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Despite the beautiful singing, the look of adoration and admiration on his daughter's face is the most beautiful thing in this video. The video camera stops darting around after first 15 seconds (Whew!). 

The NBC sitcom Perfect Harmony can be a charming show that often shows a positive, loving image of rural Christian churchgoers. While the show also goes off-key at times in its portrayal of rural Christians, it has steered clear of pushing contemporary sexual agendas. This week's episode, "Regionals," on January 23, changed that by incorporating omnipresent drag culture with Christian prayer. The show ends with the church members singing the refrain "Ave Maria" on stage at a gay drag bar (the singers combine the hymn refrain with contemporary pop). Reverend Jax: Arthur, you came! Arthur: Yeah, 154 texts later. Why...

As night fell in Paris and the fire continued to roar, the surrounding crowds came together in heartbreak, in disbelief and in song. Rising above the flames came a chorus of voices — uniting through hymns as they mourned their beloved cathedral. As of Monday evening, a video of bystanders singing “Ave Maria” had been viewed more than 3.5 million times on Twitter. The video was widely shared, with many users referring to the scene in Paris as “powerful” and “moving.” France’s Notre Dame, steeped in history, survived the French Revolution and two world wars. Around the world, many reacted...

Citing the “God of Surprises,” the president of a Roman Catholic University once known for its orthodoxy has slammed two faithful prelates for their challenges to the Pope, particularly in regard to allegations he covered for sex abuser ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.   Ave Maria University President Jim Towey released a statement yesterday placing himself squarely on the side of Pope Francis against some “conservative members of the hierarchy,” saying that Archbishop Carlo Viganò’s call for the pontiff’s resignation and Cardinal Raymond Burke’s “challenge to the Pope’s authority” are not among the “surprises” God is “full of.”   Archbishop Viganò’s 11-page...

Please, if you will, listen to Amira sing, Ave Maria. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRr6Q1g8s2c#t=176

ROME, March 21, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) - There had been a little off track betting going on among pro-life Catholics ( a tautology for sure) as to whether or not Vice Joe Biden and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi would receive Holy Communion at the Mass of Installation for Pope Francis in Rome. on Tuesday. The yeas far out polled they nays, and the yeas proved to be right. It was really a no-brainer! Biden and Pelosi and other pro-abortion politicians have been thumbing their noses at church teaching for many years now. Even though it has been repeated ad infinitum...

My distinguished colleagues and friends Michael Pakaluk and Steven Long have recently opened a new chapter in the intra-Catholic debate over the Obama Administration’s HHS mandate and the moral implications of the responses to it by employers, especially Catholic employers. I think that it is an important chapter since it raises issues that have not yet been appropriately dealt with. But before commenting on their interventions, I would like to consider a little history… The debate’s first chapter — or at least an significant chapter — began in February. Robert T. Miller, now professor of law at the University of...

Ave Maria University has become the second Catholic college to announce it will discontinue its student health insurance plan due to the Obama administration’s contraception mandate. In a May 21 statement, university president Jim Towey called the mandate “an affront to our core values.” “Ave Maria University will not offer or pay for health insurance plans that violate our deeply-held religious beliefs,” he said. The announcement comes amid continued controversy over a federal insurance mandate that will require employers and colleges to offer health care plans that cover contraception, sterilization and abortion-causing drugs, even if doing so violates their religious...

On the heels of an Ohio school's decision to abandon its student health insurance plan, another Catholic university in Florida is considering whether to follow suit over concerns about premium costs associated with the federal health care overhaul, FoxNews.com has learned.  The school, the private Ave Maria University, is voicing both moral and economic concerns. Like Franciscan University -- the Steubenville, Ohio, school that just announced it is dropping student coverage -- Ave Maria officials are opposed to the so-called contraceptive coverage mandate. But for both schools, premium costs associated with new coverage requirements appear to be fueling their anxiety. ...

Ave Maria University has joined Belmont Abbey College and the Eternal Word Television Network in the rising tide of lawsuits against the Obama administration’s attempt to force contraception, sterilization, and abortion drugs into virtually every health insurance policy in America.Ave Maria President Jim Towey, former head of the Bush administration’s Office of Faith-Based & Community Initiatives, said, “As an American Catholic, I am in disbelief that I have to choose between being a good Catholic and a good citizen. I will not, and the University will not, accept this false choice.”Towey said that the university will not allow any...

