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"Grace is not a reward for faith; faith is the result of grace." - John Blanchard "Saving faith is not a native product of the human heart, but is a spiritual grace communicated from on High." - A.W. Pink, http://bit.ly/drXWnO "It is not faith that saves, but faith in Jesus Christ.... It is not, strictly speaking, even faith in Christ that saves, but Christ that saves through faith. The saving power resides exclusively, not int he act of faith or the attitude of faith or in the nature of faith, but in the object of faith." - B. B. Warfield...

To understand Scott Walker’s rise from state representative to county executive to front-runner for the office of Wisconsin governor, one must first know the meaning of a simple two-letter acronym: P.K. The Milwaukee County executive and Republican nominee has reached the precipice of the state’s highest office with a message and approach that has roots in a rural Wisconsin church and the man who ministered there. That’s because Walker was — and is — a preacher’s kid. It’s a label that carries the burden of expectations, especially in a small town. More than a few have wilted under it or...

A grand jury on Thursday accused the Archdiocese of Philadelphia of failing to stop the sexual abuse of children more than five years after a grand jury report documented abuse by more than 50 priests. The new report said a senior church official charged with investigating allegations of sexual abuse by priests had in fact allowed some of those accused to remain in posts that gave them continued access to children. It charged him with endangering the welfare of minors and accused three priests and a teacher of raping two boys between 1996 and 1999. “By no means do we...

Justification and Sanctification are two extremely important concepts to understand, even though they are not everyday words. But they are more than concepts; justification and sanctification help us make sense out of the world, ourselves, and God. In other words, they are not simply "up there" but very relevant to "down here." These concepts are practical. Justification is the teaching that God declares us right in Jesus Christ. Paul writes in Romans, "For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, though the...

DUBLIN -- A 1997 letter from the Vatican warned Ireland's Catholic bishops not to report all suspected child-abuse cases to police - a disclosure that victims' groups described as "the smoking gun" needed to show that the church enforced a worldwide culture of covering up crimes by pedophile priests. The newly revealed letter, obtained by Irish broadcasters RTE and provided to The Associated Press, documents the Vatican's rejection of a 1996 Irish church initiative to begin helping police identify pedophile priests following Ireland's first wave of publicly disclosed lawsuits...

Barring any legal wrangling, widespread evacuations will begin this evening around a North County rental house that authorities plan to burn to ground Thursday morning to dispose of a large illegal stockpile of highly volatile bomb-making chemicals found inside it three weeks ago. At noon today, attorney Michael Berg, lawyer for renter George Djura Jakubec, is scheduled to ask a federal judge to halt the burning because there could be documents and other evidence in the house that could aid in his client's defense. Exactly how anyone would go about gathering the potential evidence from the home that bomb experts...

BASRA, Iraq—This dusty and ragged city in southern Iraq was notorious a couple years back for its vicious militia warfare and rampant smuggling. Today Basra has a very different rep: one of the world's newest oil boom towns. Some of the world's largest energy companies are ramping up drilling in Iraq. They are focused on a handful of fields clustered near Basra, the nation's oil hub, as the government attempts a dramatic expansion of output that could help moderate world energy prices for years to come. The drilling frenzy has triggered an investment and building boom in Basra itself. Recently,...

For more than a quarter-century, while Roman Catholic leaders around the country have closed parochial schools by the dozens in the face of rising costs and falling enrollments, the Archdiocese of New York has conducted a more stately retreat. It has shuttered schools a handful at a time, in a reluctant if relentless downsizing that has come to be known among some church leaders as “the melancholy rite.” Now, Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan is signaling that he will soon mount a more aggressive effort to prune the number of schools...

"...Britain’s Channel 4 News reported that an investigation had found that 14 of 22 Catholic priests convicted of serious sexual offenses since 2001 in England and Wales, and sentenced to more than one year in jail, have still not been defrocked and remain members of the clergy..."

Dr. Laura Schlessinger just told Larry King that she is quitting radio when her contract expires at the end of this year.

<p>TV reporting a NY flight bound for Los Angeles was diverted to Albuquerque due to "something about someone lighting matches."</p>

New rules the Vatican is expected to issue soon on penalties for priests who sexually abuse children will also put the ordaining of women in the same category of the most serious crimes under church law. Church sources told Catholic News Service that the new "norms," as the policies are called, will include the "attempted ordination of women" among the list of most serious crimes, or what are known as "delicta graviora." Sexual abuse of a minor by a priest was added to the classification in 2001. The new norms are largely expected to codify changes made in 2001 and...

VATICAN CITY (AP) - The pope on Sunday called the raids carried out by Belgian police investigating priestly sex abuse "deplorable" and asserted the right of the Catholic Church to investigate abuse alongside civil law enforcement authorities. Pope Benedict XVI issued a message Sunday to the head of the Belgian bishops' conference, Monsignor Andre-Joseph Leonard, expressing his solidarity with all Belgian bishops "in this sad moment." The June 24 raids targeted the home and office of a retired archbishop and also the graves of two prelates. The Vatican has slowly ratcheted up its criticism of the searches...

One day next month every student at Loyola Law School Los Angeles will awake to a higher grade point average. But it’s not because they are all working harder. The school is retroactively inflating its grades, tacking on 0.333 to every grade recorded in the last few years. The goal is to make its students look more attractive in a competitive job market...

Lakers defeat Celtics in seven games 83/79!

When Pope Benedict XVI announced the "Year of the Priest" that concluded Friday, he probably didn't have in mind the sort of year he got. He acknowledged as much in a closing Mass, telling more than 10,000 assembled priests in St. Peter's Square that "in the very year of joy for the sacrament of the priesthood, the sins of priests came to light." ...

MILWAUKEE — A neatly typed letter dated March 5, 1995, is addressed to the No. 2 man at the Vatican and recounts the story of a priest who preyed on deaf boys trapped in dormitories with no chance of escape...

<p>A Mexican resident who says he was sexually abused by a priest as a child is suing the Roman Catholic Cardinal of Los Angeles and Mexico's top-ranking Catholic cleric, alleging they aided and abetted the abuse by moving the priest between dioceses as allegations piled up against him.</p>

A West Texas teen filed a lawsuit Thursday against the Archdiocese of San Antonio and Archbishop Jose Gomez alleging repeated sexual assaults by a parish priest, who he says the church's leadership should have known was abusive. The allegations came just days after Gomez was named to a high-profile post leading the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, where he is scheduled to be formally introduced to parishioners in May. The lawsuit accuses the Rev. John M. Fiala of repeatedly sexually assaulting the teen, including twice forcing him to have sex at gunpoint when Fiala was the pastor at Sacred Heart of...

Back in one my old philosophy classes I recall lengthy discussions as to the relationship between names and reality, and then spinning around for hours contemplating the brain teaser of what it means to "mean" something about anything. The aftermath: an entire class of young minds slipped further into skepticism, as if the reality each twenty something experienced was completely unknowable. Of course, arriving at the conclusion that ultimate reality is unknowable is... to know something about ultimate reality! Ah, the futility of the sinful mind in its continual construction of Babel towers. Without the presupposition "He is there and...