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The new movie that debuted on December 1st, The Nativity Story, has received many positive reviews around the country already and also a fair number of attacks by the standard group of village atheists.Criticisms notwithstanding, the movie certainly has many redeeming qualities to it including its portrayal of Joseph and the touching scene of Mary's visit to Elizabeth, but at the same time I feel it necessary to correct the record about its presentation of Mary. More to the point, twenty centuries of theological reflection on the Virgin Mary have been effectively glossed over in the movie, and we have been...

Lea Marie Ravotti “Immaculate Conception” (2004) By David ScottIn November 1848, the specter of revolution sweeping through Europe finally reached Rome.On Nov. 15, extremists executed Pellegrino Rossi, the newly named governor of the Papal States. Angry mobs roamed the streets, surrounding the papal palace on the Quirinal Hill.Besieged for nine days, Blessed Pope Pius IX finally fled under cover of night, disguised as an ordinary priest, taking refuge in Gaeta in the Kingdom of Naples.He was in the third month of his papacy in exile when, on February 2, 1849, he finished a letter to all the world’s bishops....

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- As publications from Time magazine to Christianity Today have discovered recently, Mary, the mother of Jesus, is not just for Catholics anymore. Features on Mary are perennial favorites for editors looking for a religion-themed story before Christmas, and in the last few years many of these articles have focused on the increasing popularity of Mary among Protestants. Marianist Father Thomas Thompson, editor of the Marian Library Newsletter at the University of Dayton in Ohio, points out that the expanding Protestant acceptance of Mary is based upon a strictly scriptural view of her, rather than on any change...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 27 /U.S. Newswire/ -- No one knows what she really looked like, yet the Blessed Virgin Mary stands among the most popular artistic subjects in history. In every medium, with every imaginable material, in tiny personal images and gigantic mosaics, artists have depicted her the world over. "Picturing Mary," a stunning new high-definition documentary to debut next month on public television, explores how images of the Virgin reflect numerous traditions, devotional practices and cultures. The one-hour program leads viewers on a pictorial journey through history from the earliest times to the present day and presents a stunning array...

Why the mother of Jesus was more revolutionary than we've been led to believe.There are two Marys. One wears a Carolina blue robe, exudes piety from a somber face, often holds her baby son in her arms, and barely makes eye contact with us. This is the familiar Blessed Virgin Mary, and she leads us to a Christmas celebration of quiet reflection.Another Mary—the Blessed Valorous Mary—wears ordinary clothing and exudes hope from a confident face. This Mary utters poetry fit for a political rally, goes toe-to-toe with Herod the Great, musters her motherliness to reprimand her Messiah-son for dallying at...

The question of Medjugorje is a huge (and often heated) one, and it looks like it's about to get bigger and, well, more heated: VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Cardinal Vinko Puljic of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, announced a commission would be formed to review the alleged Marian apparitions at Medjugorje and pastoral provisions for the thousands of pilgrims who visit the town each year. "The commission members have not been named yet," Cardinal Puljic told Catholic News Service in a July 24 telephone interview. "I am awaiting suggestions from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith" on theologians to appoint....

ROME, JUNE 29, 2006 (Zenit.org).- An Egyptian Muslim and deputy director of a prominent Italian newspaper suggested that Mary could be the figure who brings Christians and Muslims together. Magdi Allam of Il Corriere della Sera spoke to ZENIT about the appeal he launched in the pages of the national daily newspaper to Muslims living in Italy to visit the Marian shrines in their host country. The journalist said that he is convinced that the Virgin Mary is a meeting point between Christians and Muslims. "Mary is a figure present in the Koran, which dedicates an entire sura [chapter ed.n.]...

ROME, APRIL 6, 2006 (Zenit.org).- A new book on John Paul II, by Italian journalist Renzo Allegri, looks at a Marian angle of his life. "Il papa di Fatima" (The Fatima Pope) was recently published in Italy by Mondadori. Allegri's research reveals that Karol Wojtyla's life and pontificate seem to have been inscribed in a divine plan that makes of John Paul II that "bishop clothed in white" mentioned in the third part of the secret of Fatima. The Pope himself became aware of that possibility after the 1981 attempt on his life. The attack took place on May 13,...

Three significant movements have swept through the Church since the Second Vatican Council, all of which have been sources of great blessing and sometimes confusion, with, on occasion, some devotees mistakenly making themselves a Magisterium unto themselves. Most of them outgrow this error. I am speaking of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, the Marian movement — particularly involving reported apparitions, especially those occurring in Medjugorje, in the former Yugoslavia — and the Traditionalist/ Tridentine Mass movement. I most closely associate myself with the charismatic renewal which I credit with perhaps saving my life while Jesus was working on saving my soul.Of...

IT'S a miracle! A four-hour miniseries on Lourdes — the French shrine-town famous for its mysterious ability to cure disease and infirmity— is about to go into production. A&E, the cable channel, is underwriting the project. "Lourdes" will follow the true story of a terminally ill surgeon who is healed after taking the waters at Lourdes. The doctor returns later to investigate the miraculous power of the site. The series' producer, Paul Lussier, who also did ABC's "Blackout," has been granted access to the Lourdes archives. The archives supposedly contain details of the 68 cases that have been classified as...

