Bill Nye The Science Guy and Ken Ham, Creation Man, will face off in a debate this evening that’s garnered a lot of attention on the Internet and in local communities. Tickets for the debate in the 800-seat auditorium at the Creation Museum in Kentucky sold out within twenty minutes after they went on sale yesterday. The debate will air at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time on NBCNews.com and MSNBC.com, or via debatelive.org. And some folks I know are gathering at... Read more
Over at the Kresta in the Afternoon blog, I posted a great news item: Tomorrow, the Guttmacher will release a report claiming that the abortion rate has fallen to the lowest level since 1973–the year that the Supreme Court, in its infamous Roe v. Wade decision, made abortion the law of the land. There’s more to celebrate, too: Guttmacher complains that there were more state restrictions imposed on abortion in 2011-2013 than in the entire preceding decade. Go over and... Read more
You’ve seen “Flash Mobs” surprise shoppers in the mall, enchant tourists in the National Museum of Art, and bring the strains of classical music to European street corners. Now there’s something new: In Buffalo, New York, there’s the Catholic “Mass Mob”! In that city, as in many metropolitan areas around the country, stately churches in urban areas are losing their congregations and struggling to remain open. So mobs of Roman Catholics are showing up at some older churches–filling the pews... Read more
You can’t take it with you–but darned! You can try! Billy Standley of Mechanicsburg, Ohio, loved his Harley. For eighteen years, the former ranch hand and rodeo rider told people he wanted to be buried astride his 1967 Harley Davidson Electra Guide cruiser. And now, his family has helped that dream to come true. Standley’s motorcycle helped him, he said, to retain a sense of adventure after he settled down to raise four children. So for years, he planned the... Read more
A one-thousand-tonne boulder that tore through a vineyard in northern Italy has caused hundreds of thousands of euros-worth of damage, the estate manager has said. On January 21 at 8:15 p.m., a couple living in a farmhouse in northern Italy got the scare of their lives, as giant boulders came tumbling down the mountainside in Tramin, near Trento in Italy. The boulders–the largest totalling 300 cubic metres (more than 14,000 cubic feet)–demolished a barn and stopped just a few feet... Read more
The relic’s been returned! Italian police have found the missing relic which had been stolen from the church of San Pietro della Ienca over the weekend. On January 26, reports from Italy were that a sacred relic which contained the blood of Blessed Pope John Paul II had been stolen from a church in the mountains outside of Rome. Yesterday I reported that the reliquary had been found, along with the crucifix which had been stolen–but that the relic itself–a... Read more
I knew that Elvis’s repertoire included some songs that were deeply spiritual. I wrote about him two years ago, featuring one of those selections. But I didn’t know, prior to reading Gary Tillery’s The Seeker King: A Spiritual Biography of Elvis Presley, that Elvis was so immersed in the quest for God. I didn’t know that faith played so large a role in Elvis’ life and career, even to the last minutes of his life. But there, in the pages... Read more
I couldn’t write a headline like that if I tried. From ABC News: Pope Francis has dined with homeless people, made the cover of Time and Rolling Stone and now has blessed a parrot belonging to a male stripper. The parrot, named Amore, was initially passed up by Pope Francis as he rode around in the popemobile during his general audience in St. Peter’s Square Wednesday. Eventually, Francis went back to bless the bird and hold it on his finger.... Read more
Just a few days ago, I told you that the reliquary containing the blood of Blessed Pope John Paul II had been stolen from a church in the mountains outside of Rome. The Globe and Mail is reporting that police in L’Aquila, in the mountainous Abruzzo region of Italy, recovered a stolen gold and glass case that once contained the blood of the late Pope John Paul II, only to find the cloth stained with the blood itself was missing. ... Read more
The Super Pope is gone! Apparently, the Vatican liked it (since the Pontifical Council for Social Communications tweeted the photo out to the world). And the media liked it. And the people liked it. But the folks who are responsible for keeping Rome’s walls and walkways in tip-top shape: Not so much. Catholic News Service reports that in the middle of the night, Rome’s “decorum squad”–which is responsible for cleaning the city and removing urban artworks–scraped off and painted over... Read more
Seasons of Grace
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