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The Vatican has taken the extraordinary step of overruling the closing of 13 parishes by the Cleveland Diocese, a lawyer who fought the cutbacks said Wednesday. The move represents a rare instance in which Rome has reversed a U.S. bishop on the shutdown of churches. The Vatican office known as the Congregation for the Clergy ruled last week that Bishop Richard Lennon failed to follow church law and procedure in the closings three years ago, attorney Peter Borre told The Associated Press. The 13 churches were among 50 shut down or merged by Lennon, who said the eight-county diocese could...

Featured Term (selected at random):JUS GENTIUM The law of nations. International law. It comprises the norms that determine the conduct of political states in their dealings with each other. All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

As the Republican establishment redoubles its efforts to anoint Mitt Romney the GOP presidential nominee (an outcome likely to ensure a second term for Barack Obama), the need to understand Mitt Romney increases. What makes Mitt the kind of person he is — ruthlessly opportunistic, dishonest, insincere, willing to say anything for advantage, lacking in conscience, preoccupied with appearance, etc., on the one hand, yet squeaky clean, family-oriented, disciplined, boring, and predictable, on the other? My new e-book, A Mormon Story, sheds light on the culture that produced Mitt Romney. The book reveals a value system that ultimately has no...

Details: As the sun set over Mexico City, the Vice President of the United States toured the shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe. After a tour, VPOTUS walked across the square to the Antigua Parroquia de Los Indios (Old Church of the Indians), part of the pilgrimage for millions of Catholics.Later, under a full moon, when reporters asked his assessment of the candidates he had met earlier, VPOTUS said, “I rather not talk about the candidates … I had a wonderful day with the candidates, but I had a better day here. I would have come just for this …...

Several students are protesting the decision by Boston College to not renew the contract of an adjunct professor in its School of Theology and Ministry who has openly questioned why the Catholic church won’t ordain women.The Boston College mission statement on its website talks about the Jesuit foundation of the school that makes it unique. It reads: “No other institution so explicitly embodies the fundamental human desire to know.”But after Father John Shea, a professor of pastoral care and counseling, asked church leaders for a theological explanation for why women are not being ordained to the priesthood of the...

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...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem The Book Of Esther Chapter 6 The King Honors Mordecai 1. That night the king could not sleep. So one was commanded to bring the book of the records of the chronicles; and they were read before the king. 2 And it was found written that Mordecai had told of Bigthana and Teresh, two of the king’s eunuchs, the doorkeepers who had sought to lay hands on King Ahasuerus. 3 Then the king said, “What honor or dignity has been bestowed on Mordecai for this?” And the king’s servants who attended him said, “Nothing...

Part ONE: Even those who aren't particularly sympathetic to Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu could get a good measure of satisfaction from this interview with British Television during the retaliation against Hamas' shelling of Israel. The interviewer asked him: "How come so many more Palestinians have been killed in this conflict than Israelis?" Netanyahu: "Are you sure that you want to start asking in that direction?" Interviewer: Why not? Netanyahu: "Because in World War II more Germans were killed than British and Americans combined, but there is no doubt in anyone's mind that the war was caused by Germany 's aggression. And...

Living a Satisfied Life Today's Scripture “With long life I will satisfy him, and show him My salvation” (Psalm 91:16, NKJV) Today's Word from Joel and Victoria One key to staying passionate about life is to simply stay productive. You have to have a reason to get out of bed every morning. You have to keep your goals out in front of you. You may retire from the job, but don’t ever retire from life. You have to choose to keep your mind active, keep growing, keep learning and keep helping others. You have to find a way to...

The Surrendered Life "I have been crucified with Christ . . ." —Galatians 2:20 To become one with Jesus Christ, a person must be willing not only to give up sin, but also to surrender his whole way of looking at things. Being born again by the Spirit of God means that we must first be willing to let go before we can grasp something else. The first thing we must surrender is all of our pretense or deceit. What our Lord wants us to present to Him is not our goodness, honesty, or our efforts to do better,...

The Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments has published a Decree permitting the use of the Revised Standard Version (Second Catholic Edition) for liturgical use in the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham. This edition of the Holy Bible allows those Catholics originally from the Anglican tradition, to worship using a version of scripture which is familiar to them. It also promotes the English Bible tradition and recent efforts to renew Catholic liturgy with more accurate translations. Alongside this, the Congregation has also approved and confirmed the Proper Liturgical Calendar of the Personal Ordinariate of...

