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EXCERPT:...let's turn to another aspect of this. The reason our editor thinks Catholics shouldn't be fruitful and multiply doesn't hold up, either. The world's population, he writes, is on an "unsustainable" growth path.The Population Bureau of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations sees (PDF, h/t Pax Dickinson) the rate of population growth slowing over the next decades and stabilizing around 9 billion in 2050…and holding there until 2300. (And note that the UN, which promotes birth control and abortions around the world, isn't exactly in the be-fruitful-and-multiply camp.) More broadly, the Malthusian view of population...

February 10, 2012   Memorial of Saint Scholastica, Virgin   Reading 1 1 Kgs 11:29-32; 12:19 Jeroboam left Jerusalem,and the prophet Ahijah the Shilonite met him on the road.The two were alone in the area,and the prophet was wearing a new cloak.Ahijah took off his new cloak,tore it into twelve pieces, and said to Jeroboam: "Take ten pieces for yourself;the LORD, the God of Israel, says:'I will tear away the kingdom from Solomon's graspand will give you ten of the tribes.One tribe shall remain to him for the sake of David my servant,and of Jerusalem,the city I have chosen out...

20 Catholic (and Christian) Institutions Opposing Obama/HHS Mandate by Thomas Peters10 hours ago (February 9, 2012) My list of bishops who have publicly condemned the Obama/HHS mandate is now at 171 (representing almost 95% of Catholic dioceses). Only 4 bishops have yet to issue statements — and I expect they will shortly!Now I’d like to begin compiling a list of Catholic (and Christian) institutions who have said publicly they will fight or oppose the mandate.A few ground-rules: I’m only going to include institutions that have issued public statements online or a statement to the press which is available online....

Pray For Our American Heroes and Our Nation The Whole Armor of God 10. Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. 11. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. 12. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. 13. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand...

From Slave to Saint The Story of St. Josephine Bakhita By: Jill Boughton The girl was walking in the fields some ways off from her home, when two strangers appeared and asked her to pick them some fruit. Brought up to show courtesy to adults, the nine-year-old hurried to obey. Not until she was in the forest did she realize it was a trick. “I saw two persons behind me,” she later recalled. “One of them briskly grabbed me with one hand, while the other one pulled out a knife from his belt and held it to my side....

CHAPTER III: THE REAL OBSTACLES In the last chapter I have dealt in a preliminary fashion with the Protestant case in the conventional controversial sense. I have dealt with the objections which I suspected very early of being prejudices and which I now know to be prejudices. I have dealt last and at the greatest length with what I believe to be the noblest of all the prejudices of Protestantism: that which is simply founded on patriotism. I do not think patriotism is necessarily prejudice; but I am quite sure it must be prejudice and nothing else but prejudice, unless...

The readings at daily Mass currently focus on the kingship of Solomon. Perhaps the high point of his life was, when presented the opportunity to ask anything whatsoever from God chose not gold or glory, but Wisdom. Today we read of the Visit of the Queen of Sheba and saw a description of his Court and Kingdom in all its glory. Her early years are a portrait of a man deeply rooted in God. But later in life Solomon turned from his first love and his infidelity ultimately led to divided kingdom. It is a moral tale that contains a...

"And you will be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." (From this week's Torah portion, Yitro, Exodus 19:6) Before the giving of the Torah, before the Ten Commandments, before the most momentous and splendorous ceremony in history, the Creator explains why. Before "Honor your parents", before "Guard the Sabbath day to sanctify it", before all the 'how', G-d explains why He gave us the Torah; why this trek from the House of Bondage to the Land of Israel. What is the destiny? What is the purpose? "And you will be to Me a kingdom of priests...

Dear FReepers, My wife and I are going through IVF. It's our last effort to try to have a baby after several years of trying and we've scraped together and borrowed just about everything we can to make it happen. We're stacking the odds in our favor as much as we can afford, but they're still against us because of our age. It's been a long road over several years to get us to the great clinic we're seeing now, and, as you can imagine, the constant trying, worrying, obsessing, etc. has taken it's emotional toll on both of us....

