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By now, you have heard the Supreme Court issued its long-anticipated decision that imposed a 50-state same-sex marriage mandate. Pastors and churches have exhibited a great degree of uncertainty preceding this moment, wondering what the effect will be on their ministry. Now that the decision has been released, though, we can respond with greater clarity. Here are the immediate things you need to know.

Chicago, Ill., Jun 28, 2015 / 06:03 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Seven monks of St. Procopius Abbey in Lisle, Ill. have filed suit against the leadership of Illinois’ Benedictine University, saying that the leadership has denied them their rights to help govern the university their abbey founded. Abbot Austin Murphy, who is also the university’s chancellor and a member of the board of trustees, said the dispute “goes to the very heart of maintaining the Catholic identity” of the university because of the monks’ oversight role in ensuring “that the university remains Catholic and Benedictine.” “They are surely not the only...

Editor’s note: This was originally given in Rome May 8, 2015 during the Rome Life Forum.ROME, June 24, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) -- In this presentation I intend to give a brief overview of events before and during the Extraordinary Synod held in October 2014. On March 17 2013, four days after his election as Pope and during his first Angelus address in St Peter’s Square, the Holy Father drew attention to a recently published book by Walter Cardinal Kasper and strongly praised it. He said: In these days I have been able to read a book by a Cardinal – Cardinal...

An overcast day could not keep Deacon Carl McIntosh from smiling. As the 11:00 am ordination Mass drew ever closer, his smile and his spirit provided the light that the clouds tried to conceal. Bishop Frank J. Caggiano lay his hands on the head of a kneeling Deacon Carl McIntosh at St. Augustine Cathedral in Bridgeport, and priestly ontological change was impressed upon his soul. In that instant, Deacon Carl McIntosh became Father Carl McIntosh. Pictured: Deacon Carl McIntosh is all smiles as he waits for his ordination Mass to begin. In the background is an image of Our Lady of...

Biblical faith is the confident conviction that God will do what He has promised. But what happens when we waver between our own thoughts and those of our Lord? How do we recover when our own feelings and our circumstances crowd out our faith in Him? Dr. Stanley answers these questions as he lists common doubts and how we can overcome them to avoid the future pain of regret.

Fr. Stanley Rother Could Become First Beatified Martyr from the United StatesA Theological Commission of the Congregation of the Causes of Saints has recognized the martyrdom of Fr. Stanley Rother, a priest from Oklahoma. According to the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, the vote is a crucial step in advancing his cause of Beatification. If beatified, Fr. Stanley Rother would be the first Catholic martyr and priest from the United States to receive such recognition. Fr. Rother, a native of Okarche and a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, was murdered by an unknown assailant on July 28th, 1981. At...

"Do you believe God is in complete control of everything - even the situation you face today? Dr. Charles Stanley reminds you in this sermon that understanding God's sovereignty - and acting on its truth - strengthens your faith and calms your fears. Take hold of God's love with My Assurance: God is in Control, Part 1." From Charles Stanley

Last week marked the passing of a woman whose missionary work and writings inspired hundreds of thousands of Christians to live lives of faith and obedience to God, and led thousands to bring the gospel to people in countries around the world. Elisabeth Elliot died June 15 at age 88, but her legacy will continue through the lives transformed by her example. I knew her simply as “Aunt Betty,” as she was my father’s sister. Elliot first entered the news in 1956, when her husband, Jim Elliot, and four other missionaries were killed by a group of Auca Indians, today...

The Catholic Church in Sydney is sending letters to companies that publicly support same-sex marriage, expressing its "grave concern" about their stance. The Archdiocese of Sydney has targeted some of the 150 businesses that put their names and logos to recent newspaper advertisements supporting gay marriage. The ABC has seen a copy of one letter addressed to the chairman of partners at Maurice Blackburn law firm, Steve Walsh, from the Archdiocese's business manager Michael Digges. "It is... with grave concern that I write to you about the Marriage Equality for Australians campaign," it reads. "You are publically supporting a strategic,...

NEWS ANALYSIS: According to one priest, the working document, issued Tuesday, reflects fidelity to the Church’s traditional teaching and the diversity of opinions within the Church today regarding hot-button issues.VATICAN CITY — A highly anticipated working document for the upcoming synod on the family, published by the Vatican on Tuesday, pushes back on same-sex relationships, reaffirms much of the traditional Church’s teaching on the family, but controversially offers an opening for divorced-and-civilly remarried Catholics to receive Communion. Although praised for being attentive to a diversity of opinions within the Church on a wide variety of issues to do with marriage...

