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At the corner of Fifth Avenue and 56th Street, in front of the Prada store, a group called Irish Queers gathered late this morning to protest the New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade. Abercrombie & Fitch is also on that block, and cologne from the preppy clothier occasionally wafted onto the sidewalk amid chants of "Let gays march!" Demonstrators were rallying against the parade's policy on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) persons, as they have done for decades. And yet for the first time since the parade began in 1762, an LGBT group, OUT@NBCUniversal, is marching openly. OUT@NBCUniversal is...

Brethren, Peace be with you. According to numerous news sources, the Presbyterian Church in the USA has changed its constitution and now will allow, celebrate, and bless same-sex "marriages." Of course, this is wrong and unwarranted in Scripture, but the fact of the matter is that Mainline Protestant church bodies don't care one way or the other about Scripture unless examined through the distorted genderist, Postmodern lenses dominating discourse in their seminaries. Out of curiosity, I checked the Presbyterian Church's own membership statistics to see what's up, and I came with the chart below. If the trend holds, in...

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If the Supreme Court decides that there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, will that signal the end of social conservatism? People have long predicted the end of the religious right and, increasingly, even the demise of “white Christian America.” These obituaries typically prove premature. First, why assume a loss at the Supreme Court will end the religious right’s reason for existence? Organized social conservatism was built from such defeats, including high court rulings against school prayer and legalizing abortion. The school prayer decision will turn 53 in June. Roe v. Wade turned 42 in January. Neither of those...

Reflects on the Sacrament of Penance During General Audience Continuing his catechetical series on the Sacraments, Pope Francis reflected on the Sacrament of Reconciliation, which along with the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick form what he described the “Sacraments of Healing”. “The Sacraments of Penance and Reconciliation [...] flow directly from the Paschal mystery,” he told pilgrims attending his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square. "In fact, the same evening of Easter the Lord appeared to the disciples, closed in the Cenacle, and, after addressing to them the greeting ‘Peace be with you’, he breathed on them...

In an incredible and shameless act of defiance to Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, Pope Francis preached a blasphemous sermon this morning at Mass. Here is the Italian text, from Radio Vaticana:

The Bible and Catholic tradition have various images for describing the essence of the church. At the center of Pope Francis’s understanding of the church, corresponding to the approach of the Argentine theology of the people, stands the image of the church as the people of God (Evangelii gaudium, 111–34). It is firmly anchored in the biblical, patristic, and liturgical tradition. The Second Vatican Council renewed that understanding and presented the church as the messianic people of God (Lumen gentium, 9–12). Before long, however reservations grew loud among European theologians.

St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City on June 19, 2014. Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA. Vatican City, Mar 16, 2015 / 05:35 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A Vatican official says there will be no papal endorsement for an LGBT activist video whose backers want it to reach Pope Francis. Father Gil Martinez, C.S.P., a member of the development team for the video “LGBT Catholics: Owning our Faith,” intended to present the video to Pope Francis in a private audience after morning Mass on March 17, according to the website of the St. Philip Neri Parish and Northwest Paulist Center in the Portland, Ore....

[SNIP] The 12 steps are so deeply ingrained in the United States that many people, including doctors and therapists, believe attending meetings, earning one’s sobriety chips, and never taking another sip of alcohol is the only way to get better. Hospitals, outpatient clinics, and rehab centers use the 12 steps as the basis for treatment. But although few people seem to realize it, there are alternatives, including prescription drugs and therapies that aim to help patients learn to drink in moderation. Unlike Alcoholics Anonymous, these methods are based on modern science and have been proved, in randomized, controlled studies, to...

What is Sloth? It is More Subtle and Devilish Than Mere Laziness By: Msgr. Charles PopeOne of the more misunderstood of the cardinal sins is sloth. This is because most see it merely as laziness. But there is more to sloth than that. Let’s take a moment and consider some aspects of the cardinal sin we call sloth.The Greek word we translate as sloth is ἀκηδία akedia (a = absence + kedos = care), meaning indifference or negligence. St. Thomas speaks of sloth as sorrow for spiritual good. By it, we shun spiritual good as too toilsome (cf ST...

