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Vatican City, May 6, 2015 / 04:24 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- During a private audience on Tuesday, Pope Francis advanced the causes of canonization of 12 potential saints, two of whom were martyred by communist revolutionaries in Laos in 1960. The May 5 audience with Cardinal Angelo Amato also formally approved the canonization of Bl. Junipero Serra – which had already been scheduled for Sept. 23. The two martyrs recognized were the Servants of God Mario Borzaga and Paul Thoj Xyooj, who were killed in hatred of the faith in April 1960. Born in Italy in 1932, Fr. Borzaga joined the...

Brothers and Sisters: Peace be with you. Frequently, Internet atheistic aces challenge me to provide evidence and/or proof for the existence of God. Almost all the time the proof they demand is, on its face, absurd because it is empirical in way or the other and God, if they only knew what the word "God" is, lies beyond any empirical proof. No matter, they keep insisting and the silence of the impossible experiment is proof enough for them. This post is not address to those narrow, sterile minds because they've closed themselves within and become impermeable to any argument....

Way too many of us believe in a magic book negated by science and peppered with all manner of misanthropic myths. A lawyer and an associate dean at Liberty University, a columnist for Glenn Beck’s The Blaze, and the founder of WND’s Christian fundamentalist site Barbwire.com, Matt Barber might seem like an evangelical fringe character, but, clearly, he means to have his voice heard and his pronouncements taken seriously: his work appears under the portentous slogan RELATIVISTS BEWARE: TRUTH TOLD HERE. Yet he is affiliated with Glenn Beck, so, in pursuit of Truth-Telling, he sees fit to publish such essays...

Never believe rumors of Jesus’ death. He is alive and well — and coming soon to a theater near you. Sean Bean is one a-list actor listed for a movie about Jesus’ boyhood that will hit theaters in 2016. Hugh Jackman will star as St. Paul in another reported movie due out next year. Pope Francis recently blessed the actor playing Jesus in a new version of Ben Hur. Thus, in 2016, Hollywood will feature at least three movies that more or less affirm the basic Christian understanding of Jesus Christ. Ironically, these three movies will come 10 years...

Imagine a president of the United States proclaiming in his or her inaugural address, “I do not believe in God. I do not believe in a hereafter…There is no hope, save in ourselves.” If something like that ever happens, writer Jeffrey Tayler’s dream will have come true. Tayler, who routinely trashes religion for the liberal online magazine Salon, complained in a Sunday article that several recent announcements of presidential candidacies have brought about “a media carnival featuring, on both sides, an array of supposedly God-fearing clowns and faith-mongering nitwits groveling before Evangelicals and nattering on about their belief in the...

We often hear from atheists how religion is dying out as mankind comes to see the clear light of reason. Atheist “intellectuals” speak disparagingly about religion and predict that mankind is on the cusp of a new age in which religion will simply disappear as science, technology and reason are in the ascendant. The facts indicate exactly the opposite. It is religion which continues to grow around the world while the statistics indicate that agnosticism and atheism are dying out. [See also:11 Maps to Help You Make Sense of World Religion] [See also:24 Crazy Facts About Global Christianity in...

Yesterday, humorist Andy Borowitz published a piece at the New Yorker with the headline “Cruz’s Constant References to Jesus Drive Millions to Atheism“: The Republican Presidential candidate Ted Cruz’s constant references to Jesus Christ in his speeches and campaign ads are sparking a strong interest in atheism among millions of Americans, atheist leaders report. … “It’s been amazing,” [executive director of the American Society of Atheists Carol] Foyler said. “We’re getting calls from people who are curious about atheism for the first time in their lives. And when we ask them what got them thinking about it, they all say...

Those who don’t believe in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, but do profess an overwhelming belief in the constitutional separation of church and state, may soon have to round up their lawyers and head to Arkansas under the banner of the organization known as American Atheists, Inc. Arkansas state politicians have approved legislation to build a Ten Commandments monument, which would be paid for with private donations, on the grounds of their state Capitol in Little Rock. American Atheists, Inc. does not have a problem with the Ten Commandments or building monuments, per se, to immortalize the basic...

Biblical Conspiracies 3 of 4 Secrets of the Crucifixion

Here is the summation for the previous threads and the last of this for some time: Jesus Christ alone possessed the intrinsic quality of infallibility, was unlike any man that has ever lived, and was in a class all by Himself. There were some (like the Ebionites) who believed that Jesus was the messiah but also believed that he lacked divinity. Some, like those who ascribed to Arianism or semi-Arianism, who were somewhere in between the Ebionites and those who believed/believe that Jesus was fully God and Fully Man. Each of these nonetheless believed that Jesus was unlike any man...

