all the time for things that are good and evil? Response: All fallen, unregenerate human beings are endowed with many of God's common graces. God has blessed all men with a conscience and the capacity to promote virtue and civil righteousness. It is abundantly clear that many beautiful aspects of the world we live in have been brought forth by those which are unredeemed by God's regenerative grace. God has gifted natural men and women with the...

All pardon for sins ultimately comes from Christ’s finished work on Calvary, but how is this pardon received by individuals? Did Christ leave us any means within the Church to take away sin? The Bible says he gave us two means.

As a young, openly gay Christian activist, Matthew Vines considered it a victory just to get into a room at a conservative Christian university here with four influential evangelicals who disagreed with him over what the Bible says about homosexuality. He ended up in a polite, heartfelt three-hour debate last month over Scripture passages about topics like celibacy, eunuchs, slavery — and the connections between sex and marriage. “Every single system you have within your body — whether it’s your respiratory system, your excretory system, your muscular system — can be completed as an individual,” said Sean McDowell, a professor...

It is nearly impossible to overstate the evangelistic failure of the Catholic Church in Ireland following that country’s democratic embrace of homosexual marriage – the first nation ever to openly choose such debauchery for itself instead of having it imposed by the courts. Many reasons were offered last week for why this happened on an island nation where roughly 84 percent of the population identifies as Catholic. Among them were the tone-setting decadence of a divorce culture, the priest abuse scandal and the fat, dumb and happy that came with the country’s economic revolution in the 1990s. There is something...

Concerns are arising among Christians and online commentators after a homosexual activist recently told a national publication that churches “must be made ‘to take homosexuality off the sin list.'” Mitchell Gold is the founder of Faith in America, an organization that aims to “end the harm to LGBT youth and families from misguided religious teaching.” He served on the board of directors for the Human Rights Campaign for seven years, and was named on of the “Top 50 Most Powerful Gay People in America” in 2007 by Out Magazine. In an article written by Frank Buni of the New York...

Ireland has gone further than paganism and “defied God” by legalising gay marriage, one of the Church’s most senior cardinals has said. Cardinal Raymond Burke, who was recently moved from a senior role in the Vatican to be patron of the Order of Malta, told the Newman Society, Oxford University’s Catholic Society, last night that he struggled to understand “any nation redefining marriage”. Visibly moved, he went on: “I mean, this is a defiance of God. It’s just incredible. Pagans may have tolerated homosexual behaviours, they never dared to say this was marriage.” A total of 1.2 million people voted...

A new Gallup poll finds that since 2001, American opinion has shifted markedly toward acceptance of extra-marital sexual behavior. The poll found that between 2001 and 2015 there have been sharp increases in the number of Americans who say that it is “acceptable” to engage in homosexual relations or to give birth to a child outside wedlock, or obtain a divorce. The poll also found substantially more support for assisted suicide, the cloning of human beings, and polygamy. Remarkably, the survey showed only a slight increase in acceptance of abortion. According to the Gallup findings, the overwhelming majority of Americans...

Most Americans hold either liberal or conservative positions on most matters. In many instances, however, they would be hard pressed to explain their position or the position they oppose. But if you can't explain both sides, how do you know you're right? At the very least, you need to understand both the liberal and conservative positions in order to effectively understand your own. I grew up in a liberal world -- New York, Jewish and Ivy League graduate school. I was an 8-year-old when President Dwight Eisenhower ran for re-election against the Democratic nominee, Adlai Stevenson. I knew nothing about...

Among the papers found in Osama bin Laden's compound is a 15-page document that urges bomb-makers to join al Qaeda to kill "drunkard, sinful" American voters who permit "alien satanic practices" such as same-sex marriage and abortion. Written by Abu-Salih Al Somali, a senior al Qaeda operative, the attempt to recruit explosives experts and other Muslim scientists explains who they will be killing: "It is the VOTERS, who choose their leaders who deploy their armies against Muslims, and pay billions of (their produced tax money) to Israel to massacre our brothers and sister(s). It is the voters who vote on...

The United Methodist Church has been a subject of controversy for years as it supports legalized abortion within the context of supposedly being a Christian denomination. Now, one pro-life advocate has uncovered a quote from a Methodist pastor who says that caring about unborn babies who die in abortions is “idolatry.” Sarah Terzo, who has a knack for documenting the history of the abortion debate and the abortion advocacy movement by posting quotes from pro-abortion activists through the years, posted a new quote today that features Minister John M Swomley. Swomley is an ordained United Methodist minister, Terzo explains and,...