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What's Wrong with a Little Indulgence?  by Jimmy Akin Ever since Luther's Ninety-Five Theses was posted in 1517 to the door of the castle church in Wittenburg, the topic of indulgences has been a controversial one. In this article Jimmy Akin explains exactly what indulgences are and how they may be applied by Catholics to mitigate the temporal punishment due to sin. He discusses the nature of punishment, the role of grace, and the role of the Church, ending with an explanation of how an indulgence may be obtained. October 31, 1517, is sometimes celebrated as the birth date...

Comfort the Sorrowful – A Consideration of the Fourth Spiritual Work of Mercy By: Msgr. Charles PopeThe fourth Spiritual Work of Mercy is to “comfort the sorrowful.” Sometimes it is listed as to “comfort the afflicted.” This description broadens the work just a bit and also fits more with the original notion of the word “comfort,” as we shall consider in a moment.But of all the spiritual works of mercy, comforting the sorrowful requires the greatest patience, sensitivity, and also silence. This is because sorrow (or grief) often has a life and logic of its own; often it must be allowed...

Diarmuid Martin stresses ‘people should be informed’ about about same-sex marriage Catholic Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin has declined to comment on the position of those Catholics who may vote Yes in Friday’s same-sex marriage referendum. It was not his policy “to tell others how to vote”, a spokeswoman said, while he stressed “that people should be informed”. Responding to a query from The Irish Times as to the position of Catholics who may in conscience vote Yes on Friday, she said: “Archbishop Martin has publicly stated how he intends to vote and why. “It is not his policy, however,...

I was sixteen years old when the concept of the Transubstantiation became clearer to me.  Until that time, I attended Mass with my parents half-heartedly and out of obligation.  It wasn’t until I left my Catholic elementary school only to enter the cesspool of public high school, riddled with all varieties of unbelievers and even some colorful Satanists, that I began to question what I believed and why in terms of religion.My parents reluctantly permitted me to attend a megachurch youth group with my closest friends from school, as long as I agreed to continue attending Mass on the weekends...

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the close of the Second Vatican Council. Pope Francis has decided to mark the occasion with the “Year of Mercy.” Despite much happy-talk and positive papal press, it is a time of foreboding in the Church. The anxiety over the coming Synod on the Family is substantial and growing, with the German bishops’ recent moves to formally ignore the Church’s teachings on sexual morality and the family. Their corruption, and the decayed state of the Church in Europe, is a source of much distress.The social and political situation in the United States is...

We all have guardian angels. Jesus told His disciples, “See that you despise not one of these little ones: for I say to you, that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father who is in heaven” (Mt 18:10, emphasis added). However, very few of us realize this or would even dare to converse with them on a daily basis. For most of us guardian angels are “cute” stories we tell children so that they are not afraid of the dark.What we don’t realize is that our guardians angels are there right beside us, ready to help...

May 20, 2015Wednesday of the Seventh Week of Easter    Reading 1 Acts 20:28-38 At Miletus, Paul spoke to the presbyters of the Church of Ephesus:“Keep watch over yourselves and over the whole flockof which the Holy Spirit has appointed you overseers,in which you tend the Church of Godthat he acquired with his own Blood.I know that after my departure savage wolves will come among you,and they will not spare the flock.And from your own group, men will come forward perverting the truthto draw the disciples away after them.So be vigilant and remember that for three years, night and...

She personally performed abortions on women, using a bicycle pump, and later boasted that she and her group had personally murdered exactly 10,141 children in the womb. She supports the legalization of euthanasia, the liberalization of drug use, and the legal prohibition of conscience exemptions for doctors who refuse to perform abortion. She even opposes the burial of aborted children in cemeteries. She is Emma Bonino, the radical leftist Italian politician, a member of the Italian Radical Party currently serving, incredibly enough, as Foreign Minister for the corrupt Italian government. And she was greeted warmly days ago by Pope Francis,...

Many Catholics and others were puzzled by the appearance of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Professor Jeffrey Sachs and former Senator Tim Wirth as speakers or honored guests at a Vatican sponsored conference on global warming. All three have spent years actively undermining Church teaching on questions of abortion and UN-style family planning, which includes active population control.

8 things you need to know about Easter Sunday by Jimmy AkinThe great day is finally here: Easter, the most important day of the Christian calendar. More important even than Christmas.What happened on this day?Was Jesus’ resurrection a real, historical event?How does the Church celebrate this day?Is Easter a pagan holiday?Here are 8 things you need to know. 1. What happened on Easter? Among other things: The women went to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body.They saw angels, who told them he wasn’t there.They went to tell the apostles, who initially didn’t believe them.Peter and the beloved disciple rushed to...

