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Breaking: Pope to host international conference on complementarity of man and woman By Joshua Mercer Big news, just announced by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith:Rome, November 3rd, 2014.On November 17-19, 2014, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith will host a colloquium in Vatican City, in cooperation with the Pontifical Council for the Family, the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, on the subject of the Complementarity of Man and Woman in Marriage. It is a global, interreligious meeting featuring representatives from 14 religious traditions and 23 countries. The colloquium will...

BILLINGS, Mont. – A gay couple has been told they can no longer receive Communion or participate in church ministry after the new priest at a Roman Catholic church in central Montana learned they had been married in a civil ceremony more than a year ago. The decision set off a split that has cut attendance at St. Leo the Great Catholic Church in Lewistown, population 5,900. It has prompted an upcoming visit from the bishop of the Diocese of Great Falls-Billings.

Once upon a time there was a church founded on God’s entering into human history in order to give humanity a path to eternal life and happiness with him. The Savior that God sent, his only-begotten Son, did not write a book but founded a community, a church, upon the witness and ministry of twelve apostles. He sent this church the gift of the Holy Spirit, the spirit of love between Father and Son, the Spirit of the truth that God had revealed about himself and humanity by breaking into the history of human sinfulness. This church, a hierarchical communion,...

Three elderly Italian nuns were sexually assaulted and murdered in twin attacks in their convent in the capital of Burundi, police said today as a hunt was launched for their killers. Police initially reported that two nuns were stabbed to death yesterday afternoon. The killer then battered one of the two with a rock, before fleeing the convent. Italian authorities named the first two killed as Olga Raschietti, 83, and Lucia Pulici, 75, both Roman Catholic nuns. But in the early hours of today morning, another nun in the same convent was killed, her body beaten and head hacked off....

“Why is it,” said Jessica, my long-time friend, a non-observant Church of Scotland member, “that the Catholic Church won’t just, er, enter the modern era? Why are they so obsessed with sex?” Um, I thought, here we go. We were sitting in a coffee place in Edinburgh, trying to catch up from our busy lives. Even though our lives have taken different paths, Jessica and I go back a long time. I took a deep breath. “For the same reason that traditionally Jews forbade pre-marital sex, and sex outside marriage,” I said evenly. “After all, Christianity is an offshoot of...

When Cardinal Bergoglio was elected pope in 2013, many traditional Catholics were wary. Recently, their pessimism is being justified as "The Francis Effect" makes itself felt across the world and in America, most notably in the Archdiocese of New York. So-called "traditional" Catholics prefer to attend the Mass as it was celebrated before and during the Second Vatican Council (1962-5), before the liturgy was radically reformed in 1969. The Tridentine Mass, which was the ordinary form of the Mass from 1570-1969, is said in Latin, often accompanied by Gregorian Chant and incense, and emphasizes the sacrificial aspect of the Mass.

The modern day LGBT movement wants you to believe that the people featured in the new documentary “Desire of the Everlasting Hills” really don’t exist. They are figments of the fevered imaginations of the Christian right.Meet Dan, Rilene and Paul, all refugees from deep enmeshment in the LGBT life, each finding a home in sexual sobriety and, not incidentally, the Catholic Church.It is impossible to watch this important documentary without tears, and not sad tears either, but happy ones, tears that come from a joyful movement of the spirit.These are people who have been deeply wounded by the choices...

Everyone has a church and everyone has an understanding of the marks of the church, of what makes their church the true church. For the Roman Catholic, the mark of the church is the pope. In his mind, if you don't have the pope, then you don't have the church as God instituted it. And so a faithful Catholic would get furious if his priest rejected papal supremacy, because doing so would stop the church in his midst from being what the church is and doing what it should do. For the Lutheran, the marks of the church are the...

1.) Fight for the rights of the unborn. 2.) Think no less of a baby/infant/child brought to you without any parent, without any Godparents, as you do not know the future. Which to you is better: baptizing a baby brought to you by good RC parents,that God knows will grow up to deny your faith and be a hell-raiser, or one that asas no one there with him/her or born out ofof wedlock to lapsed parents that God knows will turn out to be righteous?. Who cares about then and there? God told Samuel that He can see what no...

1.) An infant is baptized, is raised by believing parents and later when older turns from the faith. 2.) An infant is baptized, has no believing parents to be raised by, and when older doesn't turn from the faith. Given that the antithesis exists for 1 & 2, wouldn't it be prudent for the priest to baptize the fortunate infant as well as the unfortunate, as either could remain faithful when older, show perseverance against high odds, and no priest knows the future - only God Almighty? Given that only God knows the future, perhaps withholding baptism isn't an option...