In recent years, several self-proclaimed evangelicals, or those associated with evangelical institutions, have called into question the historicity of Adam and Eve. It is said that because of genomic research we can no longer believe in a first man called Adam from whom the entire human race has descended. I'll point to some books at the end which deal with the science end of the question, but the most important question is what does the Bible teach. Without detailing a complete answer to that question, let me suggest ten reasons why we should believe that Adam was a true historical...

The ELCA leadership loves ELCA Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber. She is the face and voice of today’s ELCA. Bolz-Weber pastors a church whose website states it is “queer inclusive,” “social justice oriented” and “irreverent."

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (ABP) – The Southern Baptist Convention’s top public-policy expert said Feb. 4 that President Obama’s health-care mandate covering contraception is the most anti-Catholic action by government since the denial of taxpayer funding to parochial schools. “This ruling by the Obama administration is the most transparently anti-Catholic action by the federal government since the Blaine Amendment was proposed in 1875,” Richard Land, head of the SBC Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said during his weekly broadcast of the Richard Land Live radio program. The Blaine Amendment would have amended the U.S. Constitution to prevent the use of taxpayer funds...

The Church of England’s governing body took the middle ground on women bishops today as it approved draft legislation seeking to safeguard the equal status of women in the episcopate whilst ensuring provision for opponents. After an exhausting three-hour debate, General Synod voted in favour of draft legislation that provides alternative oversight by a male bishop for traditionalist parishes that seek it, on the understanding that their intervention is at the discretion of the female diocesan bishop. The Manchester motion proposing ‘co-ordinate’ jurisdiction between the female and male bishop was substantially amended to allow the House of Bishops to make...

"Are coercive government control and subsidized sexual freedom more important than religious freedom?" -- Mark Tooley, IRD President WASHINGTON, Feb. 8, 2012 /Christian Newswire/ -- The United Methodist General Board of Church and Society, along with the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, which includes the Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church (USA) and United Church of Christ, have stunningly endorsed Obamacare's mandate that all religious hospitals and charities must provide insurance coverage for contraceptives, abortifacients, and sterilization, despite religious objections. In contrast, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, National Association of Evangelicals, Southern Baptist...

<p>Despite major gains in pop and political culture, many Evangelicals remain wary of Mormons. Just ask Latter Day Saints (LDS) church member Mitt Romney who is currently struggling to claim front-runner status as the Republican nominee. Political pundits believe the lack of Evangelical support is crippling his campaign.</p>

In a new book, Father Amorth, the exorcist for the diocese of Rome, gives a bizarre account of how he and two assistants brought a pair of "possessed" Italian men to one of the Pope's weekly audiences in St Peter's Square in May 2009. In his book, "The Last Exorcist – My Fight Against Satan", he claimed the mere presence of the pontiff cured the men of their demonic afflictions. Father Amorth said his two female assistants escorted the two men into St Peter's Square as the Pope was driven between crowds of faithful in the white "Popemobile" jeep. The...

John Piper, at a recent pastors conference, declared, "God has given Christianity a masculine feel." This is based, for Piper, on several things: God is revealed in the Bible in male images (king and father). The second person of the Trinity is named as "Son" and is incarnated as a man. The 12 apostles were men, and men are declared to be the heads of the church and home. But has God really "given Christianity a masculine feel"? Or has Christianity given God a masculine feel? Granted, there are plenty of male-oriented images, allusions, and references in Scripture that are...

Featured Term (selected at random):ROME The diocese of the Pope, also called the See of Peter, the Apostolic See, the Holy See, and the Eternal City. According to ancient tradition, St. Peter first came to Rome in A.D. 42; St. Paul arrived about A.D. 60. Both were martyred here under Nero, most probably in 64. The history of the city from that time to the present can be divided into several periods: 1. the age of persecution, to the Edict of Milan in 313; 2. freedom recognized by the empire and the building of the first churches, to the fall,...

Mitt Romney never has bad hair days, but yesterday was truly a bad political one. How bad? Consider this: • Romney did not win a single county in either Missouri or Minnesota. • He won the Minnesota caucus by 19 points in 2008, but finished third last night—28 points behind Santorum. • He won nearly 30 percent of the Missouri vote in 2008 in a tight three-man race, but won only 25 percent last night in a race with only one opponent whom the national media had given up for dead. • He won the Colorado caucus by over 40...