After a bruising weekend handling ferocious backlash over his campaign to acquire a $65 million Gulfstream G650 airplane with planned donations of $300 or more from 200,000 people, controversial televangelist and founder of World Changers Church International, Creflo Dollar has completely abandoned the idea and will only consider acquiring one in the future if it's "properly priced." "There is no campaign right now," said Juda Engelmayer of 5W Public Relations, who represents Creflo Dollar Ministries, in an interview with The Christian Post on Monday. The website hosting the campaign page was deactivated last week and an option to donate to...

The senior pastor and elders of City Church, the largest evangelical church in San Francisco will no longer require members to abstain from homosexual practice, so long as the homosexual activity occurs in the context of marriage. According to a letter written by senior pastor Fred Harrell on behalf of the Board of Elders, “We will no longer discriminate based on sexual orientation and demand lifelong celibacy as a precondition for joining. For all members, regardless of sexual orientation, we will continue to expect chastity in singleness until marriage.” “Our pastoral practice of demanding life-long ‘celibacy,' by which we meant...

“The Democratic Party is facing a Catholic apocalypse,” Patricia Miller warns at Salon.Her article does a good job of marshaling statistics, but when she assesses the reasons for the apocalypse she makes a critical error.“White Catholics are now identifying as Republicans by historic margins,” she says, and lists the evidence.• She cites Pew data showing that 53% of white Catholics favor the GOP, versus 39% who favor Democrats.• Catholics voted for John McCain over Barack Obama in 2008’s presidential race by 5 percentage points, she says — but chose Mitt Romney over Obama by 19 points four years later, she says.• The U.S....

The Church's mission is to proclaim the truth about man and the world—a mission which comes ahead of political alliances for limited goods that are quite obviously intertwined with intrinsic evils. Stubborn differences on political and social issues usually come out of problems regarding basic understandings. It’s not always obvious what the problems are. Most often they have to do with something that goes without saying for at least some of those involved. The result of that situation is that people see their opponents as willful, perverse, or irrational—as people who simply refuse to accept what’s obviously right. Examples include...

Social media is ubiquitous in a way that the lives of previous generations never had to deal with, and everyone from the high and mighty to the lowly and rowdy are learning hard lessons. Here are some spiritual truths that are reflected in social media scandals. 1. We cannot rid ourselves of sin. “To uproot sin and the evil that is so imbedded in our sinning can be done only by divine power, for it is impossible and outside man's  competence to uproot sin.” —St. Macarius, Homily 3.4 Hillary Clinton’s email system is teaching her a lesson many have...

FERGUSON, Mo. (Reuters) Hours after two police officers were shot at a protest in Ferguson, Missouri, last week, a black Kenworth truck in North Carolina hauling a collapsible conference room began rolling down the highway toward the scene, intent on bringing peace and saving souls. The truck, one of Christian evangelist Billy Graham’s Rapid Response Team vehicles, sped toward the latest U.S. crisis armed with chaplains trained to help people cope with everything from tornadoes to mass shootings. “The police force needed chaplains after the shooting, and we’ve also been serving the protesters,” said Al New, manager of the team’s...

The Catholic Church “acts unjustly” toward gay and lesbian Catholics, who are “held to different standards than other Catholics,” a situation “harming” the Church — and one that must change. That was the message delivered Friday at the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress by Arthur Fitzmaurice, an advocate for making the Church more welcoming for gay and lesbian Catholics. His talk, delivered to 800 catechists and religious educators during an official Church event, comes during renewed clashes between Catholics who hold the line on the Church’s teaching on issues of sexuality, and those who support same-sex marriage and other gay...

Pope Francis prays with journalists on the papal flight en route to South Korea on Aug. 14, 2014. Credit: Alan Holdren/CNA. Rome, Italy, Mar 15, 2015 / 06:49 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In his Sunday Angelus address Pope Francis lamented today’s terrorist attacks against two Christian churches – one of them Catholic – in Pakistan, and prayed that such violence will stop. “With suffering, with much suffering, I have learned of today's terrorist attacks against two churches in the city of Lahore, Pakistan, which have caused numerous deaths and injuries,” the Pope told pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square March 15....

But more substantially, when one examines the theological backgrounds of the 11 other appointees, a case could be made that the Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops is stacking the deck in favor of certain positions.

And so the effort to grease the skids in preparation for what promises to be the upcoming Synod’s assault on Catholic doctrine in the name of “pastoral solutions” has been ratcheted up a notch: Specifically, Pope Francis’ recent announcement of an “extraordinary Jubilee” under the title the Holy Year of Mercy.