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict slipped out of the Vatican unannounced for the first time in his papacy on Saturday, travelling to the same spot his predecessor did exactly 27 years ago to pray after being elected.  The Pontiff visited the shrine to the Virgin Mary at Mentorella, in the mountains about 55 km (34 miles) northeast of Vatican City, where Pope John Paul II went on Oct. 29, 1978.  John Paul had said that travelling to Mentorella, in what was the first the many pilgrimages outside Rome of his pontificate, had helped him to pray.  John Paul's trip,...

Mariaphobia is the irrational fear of Mary. In my last column I remarked that the surprise, for many Evangelical converts to the Catholic faith, is how much smaller Mary is to the Catholic than she is to the evangelical. For the evangelical, “the Catholic Mary” looms large as a kind of ur-goddess. The fear that pre-occupies the evangelical imagination is that, say what Catholics will, once the convert is safely inside the Church, the priest will produce the brain chip implant and you will be reprogrammed to adore and worship Mary by the Vatican’s Mind Control Laser Platform in Geosynchronous...

Recently, I participated in an online conversation about the Blessed Virgin. As an evangelical convert to the Catholic faith, I can empathize with the deep fears many evangelicals have about Mary. It’s a terror that runs way down into the guts and marrow of many evangelicals. It’s a deep, unreasoning and nameless fear that does not lose any of its power even when every so-called “basis” for the fear is debunked. And like many irrational fears, it has the odd quality of distracting us from reality and clear thinking. To illustrate what I mean, let me sum up not a...

Catholic University hosts sacrilegious display against the Blessed Mother, offending students, faculty and Catholics nationwide Something extremely alarming and shameful occurred at the University of Dayton, where Our Blessed Mother was depicted in an exhibit amid pictures of prostitutes and pornography.1 The sacrilegious display, "Heartlands," by Derek A. Cracco, an assistant professor of art at the University of Alabama, was on public display in the Rike Center Gallery of the University of Dayton from February 22 to March 11. Ranking among the ten largest Catholic universities in the country, the University of Dayton, founded by the Society of Mary in...

VAILANKANNI, India (CNS) -- Amid the stench of rotting bodies and decaying garbage, Thanjavur Bishop Devadass Ambrose Mariadoss spent several days at India's most popular Marian shrine to oversee post-tsunami relief efforts. Barefoot volunteers, with faces covered by surgical masks or even handkerchiefs, removed rotting bodies from mountains of debris: houses, shops, remains of thatched sheds, boats and animal carcasses strewn around the scenic beach in front of the Basilica of Our Lady of Good Health. The shrine, which draws 20 million pilgrims annually, remained untouched. More than 1,000 people, including hundreds of pilgrims, perished within a one-kilometer (.62 miles)...

The Mother of the Son: The Case for Marian Devotion    MARK SHEA It has to be one of the strangest things in the world: So many Christians who love Jesus with all their hearts recoil in fear at the mention of His mother’s name, while many who do love her find themselves tongue-tied when asked to explain why. Most of the issues people have with Mary are really issues about something else. "Where is the Assumption of Mary in the Bible?" isn't really a question about Mary. It's a question about the validity of Sacred Tradition and the authority...

Isn't Knox's story just what CBS needed? Here comes forward someone who is 87 years old who does not support Bush as president, deeming him "unfit for office" and "selected, not elected." This is right out of a left wing playbook. Why Knox is good for CBS is because she diverts attention away from CBS's proven forged documents and places the emphasis on the contents -- just what CBS been desperately been trying and failing to do. "The information in here [memos] was correct, but it was picked up from the real ones," she said. "I probably typed the information...

"When God the most High decided to chastise the Poles, in His goodness He first sent various signs warning of the catastrophe which approached." So He permitted that, the 10th of February 1654, the high tower of the Sanctuary of Czestochowa be struck by lighting and consumed by fire. In that same year, on the 9th of July, everyone saw a miracle which occurred in the face of the sun: "In the nose of the sun there appeared a cross, which gradually became transformed into a heart, this latter pieced by a sword moved to one side and halted at...

The explosion of the preventable scandals involving sodomite priests which have rocked our beloved Church in recent years evidently has weakened the faith of some Catholics. And this is to say nothing of the scandal of the abandonment of the authentic patrimony of the Catholic Faith and her traditional liturgy under the regime of novelty of the past forty to forty-six years. Indeed, it is not an exaggeration to state the the preventable scandals involving sodomite priests, at least some of whom were recruited into the priesthood and protected by sodomite bishops and sodomite chancery factotums, is an expression of...

Despite the radicalism of early Protestantism with regard to many ancient Catholic "distinctives," such as the Communion of the Saints, Penance, Purgatory, Infused Justification, the Papacy, the priesthood, sacramental marriage, etc., it may surprise many to discover that Martin Luther was rather conservative in some of his doctrinal views, such as on baptismal regeneration, the Eucharist, and particularly the Blessed Virgin Mary. Luther indeed was quite devoted to Our Lady, and retained most of the traditional Marian doctrines which were held then and now by the Catholic Church. This is often not well-documented in Protestant biographies of Luther and histories...