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Those who insist others pray and believe exactly like they do, those who have alternatives to every church teaching and benefactors who use the church as a cover for business connections may call themselves Catholics, but they have one foot out the door, Pope Francis said. "Many people say they belong to the church," but in reality have "only one foot inside," the pope said June 5 at the morning Mass in the chapel of his residence. (CNS/Paul Haring) "For these people, the church is not home," but is a place they use as a rental...

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization, delivered a letter to the Vatican on behalf of 9 teachers who have lost their jobs at Catholics Schools for either being LGBT, or supporting an LGBT family member. Last month, the Archdiocese of Cincinnati took anti-LGBT to a new level, calling not only for the firing of gay and lesbian school employees, but also citing support of the “homosexual lifestyle” as grounds for dismissal. More than 2,200 educators at 94 parochial schools in the archdiocese have been affected by this new contract....

Catholic doctors who follow church teaching on sexual ethics cannot work as gynaecologists in Britain, the Catholic Medical Association (CMA) conference was told. Charlie O’Donnell, a consultant in emergency and intensive care medicine, said the best advice he could give to an “orthodox” Catholic wishing to specialise in obstetrics and gynaecology would be to “emigrate”. Dr O’Donnell told the conference at Ealing Abbey, west London, on 17 May that a Catholic training to be a consultant in obstetrics and gynaecology would soon find he or she had conscientious objections to such tasks as prescribing artificial contraceptives, giving unmarried couples fertility...

Prior to April 27’s canonization-doubleheader, I taped a lengthy interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, discussing both John XXIII and John Paul II. The ABC was kind enough to send transcripts of the programs it did on these giants of modern Catholicism, so I was able to read what others had to say about the Church’s two newest saints. Much of it was interesting, but some comments verged on the bizarre. Dr. Lavinia Byrne (for those unfamiliar with the higher echelons of the British Catholic commentariat) is a former nun whose refusal to concede that the question of ordaining women...

The conversion of Alex Jones is a powerful story and a book from Ignatius Press!  I came across the video and was reminded of the story. You can read more below. The following comes from the Deacons Bench Blog:One of the more celebrated Catholic converts -- and a recently ordained deacon, by the way -- is former evangelical Alex Jones. He now spends much of his time traveling the country, talking about his journey back to the Church. And a paper in Fort Wayne, Indiana profiles him this weekend: Ten years ago, Alex Jones was the charismatic preacher of...

Vatican City (AsiaNews) - The Holy See has responsibility for the Vatican City State. It "has no jurisdiction [. . .] over every member of the Catholic Church", but it does "foster [in each of them] an interior conversion of hearts to love God and one's neighbour." In view of this, notwithstanding their affiliation with any Catholic institution, individuals are "subject to a particular State authority. [And] The obligation and responsibility of promoting justice in these cases resides with the competent domestic jurisdiction." In presenting the Initial Periodic Report of the Holy See to the Committee on the Convention against...

You may remember when this made news a few weeks back.Now, some teachers are challenging the contract: About 60 people gathered Tuesday on Fountain Square to protest new language in the Cincinnati archdiocese’s teacher contract.They walked to the archdiocese offices on East Eighth Street, they said, to hand-deliver petitions – including an online version initiated locally – with more than 24,000 signatures.The contract, which all teachers in the 19-county archdiocesan school system are required to sign for the 2014-15 school year, includes so-called morality clauses that are more detailed and restrictive than in past teacher contracts.The contract for the first...

Today the Pope spoke during his non-Magisterial, off-the-cuff fervorino at morning Mass in strong terms not just about generic, impersonal “evil”, but about the Enemy of your soul, the Devil.From VR: “We too are tempted, we too are the target of attacks by the devil because the spirit of Evil does not want our holiness, he does not want our Christian witness, he does not want us to be disciples of Christ. And what does the Spirit of Evil do, through his temptations, to distance us from the path of Jesus? The temptation of the devil has three characteristics and...

Homofascist Tyranny The tyranny of homofascism must be opposed By Michael Voris The Vortex April 9, 2014 Grab a pen and write the word down as quickly as you can and start using it everywhere – the word is .. homofascists .. as in homofascism. A working definition you ask? How’s this for starters? Homofascism – “a way of organizing a society in which homosexualists impose their agenda with which no one is allowed to disagree or have any appeal to the contrary without being subjected to severe consequences of ridicule, slander, libel, fines, public demonstrations, distortions, denial of free...

News coverage is now available for the resolution of complaints about Sister Jane Dominic Laurel’s controversial presentation at a Catholic high school in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Nashville Dominican sister spoke at a school assembly about Church teaching on marriage, divorce, homosexuality and gay marriage, and on the impact the disregard of Catholic teaching and the natural has on children growing up in broken our unnatural home environments. Complaints were numerous enough that a special meeting was called to discuss the matter, and diocesan officials decided to apologize for two things: First, that the school had not notified parents of...