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Posted on September 28, 2019September 27, 2019 by Msgr. Charles Pope Ignoring the Poor Is a Damnable Sin—A Homily for the 26th Sunday of the Year This Sunday’s Gospel about the rich man and Lazarus contains some important teachings on judgment and Hell. We live in times in which many consider the teachings on Hell to be untenable. They struggle to understand how a God described as loving, merciful, and forgiving could assign certain souls to Hell forever. Despite the fact that the Doctrine of Hell is taught extensively in Scripture as well as by Jesus Himself, it does...

...But there was never anything silly, nor light-hearted, nor casual, about Barack Obama's efforts to keep the public's eyes from the basic facts of his life, from birth to his candidacy for president. On the contrary, this opacity is a deliberate policy. Why? The presumptive answer, absent testimony from those involved, is to ensure that real facts interfere as little as possible with the image and narrative that he and his associates have carefully crafted for him. Distinguishing between reality and that narrative would require above all a skeptical attitude, sure to be characterized by Democrats and the media in...

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He may be the Second Coming to many San Franciscans - but one local Catholic priest wants a popular prayer candle with President Obama's picture on it pulled from a local gift shop, saying it "mocks Jesus" and "depicts our beloved saints in a not so saintly way." The Rev. Tony La Torre of St. Philip the Apostle Church, in ever-hip Noe Valley, is so riled up that he's calling for a boycott of the neighborhood's Just For Fun card and novelty shop, which has been selling the $15 candles at a fast clip. The candles feature the president's halo-adorned...

It's going to be interesting to watch House Speaker Nancy Pelosi play bad cop to President Obama's good cop. He's presenting himself as the agent of consensus building; she's swinging the partisan hammer. He invites Republicans up to the White House for talks. She puts together the votes that make the Republicans irrelevant, then announces the results from the floor.She will be the keeper of the Democratic agenda just as Newt Gingrich was the keeper of the Republican agenda. It's a position that will help her with her own party membership, but will play havoc with her image nationally.

Washington - -- The Obama stimulus, as history will know it, is change you can believe in. That $900 billion and counting reflects the outcome of the November election and the ascendancy of at least eight years of pent up Democratic ideas. The stimulus aims not just to revive the economy, but to shift the role of government, from a vastly increased participation in education and health care to federal investments in science, technology, mass transit and alternative energy. Whether it will work is another question. There are plenty of experts who say it won't, and plenty who say it...

I keep waiting for that moment when Barack Obama - President Obama - tells the American people that there is a price to be paid for the many proposals he has offered. That moment has yet to come.Obama's inaugural speech did tell America that it is time to set aside childish things, that greatness must be earned, and Obama bristled at the notion that "the next generation must lower its sights." But as usual, he failed to tell voters anything they might not want to hear. So began the "new era of responsibility."You can counter that most inaugural speeches don't...

That was quite a sight at Tuesday's inauguration ceremonies. There were California's top Democratic gubernatorial contenders - Attorney General Jerry Brown, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa - all sharing the same platform with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who just might upset all their applecarts. "We could have played musical chairs and decided the primary then and there," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's daughter Christine Pelosi, who was sitting a few feet away. All through the big day - and the days leading up to it - the state's Democratic divos preened and paraded their way...

JERUSALEM, Israel (AP) -- Gaza's streets brimmed with energy Monday as people picked up the pieces of their lives, while Israeli officials said they planned to pull all troops from the territory by Barack Obama's inauguration as president of the United States on Tuesday. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon planned to travel to Gaza on Tuesday to inspect the damage and visit United Nations facilities hit in the fighting. The visit will make him the highest-ranking international official to visit the territory since Hamas militants took it over in June 2007. Ban will not meet officials from Hamas, whose government is...

Washington -- Everywhere you go, a piece of San Francisco follows you, and that goes double for the inauguration of Barack Obama. I arrived here a couple of days early and booked myself into one of those new boutique hotels downtown. I went to check in and there was a big sign in the lobby: "Welcome Leather Daddies." Fun as it might have been to hang around with the guys, I had left my chaps at home. Besides, I thought it better to move closer to the political action. So the next day I moved over to the Westin near...

Barack Obama isn't even president yet, but a community in Main is thinking about naming a middle school for him. By the beginning of the next school year, Marin City middle school students will have a new building to study in. The question is will the new school also have a new name? It's a debate because the current name is Martin Luther King Jr. Academy, and some aren't ready for that to change.

Jacksonville, Fla. (AP) -- Barack Obama looks and acts like a guy who expects to win. Just look at his election eve schedule. While John McCain rushed around to seven states for last-minute campaigning on Monday, Obama didn't appear before voters until after 11 a.m., the first of just three events for the day. Before that, he did radio interviews from his hotel room — then he headed out in sweat pants and a ball cap for a 45-minute workout at a gym. "What is the one thing at this point that has you a little bit concerned?" he was...

Barack Obama has waged a brilliant, disciplined campaign for the White House. To the extent that Obama's campaign demonstrates his strategic and organizational abilities, the junior Illinois senator has the potential to be a great leader. The son of a Kenyan father who came to Hawaii for a university education, Obama can claim a personal story that makes him, as former Secretary of State Colin Powell put it, "a transformational figure" in American politics.Having opposed the war in Iraq before it began, Obama never had to gin up phony excuses for voting to authorize the use of military force in...

Barack Obama isn't the only one hoping to make a huge leap in importance and influence on Election Day. A Washington think tank with close ties to Obama and former president Clinton is about to publish a 50-chapter book on how to run a new Democratic administration. The Center for American Progress already has produced a 26-page document, widely distributed among Obama aides, describing what the last five presidents did on each day of his transition. And if Obama wins the presidency Tuesday, the group stands ready to fill top federal positions with some of its staffers, many of whom...

Barack Obama has pulled ahead in enough states to win the 270 electoral votes he needs to gain the White House — and with states to spare — according to an Associated Press analysis that shows he is now moving beyond typical Democratic territory to challenge John McCain on historically GOP turf. Even if McCain sweeps the six states that are too close to call, he still seemingly won't have enough votes to prevail, according to the analysis, which is based on polls, the candidates' TV spending patterns and interviews with Democratic and Republican strategists. McCain does have a path...

A little shudder went through me every time they said it. "President Obama's first priority will be this," they would begin. Or, "The Obama administration will find that?" Travelling in the United States last week, I lost count of the pundits, experts and Democratic insiders I heard speak with such confidence. And each time they did, I felt the urge to mutter: "Presuming he wins." Call it superstition, but it's one rooted in years of unhappy experience. After the British general election of 1992, or the Al Gore and John Kerry defeats of 2000 and 2004, the centre-left has surely...