Top story on Drudge as I write this. And to think, some people accuse him of being pro-Romney. “Satan has his sights on the United States of America!” Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum has declared. “Satan is attacking the great institutions of America, using those great vices of pride, vanity, and sensuality as the root to attack all of the strong plants that has so deeply rooted in the American tradition.”… “This is a spiritual war. And the Father of Lies has his sights on what you would think the Father of Lies would have his sights on: a good,...

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Marielena Stuart stood in the middle of a quiet street, 120 miles across the swamp from Miami, and stared down the black plastic barrel of a news camera. Behind her loomed a monstrous church, its 100-foot orange-brick façade shimmering like scales in the nighttime spotlights. Stuart glanced up at its one round window — a Cyclops's unblinking eye gazing out over the strange, tiny town of Ave Maria — and shuddered. Her dream town had turned against her, she explained. Stuart, a conservative Catholic writer and blogger who resembles an aging Elizabeth Taylor, explained she felt like she was being...

Cardinal William Levada will celebrate Mass for the graduation ceremony at Ave Maria University in Florida on May 7. The prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the highest-ranking American prelate ever to serve in the Roman Curia: that’s a nice coup for a young, small Catholic school. But wait: here’s the interesting thing. Ave Maria is not a Catholic university. Not officially, at least. The local ordinary, Bishop Frank Dewane of Venice, has not yet acceded to the school’s request for formal recognition as a Catholic university. Thus Ave Maria (AMU) cannot yet claim the official...

...Jim Towey's friendship with Mother Teresa of Calcutta. He served as her legal counsel for twelve years. He offered himself, both in Mexico and Washington, DC, to her work of loving and serving the poor. This is clearly a man who "walks the walk" when it comes to his Catholic faith. As a Catholic lawyer with a commitment to authentic Catholic Social Doctrine, I followed Jim Toweys early work as Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and as Assistant to President George W. Bush from 2002 to May 2006... ...President Elect Towey released this statement,...

Ave Maria, Florida. I’m in this pioneer town, about fifty minutes from Naples, Florida, to do two talks on natural law at Ave Maria University. The place is exotic because it is so different from academic towns in the Northeast, and not merely in the weather, forever spring. But it is also “familiar” to some of us because it suddenly transports us into a world we used to know in the forties and fifties: a neighborhood with a virtual society of children, roaming freely at large because the community is filled with “catchers-in-the rye”– an ample supply of grownups always...

<p>Ave Maria University is "the most Catholic Catholic" college in the U.S., and has academics superior to almost all other Catholic schools, according to a survey of American higher education published by the respected religious journal First Things.</p> <p>"Faith on campus is vibrant" at AMU, the editors of First Things wrote in their November issue, and "provides students with the opportunity to express their faith in all that they do."</p>

The visible religious community known as the Home of the Mother will be leaving Ave Maria University's campus this week after allegations surfaced that the nun supervising the school's program to help women discern a religious vocation "was responsible for immoral conduct" last year, the university announced Tuesday. The religious group, which is based in Spain and known also by its Spanish name Hogar de la Madre, recalled the nun, Sister Maria Elena, last year after learning of accusations that she had an inappropriate relationship with a female student in the program, but the group did not report the incident...

Matthew "Alex" Klucik, the oldest of seven children, was killed early Monday when his car left the road north of Emerson Park shortly after midnight and overturned in a canal. Mr. Klucik, 19, graduated from the Donahue Academy in May and was enrolled as a freshman at Ave Maria University this fall.

Tom Monaghan is ahead of the game and eager to feed at the government trough. He announced this weekend at an unofficial alumni gathering that he was fairly certain that the AVE Maria would receive accreditation from SACS. Accreditation is important because it means that the school's credits will transfer and be recognized by employers like the US Government; it also means that Ave Maria will get access to America's tax money. There is currently not any evidence that a school's accreditation was refused due to concerns of the school not having up-to-date hiring policies, such as those that include...