 Scripture Aloneby Sebastian R. FamaOne of the pillars of the Protestant Reformation is the doctrine of "Sola Scriptura," or "Scripture alone." The reformers taught that the Bible was the sole rule of faith, and that there was no need for an authoritative church. Now if this were a true teaching, as some still contend, we would expect to find it in the Bible, but we don't. The verse usually used to justify Sola Scriptura is 2 Timothy 3:16: "All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man...

Did God enlist some creep to steal a religious relic? It wouldn’t be the first time the Almighty used an infidel to do his bidding. Pagan Cyrus of Persia released long-enslaved Jews, enabling them to return to Jerusalem in 537 BC. The preserved 834 year-old heart of St. Laurence O’Toole (AD 1128-1180) disappeared Saturday from Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin, Ireland and one has to wonder if God’s sovereignty was at work behind the scenes of that seemingly dastardly act. The Almighty is known for His slash-and-burn attitude toward icons and idols, knowing that such lifeless items steal the affections,...

There’s one big reason the usually popular BYU Professor Randy Bott stepped in it big time trying to explain the LDS Church’s longtime denial of priesthood and temple blessings to members of African descent by calling it a “blessing.” (Read, read, and read) Bott and others of that era in the LDS Church were taught these types of condescending “compassionate” racist principles when learning about the LDS Churches ban on blacks decades ago. Bott was born in 1945 and grew up in Northern Utah. In 1958, the Mutual Improvement Association listed “Choose Ye This Day,” a young adult novel, published...

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)The third chapter of John allows us to overhear a conversation between Nicodemus, the chief rabbi of Israel, and Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was not trained in the recognized rabbinic schools, but approved of God by signs and wonders as well as by the irrefutable doctrine he taught. Nicodemus came to him, and spoke for other leading rabbis when he acknowledged that Jesus had come from God. The topic? The New Birth, as the...

The world is spiraling out of control. It has been, in fact, since its pinnacle eight hundred years ago, but today it seems that any minute now, we’ll hurtle off kilter.The HHS Mandate threatens the religious freedom of all people, not just Catholics. Abortion is rampant. Gay marriage was just approved in Maryland (the eighth state to approve it so far). And through it all, the Church is attacked.And yet, somehow, for some reason, people are flocking to the faith.Last weekend in Philadelphia, for example, Archbishop Chaput welcomed 785 new Catholics in the Rite of Election. At the Easter Vigil,...

The Vatican has overturned the closing of 13 Cleveland area parishes, according to the attorney who led a legal fight against their doors being shut for good. According to attorney Peter Borre, the ruling was handed down by the Congregation of the Clergy last week. Borre tells Fox 8 News’ Kevin Freeman that the clergy showed that Bishop Richard Lennon did not follow proper procedure in closing the parishes in 2009. “Bishop Lennon would be well advised to hurry up on down and open these churches immediately,” said Borre. In March of 2009 Lennon announced that 52 parishes would be...

John Allen is offering this week “three myths about the Church to give up for Lent,” and this one hit home for me: The popular take on Catholicism these days tends to be that it’s a church in crisis. Rocked by sex scandals, bruising political fights and financial shortfalls, it seems to be hemorrhaging members — a recent Pew Forum study found there are now 22 million ex-Catholics in America, which would be the country’s second-largest religious body after what’s left of the Catholic church itself — as well as clustering parishes, closing institutions and struggling to hand on the...

During the past several weeks the US bishops have been engaged in a critical political battle over the HHS contraceptive mandate, and the USCCB has issued a series of strong statements on that subject. Good. During those same weeks, however, the USCCB has also issued statements on tax cuts and unemployment benefits, the consumer bill of rights, US policy in the Middle East, nuclear weapons, and now agricultural policy. Here I am including only statements released by the episcopal conference. Individual bishops have added their own opinions on public-policy matters ranging from immigration to climate change. It is not obvious...

DENVER, March 6, 2012. A missionary with FOCUS, the Fellowship of Catholic University Students, is one of two private citizens who has joined states, senators and others in a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' mandate that nearly all health insurance plans cover contraceptives free of charge, says she would give up her critically important health insurance if the mandate is not overturned. Stacy Molai, of Omaha, Neb., suffers from Crohn's disease and says her health insurance coverage is critical in order to avoid financial ruin and possibly life-threatening consequences. Medical supplies for her condition cost...