That Goodly Mountain February 9, 2012  "And I besought the LORD at that time, saying, O Lord GOD, thou hast begun to shew thy servant thy greatness, and thy mighty hand: for what God is there in heaven or in earth, that can do according to thy works, and according to thy might? I pray thee, let me go over, and see the good land that is beyond Jordan, that goodly mountain, and Lebanon." (Deuteronomy 3:23-25)  This was the heartfelt prayer of Moses, for he was longing to see the Promised Land that had been his goal for so...

He Has another Seed for You Today's Scripture “...For God has appointed another seed for me...” (Genesis 4:25, NKJV) Today's Word from Joel and Victoria In Genesis, Eve went through a great disappointment. Her son Cain killed her son Able, the first murder in the Bible. I’m sure Eve, like any mother, was devastated and heartbroken at the passing of her son. But I love what Eve said in Genesis 4:25, “God has appointed another seed for me.” In essence, she was saying, “I don’t understand it. It doesn’t make sense, but I trust God. This is not the...

Are You Exhausted Spiritually? "The everlasting God . . . neither faints nor is weary" —Isaiah 40:28 Exhaustion means that our vital energies are completely worn out and spent. Spiritual exhaustion is never the result of sin, but of service. Whether or not you experience exhaustion will depend on where you get your supplies. Jesus said to Peter, “Feed My sheep,� but He gave him nothing with which to feed them (John 21:17). The process of being made broken bread and poured-out wine means that you have to be the nourishment for other people’s souls until they learn to...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem The Book Of Genesis Chapter 30 1. When Rachel saw that she was not bearing Jacob any children, she became jealous of her sister. So she said to Jacob, "Give me children, or I'll die!" 2. Jacob became angry with her and said, "Am I in the place of God, who has kept you from having children?" 3. Then she said, "Here is Bilhah, my maidservant. Sleep with her so that she can bear children for me and that through her I too can build a family." 4. So she gave him her...

February 9, 2012   Thursday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time   Reading 1 1 Kgs 11:4-13 When Solomon was old his wives had turned his heart to strange gods,and his heart was not entirely with the LORD, his God,as the heart of his father David had been.By adoring Astarte, the goddess of the Sidonians,and Milcom, the idol of the Ammonites,Solomon did evil in the sight of the LORD;he did not follow him unreservedly as his father David had done.Solomon then built a high place to Chemosh, the idol of Moab,and to Molech, the idol of the Ammonites,on the...

Moshe Aharon Shak has researched the Republican primary candidates in the Bible code and has presented them in a YouTube video. We present this information to our readers with the following caveat. Because of his belief that the Bible code carries the same validity as the Word of G-d, he presents the codes as G-d's divine revelation regarding who will be elected. Although he claims that the search is done by established methodology guided by scientific principles, there are two critical caveats that must be understood. Interpretation of the codes can be faulty. Undiscovered codes can shed more light on...

Brigham Youg University has the largest library of books on Muslims scholars. It has been in the forefront of taking old books and translating them into English and publishing them. The Morman are call themselves the Church of Christ and Latter Day Saints–believing that there are prophets after Jesus Christ. The Mormons are Unitarians and reject Trinity. The LDS position on Islam can be found in an August 2000 article by James Toronto, entitled “A Latter-day Saint Perspective on Muhammad,” from Ensign—the church’s flagship monthly magazine. In the clearest and most complete elucidation of its position on Muslims, Toronto, the...

NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE, February 8, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – One of the most influential evangelical leaders in the United States says Christians should go to jail rather than comply with the Obama administration’s mandate to provide all contraception, including abortion-inducing drugs, in their health care plans. Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), told LifeSiteNews.com “we will not comply” with the Dept. of Health and Human Services’ mandate requiring religious institutions to cover abortifacient products such as Plan B, Ella, and the IUD. “We want the law changed, or else we’re going to write...

A virus that causes miscarriages and birth deformities in farm animals, though it is not known to affect humans, has been confirmed at four sheep farms in Norfolk, Suffolk and East Sussex. The Schmallenberg virus is believed to be carried by midges. It surfaced in the Netherlands and Germany in August 2011, and since then on hundreds of farms there and in Belgium. Themicrobe is difficult to detect in adult animals, and is apparent only when they gestate. There is no known treatment or vaccine.

For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them...