Auxiliary Bishop Yaldo of Baghdad, Speaks on Challenges of Evangelizing Amid PersecutionAn extraordinary testimony of Christian faith in a time of persecution was given at the end of the meeting “Pellegrini nel Cyberspazio” (Pilgrims in Cyberspace) (Grottammare-Ascoli Piceno, June 18-20), by Bishop Basel Yaldo, Auxiliary Bishop of the Chaldean Patriarchate of Baghdad for the past five months. The Prelate asked the journalists in the hall “to make the whole world hear the voice of a suffering Church.” He then talked about his abduction in Baghdad in September 2006, in an overheated atmosphere, following Pope Benedict XVI’s famous address, completely misunderstood...

On the first Sunday after Pope Francis issued a landmark document on the environment, Roman Catholics attending Mass in Kenya, France, Mexico, Peru, and the United States said they were thankful that he is using his pulpit to address climate change, pollution and global inequality. But few priests or bishops — other than in parts of Latin America — used their own pulpits on Sunday to pass on the pope’s message, according to parish visits, interviews with Catholic leaders, and reports from Catholics after Mass. Despite the urgent call to action in Francis’ document and the international attention it received,...

As a tall, lanky redhead born and raised in Colorado, 34 year-old Brother David Johnson definitely sticks out in Syria, the Middle Eastern country where he serves with the St. James the Persian Carmelite Monastery in Qara.He originally came as a student to study the language, but decided to stay after he fell in love with the country and felt GodÂ’s call to the religious life there.That love for language and for God would one day save Brother JohnsonÂ’s life. At a recent prayer breakfast in Denver, Brother Johnson recalled the story of Easter Monday, three years ago. He was...

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - A working paper for a major Vatican meeting on the family this autumn indicated on Tuesday that organizers do not want the issue of how the Church should reach out to homosexual couples to be a key topic. Gay rights activists had hoped the working document, the final one before the October meeting, might resurrect at least some of the conciliatory language on the pastoral care of gay couples that surfaced during a preparatory meeting last year. The keenly awaited gathering of world bishops, or synod, will be held at the Vatican October 4-25. Its preparations...

The Catholic Education Service has said that religious instruction must remain part of Catholic educationThe Catholic Education Service (CES) has said that religious instruction must remain part of Catholic education following a landmark report calling for its removal in schools. The criticism from the CES, an arm of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, came in a report by Charles Clarke, the former education secretary, and Prof Linda Woodhead of Lancaster University. The report, entitled A New Settlement: Religion and Belief in Schools, stated that religious instruction should be the “responsibility of religious communities and families”. It said that...

The Vatican has just released the instrumentum laboris for October's synod The Synod of Bishops has released its working document ahead of the October synod on the family. The working document, or instrumentum laboris, which will guide the three-week long synod on “the vocation and the mission of the family in the Church and in the contemporary world”, is dedicated to three central themes; challenges facing the family, the vocation of the family, and the mission of the family. At a Vatican press conference Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, the secretary general of the Synod of Bishops, said that each theme will...

OMAHA, Neb. (CNS) -- About 800 people witnessed history June 18 as the Archdiocese of Omaha advanced to Rome the sainthood cause for Father Edward Flanagan, Boys Town founder. Archbishop George J. Lucas was the main celebrant of a morning Mass at St. Cecilia Cathedral in Omaha that marked the closing of the archdiocesan phase of the canonization effort with a special ceremony to encase and officially seal four boxes -- 4,600 pages -- of documents detailing the archdiocese's three-year investigation. The documents will be shipped to the Congregation for Saints' Causes at the Vatican. If the findings are accepted,...

A Brisbane priest has condemned those in the Catholic church hierarchy responsible for the anti same-sex marriage booklets distributed to school children in recent weeks as "desperate" and "worried that they are on the losing side".RECENT efforts by some Catholic dioceses to distribute anti-marriage equality booklets to school children has been slammed as “desperate” by a Brisbane priest and a sign that they’re “increasingly despairing”. The circulation of booklets from the Catholic Bishops of Australia called Don’t Mess with Marriage that lays out a case against same-sex marriage made headlines last week after it was revealed children at numerous Catholic...

It's not about guns, or race or flags ...

On Aug. 11, 1927, Smith Wigglesworth stood in Angelus Temple to preach on preparing for the Second Coming of Christ. He told the audience that liquid fire was consuming him. Then Wigglesworth made this opening statement: But there will be things that will happen prior to His coming that we shall know. You can tell. I am like one this morning that is moving with a liquid, holy, indispensable, real fire in my bosom, and I know it is burning and the body is not consumed. It is real fire from heaven that is making my utterances come to you...