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The following witness was given on Monday, Oct. 5, 2009, the Feast Day of St. Faustina Kowalska, at the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy, in Stockbridge, Mass. By Dona M. Kocylowski Good morning! I would like to first thank St. Faustina for bringing me here to Stockbridge and to the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy! I also need to thank several people: Shrine Rector Fr. Anthony Gramlich, MIC, who made this possible; Christine Kruszyna, Father's secretary; the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception; Frank Rizzo, a volunteer here at the Shrine we met on our trip in October...

Venerable John Paul II Rome, Italy, Jan 28, 2010 / 03:24 am (CNA).- A new book released by a Vatican official on Wednesday details lesser known facts about the late John Paul II, including his self-mortification practices, hand written instructions for his resignation in case of incurable illness, and a plot by Italian militants to kidnap him in the 1980's."Why he is a Saint: The True story of John Paul II," by Monsignor Slawomir Oder, a Church official heading the cause for John Paul II's canonization, was made available in Italian bookstores on Jan. 27. According to the Italian...

Calling health care a "right" to be guaranteed by the federal government, America's Catholic Bishops are trying to save ObamaCare at a time when the legislation has been pronounced in limbo, dying or dead by most of the media. The evidence of intensive Catholic Bishop lobbying activity suggests that liberal Congressional leaders are going to give the legislation a temporary respite so that liberal Catholics can be persuaded to pressure Congress to pass both national health care legislation and "comprehensive immigration reform" in the form of H.R. 4321, the "Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America's Security and Prosperity" Act. As AIM...

The Institution of the Eucharist in Scripture from a talk by Scott HahnThe Catholic Church claims that Christ is really present in the Eucharist, that the sacrifice of calvary is repeated at every Mass, and that he gives Himself to us in Holy Communion as food unto eternal life.With this in mind, let's look at Scripture. Luke 22, verse 15, our Lord says, "I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you." So we are assured that the Last Supper in the Upper Room was a Passover meal. In Mark 14, verses 22 through 26, we hear the...

Aquinas and the Big BangWILLIAM E. CARROLLAquinas would have no difficulty accepting Big Bang cosmology, even with its recent variations, while also affirming the doctrine of creation out of nothing. He would, of course, distinguish between advances in cosmology and the philosophical and theological reflections on these advances. One day a little boy asked his mother where he came from. His mother, pleased to have the opportunity to discuss such an important matter with her son, began by offering an elementary account of human biology, even introducing some references to the theory of evolution. Lest she restrict her analysis to...

n a strongly worded appeal that will test their political influence, especially with their pro-life and Republican allies, the Catholic bishops of the United States have told Congress to put politics aside and focus on the "moral imperative" of passing universal health care. "The health care debate, with all its political and ideological conflict, seems to have lost its central moral focus and policy priority, which is to ensure that affordable, quality, life-giving care is available to all," the three bishops who are leading the lobbying effort for the Catholic hierarchy write in a letter sent Tuesday to all 535...

NEW ORLEANS -- It was John B. Baus's 82nd birthday. When he was getting ready to go out with his wife, he had a heart attack and ended up on his way to the emergency room instead. Doctors there worked to stabilize him and performed surgery to implant a pace maker. Mary Adele Baus, his wife, went home after the surgery, assured that her husband was resting comfortably. Instead, at 3 a.m. doctors were working frantically with oxygen and electric paddles to keep Baus alive. In the midst of the effort Baus asked for a Roman Catholic priest, fearing death...

The late Pope John Paul II, who has been put on the fast track to sainthood by the Vatican, regularly whipped himself as an act of penance to feel closer to God, and signed a secret document saying that would step down as pontiff if he became incurably ill, according to a new book. Why a Saint? by Monsignor Slawomir Oder, the Vatican "postulator" in charge of the canonisation process, says the Polish-born Pope performed self flagellation as a bishop in Krakow and continued to do so in the Vatican after being elected Pope in 1978. "In his wardrobe, among...

The late Pope John Paul II, who has been put on the fast track to sainthood by the Vatican, regularly whipped himself as an act of penance to feel closer to God, and signed a secret document saying that he would step down as pontiff if he became incurably ill, according to a new book. "Why a Saint?" by Monsignor Slawomir Oder, the Vatican "postulator" in charge of the canonization process, says the Polish-born Pope performed self flagellation as a bishop in Krakow and continued to do so in the Vatican after being elected Pope in 1978. "In his wardrobe,...

Msgr. Slawomir Oder, postulator for the sainthood cause of Pope John Paul II, presents his new book on the late pope in Rome Jan. 26. (CNS/Paul Haring) VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope John Paul II always took penitence seriously, spending entire nights lying with his arms outstretched on the bare floor, fasting before ordaining priests or bishops and flagellating himself, said the promoter of his sainthood cause. Msgr. Slawomir Oder, postulator of the late pope's cause, said Pope John Paul used self-mortification "both to affirm the primacy of God and as an instrument for perfecting himself." The monsignor spoke...

