You’ll be better for knowing about the life of Dominican Father William Holt. I sure am...
Father Holt went viral on social media twice. The first was during Covid shutdowns. A women who took a video of him smoking at the top of the tall staircase to the Dominican priory where he lived on Lexington Avenue posted it on TikTok. (Yes, priests are human. And God works with everything.) The world was freaking out, and he was the same as he ever was. “Why can’t I be more like him,” she wrote, describing the scene of him in his white habit as “CHILL LEVEL IN THE MIDST OF CHAOS.” The second time...
“Stay prayed up”: Actor Mark Wahlberg honors the Blessed Virgin Mary in viral video with millions of views...
Actor and producer Mark Wahlberg recently paid homage to the Blessed Virgin Mary in a video published on his official Instagram account. While the Sept. 24 video is brief and contains a shoutout to the Hallow App, it also loudly proclaims his love for the Catholic faith and Our Lady. While praying and making the Sign of the Cross, Wahlberg kneels before a large statue of Our Lady and encourages his followers to "stay prayed up."
The abolition of man continues apace, and the human body is now its clear target...
Bishops helping Congress: The one thing needful?
I was glad to see that the President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops included the need to reduce “unsustainable deficits” in his offer to help congressional leaders avert a government shutdown. Phil Lawler had emphasized this very problem last Thursday in The debt limit as a moral test, though he also noticed that limiting governmental debt has seldom been an episcopal priority. Nonetheless, one wonders why the Conference should have a specific political agenda at all, or why it should offer its own political brilliance to avert a government shutdown...
Pumpkin spice birthday, and a ‘Pachamama moment’...
First, let’s start with some good news. Last week, we reported to you that a priest in Nigeria, Fr. Marcellinus Obioma Okide, was kidnapped as he traveled home to his parish last Sunday afternoon. Fr. Okide is one of dozens of priests who’ve been abducted in Nigeria in recent months — and commercial kidnapping is on the rise in his diocese. Well, the priest was released Thursday evening, after his diocese paid an unspecified ransom for his return...
This Button Is the Most Underrated Button on Your Microwave...
How to find serenity through the will of God...
Over the past few years, some Catholic publishers have reintroduced classic spiritual writings to a new generation. That is a tremendous gift. Today, when so many of us Catholics seem inordinately focused on temporal affairs like politics, there is a need to refocus on the Last Things — and this can be well accomplished through spiritual reading. Dan Burke’s Finding Peace in the Storm is a welcome addition to this category. His book not only polishes an old gem by St. Alphonsus Liguori...
A ‘very human life’ is the hallmark of Gwyneth Thompson-Briggs’ sacred art...
German Bishops Engage in Tug-of-War Over Blessing Same-Sex Unions...
Getting better, the Rupnik implication, and something in the air...
The Vatican announced yesterday that two bishops from mainland China will be attending next month’s synod on synodality. Bishop Anthony Yao Shun and Bishop Joseph Yang Yongqiang were listed as papal nominees on an updated list of synod delegates published Sept. 21, and the Holy See confirmed, drawn from a list of Communist Party-approved possible attendees. The temptation here is to view the bishops as likely shills for the CCP and in the pocket of Beijing...
Ancient Greek wisdom to help with the difficulties of life...
Discouragement, or at least its temptation, regularly accompanies intentional living. Even if we do not formulate it explicitly we find ourselves feeling “why do the good things I want have to be so difficult?”It is a consolation to know this is not unique to our time. “Fine things are really hard to achieve,” says Plato’s Socrates in the Republic. In fact, he is reflecting on something much akin to our situation, namely, how someone with a ‘philosophic nature’ tends to fair in the world. The image he uses resonates:
“Night shall be thrice night over you”: The Church’s revolutions...
Pope’s Follow-up to ‘Laudato Si,’ Document on the Environment, to Be Released Oct. 4; Name Will Be ‘Laudate Deum’...
Pope Francis’ new document on the environment, to be released Oct. 4, will be called Laudate Deum. The pope shared the name of his latest apostolic exhortation during a meeting with Latin American university rectors on Sept. 21, though the speech was only made public by Vatican News in Spanish on Monday afternoon. According to Vatican News, while speaking about the environment and the “culture of abandonment,” Pope Francis revealed that his new document on the topic will be titled Laudate Deum, which means “Praise God” in Latin.
Unbelief in our culture is more serious than most people imagine...
We live in times when many people make light of the fact that others do not believe in God. Many have relegated faith to a purely personal and largely irrelevant aspect of one’s life. This attitude even exists among many Catholics who, though believers themselves, don’t seem to be overly concerned that many others do not believe. The assessment of others seems to be a rather vague evaluation of whether they are “nice” or not. Once most people, Catholics included, decide that a person is “nice,” little else seems to matter.
Sts. Cosmas and Damian, Pray For Us!...
They’ve become an optional memorial in the current Roman Calendar, displaced from their traditional feast day on Sept. 27 because the Church decided that St. Vincent de Paul is more significant to Catholics of our times. But Sts. Cosmas and Damian are always mentioned in the First Eucharistic Prayer and, since the Roman Canon was the Eucharistic Prayer for centuries, the fact these two brothers are included every time it is prayed suggests we learn something about them.
“Verdigris” is the color of oxidation, impermanence, and the Statue of Liberty...
This angel-botherer knows: If you call angels, they will come!...
Parents are all too familiar with the sort of anxiety that can subconsciously nag at you all day long, before really kicking in at night. While we’re up and about and keeping busy, it’s possible to shush the parental panic that ever resides just below our breastbones — that is implanted within us at our children’s births. It begins as a seed that we water and over-water with our worst fears and deepest imaginings of all the ways they are vulnerable, all the ways kids can be hurt either physically or emotionally or in the psyche...
The problem with long Masses? It’s not the reverence — it’s the ego...
The Mass I normally attend – Novus Ordo, but with lots of Latin, chant and 10-12 minute homilies – is never less than 75 minutes long, is packed, noisy with kids (“the baby choir” as one celebrant memorably and cheerfully described it) and almost everyone stays to the very end of the last verse of the final hymn, of which we do, yes, sing all the verses, sorry, Cardinal – “God forbid we would leave before all five verses of the closing hymn are sung...”
Feminism: America’s Best Frienemy...
For decades, Roe v. Wade stood as the legal Goliath against which pro-lifers battled. Few of us believed that we would see the end of its grip on America. And then it was overturned. We rejoiced and still rejoice at the end of Roe’s legal stranglehold on our great country. But its removal has uncovered something not everyone anticipated. The cultural underbelly of our nation has been revealed, and it isn’t pretty.
Controversial Mercy in the Vineyard...
How an extraordinary healing led to the creation of The National Centre for Padre Pio...
Brain scans of coffee drinkers show its effects go beyond caffeine...
Tyler Bishop Joseph Strickland: ‘No Communication From Rome’ Yet Following Apostolic Visitation...
This Sunday, No Matter How You Hyphenate ‘Catholic’, Jesus Says: Get to Work!...
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