Who Are the Atheists? [excerpts] For reporting purposes at Barna, we often combine atheists and agnostics into one group, which we call skeptics. Skeptics either do not believe God exists (atheists) or are not sure God exists, but are open to the possibility (agnostics). Skeptics represent one-quarter of all unchurched adults (25%). Nearly one-third of skeptics have never attended a Christian church service in their lives (31%). That’s nearly double the proportion of “virgin unchurched” who are not skeptics (17%)... Five Demographic Shifts among Skeptics They are younger. Skeptics today are, on average, younger than in the past. Twenty years...

On Easter Day (April 5th, 2015), faithful Christians will celebrate the resurrection of Jesus bodily from death. Later on this year, faithful Christians will also (on August 15th, 2015) celebrate the resurrection of Mary the mother of Jesus (before her body could see decay) and her Assumption into heaven. With the shows on CNN (Finding Jesus: Faith, Fact and Forgery) and O'Reilly's book, "Killing Jesus" on television (both this Sunday), there seems to be an uptick in the interest on the life of Jesus, the Apostles and early followers of Jesus - as well as Mary's role, too.

Moving back from the Theodosian Code, which stated the scriptures they believed to be heretical, back to the First Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D., which decreed that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were to be in the fixed New Testament Canon of scripture, and back to earlier dates we find the following: A.) The Clermont List - a codex which embraced the Canon as it existed in Egypt (i.e. Alexandria) c.300 A.D. It lists the New Testament books which are the same as ours except that the Gospels are listed Matthew, Mark, Luke (the apostolic authors...

Barna Group has released its 2015 study on the state of atheism in America, and has revealed that one in four unchurched adults in the country now identify as atheists or agnostics. The study also found that rejection of the Bible and lack of trust in the church are two main reasons why people are turning away from faith. The study was focused on those who have not attended church within the past six months, and found that the majority of such people identify as non-practicing Christians. One in four, or 25 percent, however, were classed as skeptics, which Barna...

The New Atheists are not a comfortable group of people. They have scornful contempt for those with whom they differ — that includes religious believers, agnostics and other atheists who don’t share their vehement brand of nonbelief. They are self-confident to a degree that seems designed to irritate. And they have an ignorance of anything beyond their fields to an extent remarkable even in modern academia. They also have a moral passion unknown outside the pages of the Old Testament. For that, we can forgive much. When asked in Ireland a few years ago about the abuse of children by...

1.) The King James Bible and/or Protestant Bible contains 39 Old Testament books and 27 New Testament books. Roman Catholics include all of these books within their sacred canon, with the addition of other books not included within the Protestant Canon. The Coptic Bible contains more books than all of the aforementioned (including the 27/39) and books that Roman Catholics believe to be canonical - and some other books. 2.) The First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD issued the Nicene Creed, adhered to by almost all Christians (Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Protestants and Coptics) with the exception of a...

As the chart ... shows, Catholicism is the most common religious tradition in 17 states, while white evangelical Protestants are first in 15 states, mostly in the South. The religiously unaffiliated are the most common religious group in 13 states, mostly in the Pacific Northwest and the Northeast. Three states are outliers: Utah, which is 56 percent Mormon, the largest percentage of one single religious tradition, and Iowa and North Dakota, where white mainline Protestants are the dominant religious tradition.

What would you say if you found out that our public schools were teaching children that it is not true that it’s wrong to kill people for fun or cheat on tests? Would you be surprised? I was. As a philosopher, I already knew that many college-aged students don’t believe in moral facts. While there are no national surveys quantifying this phenomenon, philosophy professors with whom I have spoken suggest that the overwhelming majority of college freshmen in their classrooms view moral claims as mere opinions that are not true or are true only relative to a culture. What I...

Family of Bishop Shi Enxiang, who spent more than half a century in detention for refusing to renounce Pope's authority, told by a village official last month that he had died, aged 93In a living room plastered with pious images, the Shi family flicked through timeworn pictures of a wizened man with tortoiseshell glasses and bright eyes, the oldest bishop of China’s underground Catholic church. Almost a month ago, they were passed word that Bishop Shi Enxiang – who spent more than half a century in detention for refusing to renounce the authority of the Pope – had died, aged...

Robert Jeffress, senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas. joined Father Gerald Murray of New York on Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor" Tuesday night to encourage Americans of all faiths to contact the White House and demand that the Obama administration call out radical Islam and take action to defeat the Islamic State terrorist organization. "This is part of a disturbing pattern," Jeffress said when asked by Bill O'Reilly what he made of Obama's initial refusal to call the ISIS beheading victims Coptic Christians [until he publicly acknowledged that the 21 Egyptian men were Christians and not just "citizens"...