Joint Coordinating Committee for the Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox ChurchAghios Nikolaos, Crete, Greece, September 27 - October 4, 2008Introduction1. In the Ravenna document, "The Ecclesiological and Canonical Consequences of the Sacramental Nature of the Church – Ecclesial Communion, Conciliarity and Authority", Catholics and Orthodox acknowledge the inseparable link between conciliarity and primacy at all levels of the life of the Church: "Primacy and conciliarity are mutually interdependent. That is why primacy at the different levels of the life of the Church, local, regional and universal, must always be considered in the context of conciliarity,...

MOSCOW – More than 100 Russian Orthodox believers have been hospitalized after drinking holy water during Epiphany celebrations in the eastern city of Irkutsk, an official said Monday. A total of 117 people, including 48 children, were in the hospital complaining of acute intestinal pain after drinking water from wells in and around a local church last week, said Vladimir Salovarov, a spokesman for the Irkutsk Investigative Committee. Salovarov said 204 people required some medical treatment after consuming the water, the source of which was a stagnant lake. He said, however, that it was too early to say what caused...

The punishment already inflicted by the majority on such a one is enough; you should now relent and support him so that he may not be crushed by too great a weight of sorrow. 2 Cor. 2:6-7 Indulgences rank among the most poorly understood blessings of the Catholic Church. An indulgence is not permission from the Church to indulge in sin. It is not being indulgent with sinners. It is not the pardon of sin nor the remission of guilt. Now according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC):An indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment...

Frequently Requested Catholic Church Statistics CARA gets many inquiries from Church agencies and the media about the numbers for vocations, seminary enrollments, priests and vowed religious, parishes, Mass attendance, schools and the Catholic population. Below are some comparative statistics from 1965. Generally, these data reflect the situation at the beginning of the calendar year listed. The sources for this information include The Official Catholic Directory (OCD), the Vatican's Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae (ASE), and other CARA research and databases. All data are cross checked as much as possible. For the U.S, the numbers reported here include only figures for those...

Did you know that penance is not only for Lent and Advent? And that we Catholics are not only supposed to be doing penance on the Fridays of Lent? Of course, penance is good to do at many times for many reasons.  But in fact, canon law requires us to do some form of penance every Friday of the year. Canon 1250—All Fridays through the year and the time of Lent are penitential days and times throughout the universal Church. Canon 1251—Abstinence from eating meat or another food according to the prescriptions of the conference of bishops is to...

First take a sprig of rosemary and one of thyme and sprinkle them with water and put one in one shoe and the other in the other and place the shoes one each side of your bed-head, and say before falling asleep, "St Agnes, that's to lovers kind / Come ease the trouble of my mind," and you will dream of your husband-to-be. Or so they say. For today is the Eve of St Agnes, the day on which John Keats's rich poem of that name is set. In the poem, the heroine Madeline follows simpler rules she has heard...

Vatican City, Jan 21, 2010 / 10:44 am (CNA).- Today Pope Benedict celebrated the feast of the martyr St. Agnes by blessing a group of lambs in the Urban VIII Chapel of the Vatican Apostolic Palace. Every year on January 21, the Pope blesses a group of lambs which are traditionally less than a year old. The lambs are raised by the Trappist Fathers of the Abbey of Three Fountains in Rome. They are then sheared, and the wool is woven into palliums by the Sisters of St. Cecilia. The palliums will be given to the new metropolitan archbishops...

Next to the Most Precious Blood of Jesus there is nothing more touching and effective than the tears of our heavenly Mother! How many tears she shed on the Way of the Cross and when she stood beneath the Cross! She shed bitter tears in reparation for the many insults her Divine Son then and which He would receive in the future. She wept bitter tears for the many souls who would not submit to the Commandments of God, and so would be lost forever. In recent centuries, too, she wept tears of sorrow: The account of the apparitions of...

The problem of evil has puzzled mankind from the earliest of times. It is an apparently insoluble conundrum: If God is both all-good and all-powerful, He should have both the motive and the ability to exclude evil from His creation. But evil is here — it is pervasive and oppressive throughout our world. Not only do we have moral evil wrought by responsible agents such as humans and angels, but also natural evils like earthquakes, tsunamis, and hurricanes that "just happen" and are often dismissed as "acts of God." Why doesn't God do something to stop it all? Some...

Moscow, Russia, Jan 20, 2010 / 12:11 am (CNA).- The Gospels, four icons, crosses and a relic of the True Cross have been taken aboard the Russian segment of the International Space Station (ISS), a Russian cosmonaut has reported. A photo taken by the station crew shows an icon and a crucifix floating in zero gravity in the ISS. Writing on his blog at the website of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), Cosmonaut Maksim Suraev responded to readers’ questions about religious symbols on the space station. “We have four holy icons on the Russia segment. We also have the...