The government in Britain and the medical establishment are working together to resist any lowering of the present 24 week abortion limit. Despite the fact that premature babies at just 23 weeks gestation born and nurtured in British intensive care units have a pretty good survival rate, they are still refusing to lower the time limit. Pictured above is a 24 week old human fetus. Babies of this age are able to be legally killed in Britain. UPDATE: Read Charles... Read more

The Daily Telegraph reports that Padre Pio faked his stigmata with carbolic acid. What next? The insane thing about those who attack the Catholic Church is that they often say that Catholic beliefs are incredible, yet they push out stuff like this. In recent years we’ve had Pius XII–Hitler’s Pope, all the DaVinci Code junk, John Paul the Great being euthanized, Mother Teresa a financially corrupt fascist, and now Padre Pio faking his stigmata. For goodness sake the man suffered... Read more

Shawn Tribe reports on moves from one of the Anglican ‘continuing’ churches to establish ‘sacramental unity’ with Rome. I can’t keep up with all this. Traditional Anglicans are already welcome to establish ‘sacramental unity’ with Rome. It’s called being received into full communion with the Catholic Church a.k.a ‘becoming a Catholic.’ In a comment Fr. Newman points out that the head honcho of TAC is himself a former Catholic priest who went Anglican and got married, and that one of... Read more

This is by the Russian artist Vasnetov, who also painted the wonderful Mother of God pictured below. More of his work can be viewed here. Read more

St Luke is represented by the Winged Ox. Here’s a good article on the Biblical background for the four winged beasts representing the four gospel writers. I was in the Bob Jones art gallery some time ago, and they have a great 18th c. Italian collection of the four gospel writers: a portrait of each with his assigned winged beast. I was surprised to find that in the captions and explanatory notes they did not know the Biblical background for... Read more

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Jeffrey’s got a particularly stunning sequence of pictures from an Abbey in Tuscany. These are my two favorites. Double click on the interior shot. It enlarges nicely. Read more

Some English doctors want women to be allowed to pop a few pills to have their own abortion at home. They say the use of these pills are find and dandy up to nine weeks into a pregnancy. I know very little about the medical aspects of this, but they say that a couple of pills ends an early pregnancy ‘safely’. We’ll leave on one side the obvious question of safe for whom? Obviously not safe for the unborn child.... Read more

During RCIA this evening an idea hit me. I was trying to communicate the fact that the Christian faith is not just a list of rules to be obeyed or a list of doctrines to be believed, but it is an encounter with a person. It is a way of life. It is a journey and a destination, a beginning and an end. Jesus Christ says he is the Way, the Truth and the Life. We often break these down... Read more

According to Pope John Paul the Great, evangelization works like this: 1. Spend time (lots of time) in contemplative prayer2. Because we become like the thing we worship, we will eventually become more like Christ3. As we become more like Christ, we will reflect his glory in our own lives, and our faces will become radiant with glory like Moses.4. Because we are becoming more like Christ, we will want to spend more time with people and for people5. They... Read more