Featured Term (selected at random):COTERIE A small circle of persons who form an intimate group, applied to the followers of some school of thought or sectarian belief. All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

Americans, from sea to shining sea, are hurting and confused. We are told, daily, that everything is getting better. America's best days are still in her future. The overwhelming evidence (continually declining home prices, escalating unemployment figures, massive cuts in defense as our enemies strengthen, etc.) point in the opposite direction. What are we to believe? Several politicians, who are all fine speakers, are running for the presidency. I fear that, metaphorically, our nation has hit a massive iceberg and has an irreparable rip from bow to stern. Like the RMS Titanic, we're going down. We don't need excellent orators;...

WASHINGTON, D.C., February 8, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – After pro-abortion House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi defied America’s bishops last week by proclaiming she would stand with her “fellow Catholics” in support of President Obama’s contraception mandate, one of the web’s most prominent priest-bloggers has issued an impassioned plea for her bishops to deny her Holy Communion in accord with canon law. “For the good of souls, Nancy Pelosi must be denied Holy Communion and the Catholic people should be informed that she is being denied Holy Communion,” wrote Fr. John Zuhlsdorf (aka Fr. Z) on his blog Tuesday. Fr. Zuhlsdorf is...

Everything We Need February 8, 2012  "According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue." (2 Peter 1:3)  In His wisdom and grace, God has seen to it that we have everything we need to produce "life and godliness." "Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust" (v. 4). This all-sufficient tool is, of...

I believe that our right to religious freedom is now being censored. Each day as I write this message, I wonder if it will be my last. For those of you who “pooh pooh” that, and think it is a gross exaggeration, think again.

I remember my drill seargent saying,"I'm your mother, your father, your brother, your sister, AND your girlfriend!" So, it seems true for the Archbishop! Read more...

They may be outraged now, but the American Catholic Church has been forging alliances with the secular state on social issues for too many years. Now, the Bishops who promoted and shilled for ObamaCare look like schmucks. Excerpt: "They got what they deserved", he said. "They fell into bed with the secular left, and then wondered why they force them to do what the secular left wants them to do." Link to Video (2 mins, 25 seconds)

The latest report on Fr. Michael Pfleger in Chicago reminds me that if the American bishops hope to rally the faithful to oppose the HHS mandate, they will have to put priestly fidelity at the top of their agenda. Right where it should have been all along. Cultural pressures have certainly precipitated a widespread crisis of faith in the Catholic Church since the 1960s. But it is not only the laity who have been allowed to drift. The laity drifted largely because their priests drifted first. And priests drifted because their bishops drifted before them. This same order of precedence...

Catholic Archbishop George Niederauer of the Archdiocese of San Francisco has written a letter that will be distributed at all Masses this weekend about the Obama administration’s decision to require Catholic institutions to administration would require Catholic institutions such as hospitals and universities to provide contraceptives under the Affordable Care Act. See Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ statement here. The ruling has raised a huge row with many Catholics, who make up 27 percent of the electorate and constitute a large share of independents. They are also concentrated in the battleground states that will decide the presidential election....

The first Roman Catholic presence in Arizona dates to 1539, when Franciscan priest Marcos de Niza explored the Southwest in his quest for the mythical seven cities of gold. Despite this early visit and the 1692 founding of a Jesuit mission near Tucson, the church's long history has failed to produce a Catholic university or college. Even Vermont and North Dakota, which respectively have the second-smallest and third-smallest state populations, have Catholic colleges. But Arizona's large Catholic population may finally have a college to serve it, with January's announcement that Benedictine University plans a downtown Mesa campus. The lack of...

An organisation called Catholic Voices organises seminars – amongst other things – to help young Catholics in the media. A few months ago, I spoke at one of their seminars about ‘Broken Britain’. It was not remotely hostile, unlike a Theos meeting a few weeks later in which I debated whether Anglican Bishops were addicted to the welfare state and in which I was told by an Anglican Bishop that the welfare state was an extension of the communion of the last supper… The young Catholic Voices at the event I attended gave the impression of either being broadly pro-market;...

