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"I am not a saint, I am a sinner" says Giovanni Vecchio as he snips at a customer's hair in his barber's shop in a side street of a workaday Rome suburb. "But I have known a saint." He pauses, scissors in mid-air. "In fact, I have cut his hair". If - or when - the late Pope John Paul II is canonised, it will be in part thanks to Mr Vecchio. Over 30 years ago, when the barber's shop he worked in was near the Vatican, a Polish prelate called Karol Wojtyla wandered in, sat down, and had his...

The prayer life of the Roman Catholic is quite different from the Bible believing Christian. The predominant prayer in the life of almost any catholic is the "Hail Mary." It goes like this: "HAIL MARY FULL OF GRACE, THE LORD IS WITH THEE. BLESSED ART THOU AMONG WOMEN AND BLESSED IS THE FRUIT OF THY WOMB, JESUS. HOLY MARY, MOTHER OF GOD, PRAY FOR US SINNERS, NOW AND AT THE HOUR OF OUR DEATH. AMEN." The statements made in this prayer are quite significant. Allow us to look at them one at a time and compare them with the word...

Vatican City, Feb 20, 2010 / 10:53 pm (CNA).- The number of Catholics worldwide rose by 19 million from 2007 to 2008 according to the Vatican almanac presented to the Pope on Saturday morning.  The 2010 "Annuario Pontifico," or Pontifical Yearbook, which offers a variety of other statistics concerning religious and lay faithful in the Universal Church, also reports an increase in seminarians.The 2010 Pontifical Yearbook was presented to the Holy Father on Saturday morning by Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone and Archbishop Fernando Filoni. It was edited under the direction of Msgr. Vittorio Formenti, who is in charge...

Catholic Biblical Apologetics Apologetics without apology! What does the Roman Catholic Church teach about ...? ... and why? This website surveys the origin and development of Roman Catholic Christianity from the period of the apostolic church, through the post-apostolic church and into the conciliar movement. Principal attention is paid to the biblical basis of both doctrine and dogma as well as the role of paradosis (i.e. handing on the truth) in the history of the Church. Particular attention is also paid to the hierarchical founding and succession of leadership throughout the centuries. This is a set of lecture notes...

Even with the significant areas of doctrinal agreement between Catholics and Protestants (see Part One), a notable number of Protestant fundamentalists insist that Catholicism is an anti-Christian cult. Organizations and individuals (some of them quite popular) who classify Catholicism as a cult include: Chick Publications, Alberto Rivera's Anti-Christ Information Center, Tony Alamo's Christian Foundation, Bill Jackson's Christians Evangelizing Catholics, Albert James Dager's Media Spotlight, and Dave Hunt's The Berean Call. (This is not to say that all of these people belong in the same category — the latter three are more respectable than the former three.) Actually this is just...

Wednesday, February 17, 2010 "When you fast. . .": An Ash Wednesday Post   Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the traditional period of "Lent". "Lent" is an old English word for "Spring", but of course for Christians it is more than a recognition of the changing of seasons, it is a call for a change of heart. I recently did an hour-long radio interview on the practice of Lent on Catholic Answers radio, the podcast of which can be heard here. I'm not going to try to reproduce all I said there in this post. In addition, to...

Monday, February 15, 2010 The Popes on "the Great Washington" Given that today is George Washington's birthday--Happy Presidents Day!--I thought I'd say something about the man. In fact, since turning in my doctoral thesis (please pray for me!) I've been resisting the urge to read much biblical theology out of fear that I might discover something that might make me regret something I said in the dissertation. . . or for that matter, failed to include (too late to change it now!). Thus, in my free time I've turned my attention to a different topic: the American revolution. In particular,...

ROME, FEB. 16, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Answered by Legionary of Christ Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum university. Q: Many priests recommend the faithful to have confession at least once year, as in the second precept of the Church (Catechism No. 2042, "You shall confess your sins at least once a year"). But I heard a priest say that this is not necessary unless there are grave sins, as in Canon 989, "All the faithful who have reached the age of discretion are bound faithfully to confess their grave sins at least once a year." Theoretically, one...

Two books arrived in recent weeks that are written from the scientific standpoint and have to do with near-death experiences. We'll be drawing articles from them, starting with one by a researcher named Roy Abraham Varghese. As Varghese points out, in There Is Life After Death, near-death experiences cannot be explained by anesthesia, chemicals in the brain, lack of oxygen, sedatives, hallucination, or other factors skeptics have sought to use in explaining the death episodes. Even those blind from birth have been able to describe their environment once they "leave" their body! When -- in trying to duplicate near-death experiences...

Well, I've got Volume II of my Breviary all placemarked. I've got the sweets put away. I pigged out tonight because tomorrow the fast begins. And if I'm going to start going to Mass at 6:30 AM, I need to hit the rack now. It is my fervent prayer that each and every one of you make a good Lent this year and that the peace of Our Lord fill your hearts during this time. I'll catch up with you all in a few weeks.

