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Saturday of the 2nd week of Lent St. Turibius Chapel – Columbus, OH First readingMicah 7:14-15,18-20 ©Have pity on us one more timeWith shepherd’s crook, O Lord, lead your people to pasture,the flock that is your heritage,living confined in a forestwith meadow land all around.Let them pasture in Bashan and Gileadas in the days of old.As in the days when you came out of Egyptgrant us to see wonders.What god can compare with you: taking fault away,pardoning crime,not cherishing anger for everbut delighting in showing mercy?Once more have pity on us,tread down our faults,to the bottom of the seathrow...

CHICAGO (CBS) — A third man has come forward claiming that he was sexually abused by the Rev. Michael Pfleger when the man was a teenager more than 40 years ago. Pfleger was removed from St. Sabina’s parish, pending an investigation into allegations of past sexual abuse. Both of Pfleger’s original accusers – two brothers – shared their story exclusively with CBS 2 Political Investigator Dana Kozlov. They told her they could no longer keep their secret. I would like people to see there is a dark side to Mike Pfleger,” one of the men told Kozlov in January. The...

Cairo (Agenzia Fides) - Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al Sisi confirmed by decree the establishment of the council for the administration of the foundations of the Catholic Church in Egypt. The presidential decree of February 27th published in the Official Journal as provision 80/2021. A similar presidential decree also set up the Board of Directors for the foundations of the Evangelical Christian community in Egypt. The two bodies were oficially launched with Law 190 of 2020. The new presidential decree stipulates that the Coptic Catholic Patriarch Ibrahim Isaac Sidrak will head the body's Board of Directors, for a period of...

The front-door windows of St. Anne's Catholic Church in Tucumcari were vandalized a few hours before a service took place there Saturday evening. According to a Tucumcari Police Department report, officer Justin Garcia was sent to the church at 306 W. High St. about 3:30 p.m. Saturday after parishioner reported the damage. Edward Perea said someone had called him after seeing the damage, and he went there to find the front doors' stained-glass windows had been broken. Garcia had Perea open the door to see whether any objects or anyone was inside the church. None was found. The total value...

Don Pietro Leone: THE COUNCIL AND THE ECLIPSE OF GOD - PART IV In Part IV of ‘The Council and the Eclipse of God’, Don Pietro explains how the Council attacks the very notion of Truth, how this is the basis of all its false teachings and how Decartes’s Philosophy of Doubt permeates the Council’s documents. F.R. The Council and the Eclipse of God Beatissimae Vergini Mariae humillime dedicatum,Quae cunctas haereses sola interemisti in universo mundoPART IV TRUTH – part 2Rene Descartes (1596-1650): Father of Modernist Thought - his philosophy begins with Doubta) The Fullness of Truth The Council...

NEW COMPENDIUM BOOK: Defending the Faith against Present Heresies….Since the Church’s earliest days, even in the Letters of Paul, there developed a genre of writing adversus haereses, against heresies. The reason is obvious: Christ is the Truth. With the exception of those on the ideological Left regarding elections, Christians want the TRUTH, even though it is hard. When people stray from the Truth to sow error, they and what they teach become a threat to the salvation of souls, their own and those of others who embrace their errors. Christ gave a special ministry to the Church, the Petrine Ministry...

Explainer: Cardinal Tobin will now help Pope Francis pick bishops. What does that mean for the U.S. Church?Pope Francis appointed Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin of Newark, N.J., to the Vatican’s influential Congregation for Bishops on March 4, filling the position left open when Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl, the former archbishop of Washington, D.C., retired in November from his Vatican roles.Cardinal Tobin joins Chicago’s Cardinal Blase Cupich as one of two Americans on the congregation. The two will play a key role in choosing bishops for the United States in particular, as congregation members generally have significant sway within the body...

The Beiging of Bishop BarronBishop Robert Barron first came to fame in the Catholic world for his fight against what he called “beige Catholicism.” The founder of Word on Fire rightly saw that a milquetoast, flaccid expression of Catholicism—so common in parishes across the country and embraced by the liberal elements of the Church—is a death knell for the Church. Barron wrote eloquent articles and produced polished videos reminding Catholics that the Faith is more than the insipid liturgies and watered-down teachings they were being fed each week. Justifiably, his influence grew and eventually he was named the Auxiliary Bishop...

New book presents multiple open letters to Pope Francis correcting his errorsThe book contains critical formal statements about Pope Francis’s teachings that have been published from 2016 until 2019.Pope Francis receives Pachamama statue (after blessing it) in Vatican gardens during indigenous ceremony, Rome, Oct. 4, 2019.March 4, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – The Canadian publisher Arouca Press has taken the courage to publish a collection of the major statements by prelates, priests, and laymen addressed to Pope Francis over the course of the last years, asking him either to correct erroneous or confusing statements or even to rescind them and repent for...

More on McCarrick and his Connections to the Obama/Biden White HouseMarch 5, 2021 (Steven O’Reilly) – I have previously written of ex-Cardinal McCarrick’s trip to China following his meeting with Pope Francis in June of 2013 (see here). Archbishop Vigano in his Testimony regardomg McCarrick seemed to suggest that the Pope’s rehabilitation of McCarrick was a reward for McCarrick’s significant role in Bergoglio’s election in March 2013. The significance of McCarrick’s role has been told in more detail in The Conclave Chronicles.Roma Locuta Est has also called attention to the fact that the McCarrick Report failed to report on McCarrick’s...