Several pieces have been posted recently on the unabated persecution of Christians and other religious minorities like Yazidis and Mandeans in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East — and of the relative indifference of the State Department and the Obama administration to it.  Last month, journalist Kirsten Powerswrote in USA Today that President Obama “just can’t seem to find any passion for the mass persecution of Middle Eastern Christians.”  Reporting on a joint press conference that Obama held with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, she writes: As Renzi was questioned about the incident, Obama   was mute on the killings. He...

Catholics, as a segment of U.S. population, shrank by 3.1% from 2007 to 2014, and are now outnumbered as a portion of American population by the “nones”, the religiously unaffiliated. That was the headline-grabbing revelation last week from the Pew Research Center.  That trend fits within the overall decline in affiliation with Christian denominations, notwithstanding population growth in the U.S. in the same time period. So there it was in black in white:  approximately 51 million adult Catholics in the United States as of 2014 versus approximately 56 million religiously “unaffiliated” adults. That should come as no surprise to any Catholic...

I was born in Baghdad, but all my ancestors before me, including my parents, where born in Mosul and neighboring cities in Northern Iraq. Even now when I speak Arabic it is still with a Moslouy dialect. For many years, no matter where I was living or what I was doing, the answer to “Where are you from?” was one of identity: “Ana Maslouy.” I am a Mosulian. And I am, all the way down, in spite of my thoroughly Americanized personality—such is the deep and dual identity of immigrants.Born to a Chaldean Catholic mother and a Syriac Orthodox...

Submit to the Lord and you will find, Breakthrough of a new kind, For in submission Heaven becomes clear, And you will see into things others fear, For The Father's Heart is Pure Above All, And only The Holy may access and call, For The Eyes of The Cherubim guard what is pure, So only the Holy are able to endure . . . Isaiah 6:5-8 5 Then said I, Woe is me! For I am undone and ruined, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for...

Featured Term selected at random:ALLEGORY A long or complicated story with an underlying meaning that differs from the literal or surface meaning. The greatest biblical allegory is the Canticle of Canticles. (Etym. Latin allegoria; from Greek all_goria, a description of one thing under the image of another.) All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

Considering Cremation? A Reflection on the Reverent Interment of Cremated Human Remains By: Msgr. Charles PopeI have written off and on about some of the problems that are setting up around cremation. Of course there has been very little explicit teaching or information available to Catholics to help them to frame their thinking. To assist modestly in that refelction I wrote the following flyer for my own parish. What follows is the text of that flyer. In case you are interested, I provide it in PDF format here: Considering Cremation?Some years ago, the Church gave wider permission for cremation and also lifted traditional...

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis has told bishops to strongly denounce corruption and to act more like pastors than "pilots" telling the faithful what to do. Francis' strong words were aimed at members of the Italian bishops' conference, who opened their annual meeting at the Vatican on Monday. Francis, who is also the bishop of Rome, urged his bishops to be more Christ-like in showing humility, compassion, mercy and wisdom. He told them to not shy away from denouncing the "diffuse mentality" of public and private corruption that he said impoverished families, honest workers and retirees, while marginalizing the...

One of the most common assumptions is that religiosity is linked to economic and technological underdevelopment. As a society gets more technologically and economically advanced, the thinking goes, religiosity naturally fades away and is replaced by a more secular worldview. Exhibit A is usually Western Europe, which grew more secular as it grew richer (and much, much more violent) across the 19th and 20th centuries. Exhibit B is the world's most religious continent — Africa — which happens to be its poorest. Under this view, the 21st century will be the century in which secularization spreads even further as the...

May 19, 2015Tuesday of the Seventh Week of Easter   Reading 1 Acts 20:17-27 From Miletus Paul had the presbytersof the Church at Ephesus summoned. When they came to him, he addressed them,“You know how I lived among youthe whole time from the day I first came to the province of Asia.I served the Lord with all humilityand with the tears and trials that came to mebecause of the plots of the Jews,and I did not at all shrink from telling youwhat was for your benefit,or from teaching you in public or in your homes.I earnestly bore witness for both...

...Law will play Lenny Belardo, a conservative American pontiff recruited by a Vatican fed up with liberals. “No one, even at the Vatican, is prepared for how hard-line this American pope really is,” Tony Grisoni, who is one of the writers, recently told Variety.