From John Burger at Aleteia: Pope Francis in September asked Catholics in Europe to put up immigrant families fleeing the horrors of war in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East and Africa. In the village of Lourdes, France, it was already happening. About 15 Iraqi Christian families have arrived in the pilgrimage town over the past year. Up to 20 families, roughly 70 to 80 people, are expected to have reached the town by early 2016, Reuters reported: Under a local... Read more
From The Lansing State Journal: State of Michigan Corrections Department officials have denied a request by a Vatican-sponsored program to bring the relics of a Catholic virgin martyr saint, known for forgiving her killer, to the Macomb Correctional Facility. The remains of St. Maria Goretti, an 11-year-old Italian girl stabbed to death while resisting a sexual assault in 1902, were displayed before prisoners on Sept. 20 at the infamous Sing Sing prison outside of New York City. But a Michigan... Read more
The culture of death scores another victory—and during Respect Life month. From The Washington Post: California Gov. Jerry Brown (D), a lifelong Catholic and former Jesuit seminarian, signed a law Monday legalizing physician-assisted suicide in California. Brown, who has had brushes with cancer, noted his personal struggle ahead of signing the law. “I have carefully read the thoughtful opposition materials presented by a number of doctors, religious leaders and those who champion disability rights,” Brown wrote in a statement. “I... Read more
A friend sent this my way, evidently posted by a priest on Facebook: “A friend and parishioner went to another parish last weekend. Evidently, a deacon candidate was preaching, which is problem number one. Yes, I know. Practice, blah, blah, blah. But only clerics can preach at Mass. But, Father, it was a ‘reflection’. Listen, if it sounds like a homily and is in the place of a homily, it is a homily. However, the bigger problem was that he... Read more
From Monday morning: Let us remember, that the Synod will be a space for the action of the Holy Spirit only if we participants vest ourselves with apostolic courage, evangelical humility and trusting prayer: with that apostolic courage, which refuses to be intimidated in the face of the temptations of the world – temptations that tend to extinguish the light of truth in the hearts of men, replacing it with small and temporary lights; nor even before the petrification of... Read more
From The Lansing State Journal: State of Michigan Corrections Department officials have denied a request by a Vatican-sponsored program to bring the relics of a Catholic virgin martyr saint, known for forgiving her killer, to the Macomb Correctional Facility. The remains of St. Maria Goretti, an 11-year-old Italian girl stabbed to death while resisting a sexual assault in 1902, were displayed before prisoners on Sept. 20 at the infamous Sing Sing prison outside of New York City. But a Michigan... Read more
The culture of death scores another victory—and during Respect Life month. From The Washington Post: California Gov. Jerry Brown (D), a lifelong Catholic and former Jesuit seminarian, signed a law Monday legalizing physician-assisted suicide in California. Brown, who has had brushes with cancer, noted his personal struggle ahead of signing the law. “I have carefully read the thoughtful opposition materials presented by a number of doctors, religious leaders and those who champion disability rights,” Brown wrote in a statement. “I... Read more
A friend sent this my way, evidently posted by a priest on Facebook: “A friend and parishioner went to another parish last weekend. Evidently, a deacon candidate was preaching, which is problem number one. Yes, I know. Practice, blah, blah, blah. But only clerics can preach at Mass. But, Father, it was a ‘reflection’. Listen, if it sounds like a homily and is in the place of a homily, it is a homily. However, the bigger problem was that he... Read more
From Monday morning: Let us remember, that the Synod will be a space for the action of the Holy Spirit only if we participants vest ourselves with apostolic courage, evangelical humility and trusting prayer: with that apostolic courage, which refuses to be intimidated in the face of the temptations of the world – temptations that tend to extinguish the light of truth in the hearts of men, replacing it with small and temporary lights; nor even before the petrification of... Read more
That’s the eye-catching question posed at the beginning of this op-ed piece by Peter Manseau in The New York Times. The key to understanding the pontiff, he explains, is his consistency: No matter if in his meeting with Kim Davis we cast Pope Francis as a bumbling victim of his own lieutenants, or a back-room wheeler-dealer unwilling to come clean, in his past complaints about judges meddling in matters constitutional and divine, he already lent support to Ms. Davis’s cause... Read more
The Deacon's Bench
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