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January 24, 2018

Note from the Assistant Managing Editor:

January 22nd marked the 45th anniversary of Roe v. Wade and the "Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children."  "Everything is interrelated," Pope Francis says, and "concern for the protection of nature is incompatible with the justification of abortion."

It's been a good week. In addition to his weekly "from the pastor" column, Father George Rutler contributes "Where Are the Churchmen With Chests?".  That article is a splash of cold water that begins with some delightful anecdotes about Winston Churchill.

"Virtue is a power, a liberating power.  Sexual desire in man is extraordinarily powerful.  Therefore sexual virtue will also be extraordinarily powerful and liberating."  Read Anthony Esolen on "Why Church Teachings on Chastity are Undeniably True."

Mary Eberstadt's "The Primal Scream of Identity Politics is long but well worth the read.  "For many people, for all kinds of reasons, the roots of the family tree no longer hold.  The relative stability of yesterday's familial identity could not help but answer the question at the heart of today's politics — Who am I? — in a way that many of us can't answer it anymore."

Fr. Hardon's "Ignatian Spirituality Today" is an excellent tool for discernment.  If you are pondering a decision or struggling with a sin, it will help.

Let us keep each other in prayer this week. - Meaghen Hale



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"Christ was crucified on earth and the Church is crucified in time, and the Church is crucified by all of us, by her members most particularly because she is a Church of sinners. Christ never said the Church would be operated in a sinless or intelligent way." - Flannery O'Connor



New Resources


 
Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children - Pope Francis - Laudato Si

We need to develop a new synthesis capable of overcoming the false arguments of recent centuries.


 
The Chains of St. Peter in Rome - Mike Aquilina & Grace Aquilina - chapter 9 from A History of the Church in 100 Objects

Two lengths of fetters are here fused in a single chain, displayed in a church all its own near the Roman Colosseum.


 
Where Are the Churchmen With Chests? - Father George W. Rutler - Crisis Magazine

Winston Churchill saw through religious sham enough to avow that if he had become a clergyman, he would have enjoyed unsettling the bishops by preaching sermons highly orthodox in character.


 
Why Church Teachings on Chastity are Undeniably True - Anthony Esolen - Crisis Magazine

When the Church upholds the rules of chastity, she is not so much prescribing a diet, as she is identifying what is good for man's sexual being.


 
The Primal Scream of Identity Politics - Mary Eberstadt - The Weekly Standard

Why have so many people found in identity politics the very center of their political being?


 
Was the Reformation good for Christianity? - Graham Osborne - The B.C. Catholic

If you read my column regularly, you know my great desire for Christian unity.


 
The 5 most dangerous countries to be a Christian in 2018 - Joe Carter - Open Doors USA

According to The Pew Research Center, over 75% of the world's population (over 215 million believers) live in areas with severe religious restrictions.


 
Ignatian Spirituality Today - Father John A. Hardon - Inter Mirifica

It is just five hundred years since his birth in 1491 at the Castle of Loyola, Spain.


 
The building and demolishing of churches - Father George W. Rutler - From the Pastor

In the late 1990s I watched the rebuilding of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, replicating the nineteenth-century cathedral that had been dynamited by Stalin in 1931.

Editorials of Interest:

By What Authority? - First Things
Kindness Is Not the Same as Love - Community in Mission
Purity and Prejudice - First Things
Eminem and Gandhi Are Right - Weekly Standard
Of Television — and Liturgy - The Catholic Thing

Editorials of Interest


Pope celebrates Mass for 1.3 million people in Lima - Catholic Herald

Pope Francis took his message of hope to this sprawling, dusty capital of Peru, celebrating Mass within view of the rocky, waterless Andean slopes where most of the city's poorest residents live.


Pope Francis' message on breastfeeding in the Sistine Chapel - For Her

Last year Pope Francis invited mothers to breastfeed in the Sistine Chapel, reminding them that this is how Mary fed the Child Jesus.


By What Authority? - First Things

The pope cannot add anything to the revelation given to us in Scripture and Tradition, nor can he change the content of previous dogmatic definitions.


Kindness Is Not the Same as Love - Community in Mission

Kindness too often looks merely to relieve whereas true love looks to heal, something that often involves painful choices.


New Survey Examines the Lives of Catholic Women - epicPew

The survey asked women about issues such as prayer, vocational discernment, parish life, Mass attendance, reconciliation, women deacons, politics, and women's experience of sexism with the Catholic Church.


Chinese Catholics who changed China and the world - Catholic World Report

The inspiring and little-known stories of Fr. Ma Xiangbo, Princess Yu Deling, Ying Lianzhi, Abbot Lu Zhengxiang, and Bishop Fan Xueyan.


Mainstream media largely ignores March for Life despite Trump's historic address - LifeSiteNews

The major mainstream media networks' typical editorial approach of all but ignoring the largest pro-life gathering in the United States was not affected much by the first-ever live stream address of the March for Life by a sitting president on Friday.


Is this the way to reverse the Japanese baby dearth? - Mercatornet

One small town may have the solution to demographic collapse.


How one Hawaiian Catholic family got ready for the missile that never came - Catholic World Report

"Don't play around with grace. Be in the state of grace, be prepared."


New Los Angeles ministry aims to help families of the imprisoned - Catholic World Report

Deacon Paulino Juarez and Deacon Louis Roche, both of the archdiocese, head up a new ministry that reaches out to families of the incarcerated and raises awareness in local communities of the suffering and challenges that these families face.


'The good Lord has guided me well': 113-year-old nun reflects on blessings - Catholic World Report

Sister André told La Croix that she worked until she was 104 years old. What she misses now is that she can no longer "read, write, draw, embroider and knit." However, she said that she still enjoys seeing the blue sky when the weather is nice.


The Pope wants to hear from you - Father Zs blog

No. Really. He wants the "sensus fidelium".


Science Is Giving the Pro-Life Movement a Boost - The Atlantic

Advocates are tracking new developments in neonatal research and technology — and transforming one of America's most contentious debates.


The Catholic priest who was Robert Louis Stevenson's spiritual father - Catholic Herald

Stevenson, a Presbyterian, recognised that Fr Damien was not simply kind or public-spirited but that he was holy


Purity and Prejudice - First Things

Unmooring sexuality from the home, from marriage, and from religion has benefitted nobody more than lecherous, grasping men.


Who cheats? The demographics of faith and infidelity - Catholic World Report

According to a recent survey, people who attended religious services at least semi-regularly were less likely to cheat on their spouses than people who attended religious services once a year or less.


Eminem and Gandhi Are Right - Weekly Standard

In church or out of it, macro-humans both present and to come are finding more reasons than ever to question the baleful assault on humanity licensed 45 years ago


The Deadly Legacy of Eugenics - First Things

Many people believe that German crimes in the medical context were Hitler's idea, or were purely a product of Nazi ideology. Not true.


Why this man says abortion isn't just a woman's issue - Catholic World Report

"As a man, I have something in me that wants to protect the vulnerable from violence. That is what men do."


A Philosopher Embraces New Urbanism — At Home and In the Classroom - The American Conservative

The Congress for the New Urbanism is an organization of architects, city planners, and citizen activists devoted to the retrieval of classic urban form and the creation of walkable city neighborhoods.


Of Television — and Liturgy - The Catholic Thing

The Church has always had her doubts about theater and other forms of entertainment because of the false vision of life that they present in such convincing ways. It's our task to remain vigilant, to maintain a different way of viewing things.


Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman and
St. Justin Martyr, pray for us

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