 |
|
Serving Catholics for 25 Years
|
|
|
|
|
 |
St. Peter wrote, "Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope." (1 Peter 3:15)
Before we can do that, we must Combat the Temptation to Give Up. We have to be people of hope. It's not easy right now. War, terrorism, persecution. Child sex trafficking, the proliferation of pornography, not even promiscuity but sexual depravity. Lack of meaning and committment, missing families. Our own failings.
1. "The devil can tempt us into thinking that it is all over by hindering us from hearing, understanding, and applying the word of God to our lives. ... We can counter the lies and deceptions of the devil through cultivating a spirit of prayerful vigilance."
2. "The 'it's all over' message can come from our present trials and difficulties. ... We counter the negative message from our trials by cultivating perseverance and courage."
3. "The discouraging message can come from our anxious thoughts. ... We counter this source of negativity by mortifying our imagination."
In prayer for hope! - Meaghen Gonzalez
Image: Detail from St. Luke Drawing the Virgin by Rogier van der Weyden, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
|
|
| |
|
 |
|
|
"Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable." - G.K. Chesterton
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
| The Importance—and Power—of Forgiveness |
| Raïssa Maritain, Prayer and Intelligence & Selected Essays |
| In Saint Matthew we read: And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors; and in Saint Luke: And for give us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us. |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| Combat the Temptation to Give Up |
| Fr. Nnamdi Moneme, Catholic Exchange |
| "It's all over." This is the debilitating message that we sense in our commitments when we face difficult and trying times and the future seems so bleak and hopeless. |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| Pride and Prejudice |
| Fr. Paul Scalia, The Catholic Thing |
| Armando Valladares was initially one of Fidel Castro's supporters. |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| Sheen and Hiroshima |
| Dr. Christopher Shannon, CWR |
| The dropping of an atomic bomb on Japan on this date in 1945 provides an opportunity to consider how the unthinkable so often becomes thinkable and doable in the context of competing goods rather than through a direct embrace of evil. |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| Discipline and Doctrine: Law in the Service of Truth and Love (Part II) |
| Cardinal Raymond Burke, cardinalburke.com |
| Over the past few years, certain words, for example, "pastoral," "mercy," "listening," "discernment," "accompaniment," and "integration" have been applied to the Church in a kind of magical way, that is, without clear definition but as the slogans of an ideology replacing what is irreplaceable for us: the constant doctrine and discipline of the Church. |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| Inside Man |
| Randall Smith, The Catholic Thing |
| Apologies, but I am going to mention a television show, not to praise it or blame it, but simply because it portrays an interesting, troubling character. |
|
|
| |
|
| PODCAST: The Synodal Dream as Toxic Nightmare |
| The Catholic Thing |
| Fr. Robert Sirico and Robert Royal discuss a new book of essays by and about the late great Australian Cardinal Pell Contra Mundum, and his view of the synodal process as a "toxic nightmare" from which the Church must awake. |
|
|
| |
|
| Lessons of Natural Law in Gaza |
| The Catholic Thing |
| I think about Shani Louk and pray for her, the 22-year-old German-Israeli tattoo artist and globe-trotting pacifist, who was kidnapped by Hamas from the Tribe of Nova rave festival in the Negev Desert. |
|
|
| |
|
| Untangling Some Crucial Questions |
| The Catholic Thing |
| As all the world now knows, Cardinal Raymond Burke and four fellow cardinals (Brandmüller, Sarah, Sandoval, and Zen) sent five dubia (questions) to Pope Francis this past July. |
|
|
| |
|
| Let Them Be Born in Wonder |
| The Imaginative Conservative |
| We are made for the stars but rooted in the soil. We are made to seek spiritual realities, but we must use this world, this visible creation, to do so. |
|
|
| |
|
| Beauty, reality, and craft |
| CWR |
| "Nowadays, people don't even know the names of even the plants and animals in their backyard," says poet Maya Clubine, recipient of the prestigious Vallum Chapbook Award. "I think that's important for me artistically, but I also think it's almost part of our call as Christians and especially as any sort of small-c creator to attend to the thing by calling it by its name." |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