March 05 2021 St. Joseph's Catholic Church, Marshall, East Texas Lectionary 234Readings at MassLiturgical Colour: Violet.First readingGenesis 37:3-4,12-13,17-28 ©Let us kill him: then we shall see what becomes of his dreamsIsrael loved Joseph more than all his other sons, for he was the son of his old age, and he had a coat with long sleeves made for him. But his brothers, seeing how his father loved him more than all his other sons, came to hate him so much that they could not say a civil word to him. His brothers went to pasture their father’s flock at Shechem....

California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra disclosed Tuesday that his office is investigating whether the Catholic healthcare chain Providence Health has violated its legal commitments by applying religious restrictions on care at one of Orange County’s premier hospitals. Becerra’s office is requesting a heap of documentation from Providence about its dealings with Hoag Memorial Hospital, a Newport Beach medical center with which it has partnered since 2016 and is now in an acrimonious dispute. It comes as Becerra awaits Senate confirmation of his nomination as President Biden’s secretary of Health and Human Services. Becerra’s action follows a confidential complaint that several...

FLOYDS KNOBS — The Floyd County Sheriff’s Department is investigating a report of vandalism at St. Mary of the Knobs Catholic Church in Floyds Knobs. According to a Facebook post from the department, a report of vandalism was made this week. A photo attached shows a small statue of Mary with the misspelled word “Harlat” in red. It also shows red markings around the top of her head. Greg Otolski, director of communications at the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, said the damage also included the word “hell” spray-painted on the doors of a small chapel, not the main church doors. The...

Vatican City, Feb 27, 2021 / 08:30 am MT (CNA).- Pope Francis has said that seeing a psychiatrist in Argentina helped him with anxiety when he was a younger priest in an interview published in an Argentine newspaper Saturday. The pope spoke with an Argentine journalist about his physical and mental health. In the excerpt of the transcript provided by the Argentine newspaper La Nacion, Pope Francis said that he has developed ways of dealing with moments of anxiety, such as listening to music by Johann Sebastian Bach. The interview, which took place in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace on Feb....

Cardinal Tobin joins Cupich on Vatican's influential Congregation for BishopsVatican City — On March 4, Pope Francis named Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, as a member of the Vatican's Congregation for Bishops, making him the second American now serving on the group tasked with advising the pontiff on which Catholic priests to appoint as bishops across the world.Tobin effectively replaces retired Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl, whose appointment to the congregation ended in November on Wuerl's 80th birthday. Tobin now joins Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich, whom Francis appointed to the group in 2016.The congregation, which traces its origins to...

There is a story of King Jehoshaphat and the victory of Israel against the Moabites, Ammonites and Meunites (2 Chronicles 20). It is a story that speaks of the power of praise to defeat a numberless army. Simply singing a hymn of praise can cast out demons, avert war, and send evil threats limping away. Yes, praise! It is not always weapons of iron and steal and fiery bombs that wins the day. Often it is simple praise, hands lifted in prayer, voices raised in praise.Never underestimate the power of the liturgy to change world history, to turn back threats...

March 04 2021 Saint Casimir (Kazimierz) of Poland St Casimir Chapel, Vilnius Cathedral, Vilnius (Wilno), Lithuania By Juliux - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3254027 Lectionary 233Readings at MassLiturgical Colour: Violet.First readingJeremiah 17:5-10 ©A curse on the man who puts his trust in man and turns from the LordThe Lord says this:‘A curse on the man who puts his trust in man,who relies on things of flesh,whose heart turns from the Lord.He is like dry scrub in the wastelands:if good comes, he has no eyes for it,he settles in the parched places of the wilderness,a salt land, uninhabited.‘A blessing on...

YOUNGSTOWN — An East Palestine man is jailed in connection with more than a dozen religious statues vandalized at the Basilica of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, in what Diocese of Youngstown Bishop David Bonnar described as a senseless act. Police Friday afternoon arrested the 20-year-old in connection with a felony count of vandalism for the early morning incident. After the damage was reported, two patrol officers recalled dealing Thursday morning with a suspicious man in two car break-ins on East Commerce Street, a short distance from the church, said Capt. Rod Foley, chief of detectives. That man was...

‘Veritatis Splendor’ will enliven the faith of Catholics in the Lone Star State and around the world.“This is the choice of our moment: whether to be Catholic in the fullest sense or to let that option fade, for the foreseeable future, into darkness.” — from the foreword to Light and Leaven: The Challenge of the Laity in the Twenty-First Century, by Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas A grand oratory, seven Catholic institutes, a retreat center, residences, multilevel educational programs: These are among the ambitious projects about to launch in the bucolic east Texas countryside of Winona, outside of Tyler....

When Race Doesn’t MatterIt was only after I had begun Basic Training, courtesy of an offer from the U.S. Army I could not refuse, that I met my first black man. Well, maybe a dozen of them, actually. I felt an immediate rapport with them, owing to a sense of shared suffering. For those of you whom God may have spared, I am referring to nine nightmarish weeks spent slogging through the snow and the ice and the mud of Ft. Dix, New Jersey while demented Drill Sergeants screamed obscenities at us. And the closeness, of course, would only deepen...