Obama administration’s contraceptive mandate evokes bitter memories of past persecution.The Obama administration's recent decision to require Catholic institutions to provide contraceptives through their health care plans has been met with firm resistance from Catholic leaders, and incredulity even from the president’s own supporters, who warn that the administration is walking into a political minefield. "One of Barack Obama’s great attractions as a presidential candidate was his sensitivity to the feelings and intellectual concerns of religious believers," writes the Washington Post's E.J. Dionne. "That is why it is so remarkable that he utterly botched the admittedly difficult question of how contraceptive...

Oh the joy of being called sons of God! Man has this special title given by believing in Christ and being born by the will of God (John 1:12-13). The Bible uses different terms both in the Hebrew and Greek for the word “son” or “sons”. One particular Hebrew word, “bane”, designated by Strong’s Hebrew and Greek Dictionaries “H1121” appears 4924 times in the Old Testament. It is translated in many ways, the majority of which are not “son or sons”. Consider these few: children (Genesis 3:16), old (Genesis 5:32), one born (Genesis 15:3), people (Genesis 29:1), colts (Genesis 32:15),...

Moscow, February 8, Interfax - Prime Minister Vladimir Putin promised on Wednesday it would be one of the tasks of Russia's foreign policy to defend Christians in other countries who are persecuted for their faith. "You needn't have any doubt that that's the way it will be," Putin said at a meeting with Russian religious leaders when Metropolitan Hilarion, foreign relations chief of the Russian Orthodox Church, expressed hope that Russia's government would stand up for persecuted Christian communities abroad.

File it Away Today's Scripture “Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor my eyes lofty. Neither do I concern myself with great matters, nor with things too profound for me” (Psalm 131:1, NKJV) Today's Word from Joel and Victoria When things happen in your life that you didn’t plan, do you find yourself trying to reason it all out, or look for a “file,” so to speak, in your mind? What happens when you can’t find a “file” to put it in? What if you can’t make sense of it all? Here’s the answer: Every one of us needs...

The Cost of Sanctification "May the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely . . ." —1 Thessalonians 5:23 When we pray, asking God to sanctify us, are we prepared to measure up to what that really means? We take the word sanctification much too lightly. Are we prepared to pay the cost of sanctification? The cost will be a deep restriction of all our earthly concerns, and an extensive cultivation of all our godly concerns. Sanctification means to be intensely focused on God’s point of view. It means to secure and to keep all the strength of our...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem The Book Of Genesis Chapter 29 Jacob Arrives in Paddan Aram 1. Then Jacob continued on his journey and came to the land of the eastern peoples. 2. There he saw a well in the field, with three flocks of sheep lying near it because the flocks were watered from that well. The stone over the mouth of the well was large. 3. When all the flocks were gathered there, the shepherds would roll the stone away from the well's mouth and water the sheep. Then they would return the stone to its...

In March 2010, I expressed the view that Nancy Pelosi’s protracted and public anti-life conduct, which she repeatedly justifies with (twisted takes on) the Catholic faith, sufficed, in my view, to bring about her debarment from the reception of holy Communion under Canon 915. If Pelosi’s “prolonged public conduct does not qualify as obstinate perseverance in manifest grave sin,” I wrote two years ago, “then, in all sincerity, I must admit to not knowing what would constitute obstinate perseverance in manifest grave sin.”It’s now February of 2012, and nothing in Pelosi’s conduct over the last 23 months suggests any emendation...

February 8, 2012 Wednesday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time   Reading 1 1 Kgs 10:1-10 The queen of Sheba, having heard of Solomon's fame,came to test him with subtle questions.She arrived in Jerusalem with a very numerous retinue,and with camels bearing spices,a large amount of gold, and precious stones.She came to Solomon and questioned him on every subjectin which she was interested.King Solomon explained everything she asked about,and there remained nothing hidden from himthat he could not explain to her. When the queen of Sheba witnessed Solomon's great wisdom,the palace he had built, the food at his table,the...

Emperors in medieval Christendom often disregarded Papal edicts because the Pope lacked the armies to enforce them. Times have changed. As has been widely reported, President Obama’s Health and Human Services department (HHS) will soon require Catholic organizations to provide contraception services within their healthcare plans, and pay a fine if they don’t. Worse yet, it will also require Catholic organizations who don’t offer these services to apprise citizens where they can obtain them. Catholics are outraged, for good reason. The stark implications of this policy for the Catholic Church were noted by Atlanta archbishop Wilton D. Gregory who said,...