PORTLAND, Ore. (CNS) -- The Diocese of Baker has ended the church's official sponsorship of central Oregon's largest medical center, citing the hospital's refusal to adhere to some Catholic teachings. Baker Bishop Robert F. Vasa said St. Charles Medical Center in Bend "gradually moved away" from church ethical and religious standards and can no longer be called Catholic. "As bishop, I am responsible for attesting to the full Catholicity of the hospitals in my diocese, a responsibility which I take very seriously, and I have reached the conclusion that I can no longer attest to the Catholicity of St. Charles,"...

It is important to give things up for Lent. Some pastors rightly warn some congregations about the wrong approach to Lent. It isn’t a spiritual bodybuilding contest … you aren’t supposed to do astounding things in Lent so you can look in the mirror and flex your spiritual muscles. But you are supposed to regain some control over your life. As St. Paul says, for some, their god is their stomach. If you’re in that boat with me, let’s cast away that idol. The public recently learned that Pope John Paul II went to great lengths to practice mortification in...

40 Ways to Get the Most Out of Lent! By: Dr. Marcellino D’Ambrosio, Catholic theologian and speaker This, of course, is not an exhaustive list of Lenten ideas, activities and devotions.  But it’s a start!    Take 30 minutes to pray, ask the Holy Spirit’s guidance, look over this activities list, and make a few practical Lenten resolutions.  Be careful.  If you try to do too much, you may not succeed in anything.  If you need to get up early or stay up late to get the 30 minutes of quiet, do it.  Turn off your phone and computer.  Don’t put...

Catholic Roots of Mardi Gras   Mardi Gras, literally "Fat Tuesday," has grown in popularity in recent years as a raucous, sometimes hedonistic event. But its roots lie in the Christian calendar, as the "last hurrah" before Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. That's why the enormous party in New Orleans, for example, ends abruptly at midnight on Tuesday, with battalions of streetsweepers pushing the crowds out of the French Quarter towards home.What is less known about Mardi Gras is its relation to the Christmas season, through the ordinary-time interlude known in many Catholic cultures as Carnival. (Ordinary time, in the...

Sacramento, Calif., Feb 14, 2010 / 06:05 pm (CNA).- Next month, the body of a California bishop under consideration for canonization will be transferred from a Sacramento cemetery to the parish he served during his lifetime. Supporters of his canonization hope moving his body will make it easier for the faithful to ask for the late bishop's intercession. On March 27, the body of Servant of God Bishop Alphonse Gallegos, OAR will be exhumed from St. Mary Cemetery and moved to the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a parish in the heart of Sacramento where he served, reports the...

a toast for Bishop Tobin    By Phil Lawler | February 12, 2010 2:13 PM Bishop Thomas Tobin, please stand up and acknowledge a hearty round of applause. For three generations, Catholic bishops had coddled the Kennedy family, shrinking away from any confrontation as the nation's most prominent Catholic political dynasty moved steadily away from Church teachings on a host of critical public issues. Finally last year Bishop Tobin took a firm stand-- and then refused to back down in the face of criticism. His clear pastoral leadership was the single best story of 2009: the most conspicuous of many displays...

Pave the Way Foundation Proposal ApprovedVATICAN CITY, FEB. 12, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The Holy See is planning to publish on the Internet, free of charge, several documents from the Vatican Secret Archives in relation to World War II. The initiatives is partially in response to a petition from Pave the Way Foundation, an organization dedicated to bridging gaps between religions. The foundation proposed making digital files of, and later publicizing, some 5125 descriptions and copies of documents from the closed section of the Vatican archives, from the period of March 1939 to May 1945. Gary Krupp, the foundation's president and founder,...

VATICAN CITY -- Pope John Paul II whipped himself with a belt, even on vacation, and slept on the floor as acts of penitence and to bring him closer to Christian perfection, according to a new book by the Polish prelate spearheading his sainthood case. The book "Why He's a Saint" also includes previously unpublished speeches and documents written by John Paul, including one 1989 signed memo in which he said he would resign if he became incapacitated. The book also reported for the first time that John Paul forgave his would-be assassin in the ambulance on the way to...

Culture watchers dismissed the statement as the wistful longing of a faithful man. Yet John Paul, with his gift of seeing through the clutter of immediate events into the deeper and far-reaching ways of God, knew better. He believed that the fall of Communism would unleash a transformation that could only come from those who suffered. His words are proving true. The Orthodox Church in Russia, after 80 years of brutal persecution, is emerging not only as a religious force in Europe, but also as the new leader in worldwide Orthodox Christianity. More Christians have been killed for their faith...

Moscow, February 12, Interfax - Vatican will hold several events dedicated to Russian Orthodoxy. “Today the Moscow Patriarchate and the Roman Catholic Church prepare a number of joint projects in the field of culture as, for example, the Days of Russian Spiritual Culture in Vatican in spring 2010,” Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia writes in his article published in the Expert magazine. According to the Russian Church Primate, Christians need to find “new language and new creative ways to preach Christian values in modern-day conditions of the constantly changing world so that this sermon can be heard and...