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When Science is Betrayed – and What Lessons We Should Learn By: Msgr. Charles PopeThere is a great reverence for science in our culture. On the one hand, rightly so. Science has made enormous strides that have changed life as we know it. Profound discoveries have eradicated diseases, improved health, increased the world’s food supply, led to a computer revolution, drawn us higher into outer space and deeper into inner space, revealed hidden mysteries of nature, and produced technologies unimaginable to even our recent ancestors.On the other hand, the reverence of science has tipped perhaps too far in the direction of a...

I’m not a scientist, and I don’t play one on TV. But I can examine scientific evidence and ask the question, “How is life possible?” This past Christmas, the Wall Street Journal ran an essay of mine entitled “Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God.” The content will be familiar to those who have read my latest book, “Miracles,” or heard me talk about it here at BreakPoint. I noted that the initial euphoria over the possibility that there were a septillion -- that’s one followed by 24 zeros -- planets capable of supporting life in the universe was followed...

So here we are waiting for Pope Francis to hand down his encyclical on our moral responsibility to care for the natural environment. Already there is lots of huffing and puffing, and ideological battle lines are being drawn. It seems that virtually nobody in the public media is interested in being taught by the Pope in his magisterial capacity. Instead, all the talk is about how the encyclical can or can’t be used to advance political agendas. Catholics who fear that the Pope is a secret (or perhaps not-so-secret) radical left-winger, are preemptively questioning the Pope’s authority as pope to address...

An ex-gay organization is planning legal action against the District of Columbia for its recent banning of conversion therapy, also called Sexual Orientation Change Efforts therapy, for minors. Voice of the Voiceless, an organization focused on ex-gay rights and recognition, is in the early stages of planning to bring legal action against the government of the nation's Capital over the recently passed bill. Christopher Doyle, president and co-founder of VoV, told The Christian Post that at present they are seeking a plaintiff to bring a case against the new law. "We are still seeking a plaintiff (minor and their family)...

If 2014 was, in Church matters, rather akin to 1914, 2015 might well end up resembling 1915 if Francis decides to go for the all-out confrontation in matters of, ahem, pastoral sacrilege. An hypothesis, this, which I consider not very probable, but certainly possible. There isn’t much we humble pewsitters can do individually to counter this. Collectively, though, we are the ones who will shape the image, and therefore to a good extent the effectiveness, of this diabolical papacy. You would not be led in moral matters by a child, or by a lunatic, or even by an old crank....

 Investor’s Business Daily notes the stark chilling nature of Pope’s upcoming climate push. It’s anything but Catholic. Pope Francis' recent leftist statements should trouble Catholics and non-Catholics alike, but even more disturbing are the pope's latest declarations on the dramatic action needed to fight climate change. The Vatican apparently now has been infiltrated by followers of a radical green movement that is, at its core, anti-Christian, anti-people, anti-poor and anti-development. The basic tenets of Catholicism — the sanctity of human life and the value of all souls — are detested by the modern pagan environmentalists who worship the created, but...

I smile already at seeing how much this enviro-moron in white will cover himself in ridicule if he dares to, as reported, dedicate no less than an encyclical letter to Environ-Mentalism; thus childishly trying to play Leo XIII as he consigns himself to public mockery for all centuries to come. He will be made into little pieces, ridiculed by everyone with a brain in front of everyone with a brain; not very many, perhaps, but enough to destroy this other dream of greatness of this petty, old, vain man. If the Synod has shown anything is that the world is,...

I have taken ten of the most believed or written about misconceptions about Catholics or the Church and debunked them (with evidence wherever possible).

Next year, Pope Francis will issue a rare encyclical calling on Catholics the world over to do their bit in reducing emissions, the Observer has reported.The pontiff also plans to make a series of speeches and summit appearances in the run up to the UN’s climate conference due to take place in Paris toward the end of 2015, with a view to influencing the outcome of the meeting. The conference, which will be the 21st such annual climate conference, is widely seen as a deadline for global negotiations on climate change, and the event at which new legally binding targets...

You know the Catholic Church is in trouble when the left-wing Guardian refers to Francis as the “superman pope.” He didn’t earn this dubious honor just by brokering Obama’s embrace of the communist slave state in Cuba. He has promoted state-inflicted poverty by attacking economic freedom and is now pushing the global warming hoax: In 2015, the pope will issue a lengthy message on the subject to the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, give an address to the UN general assembly and call a summit of the world’s main religions. The reason for such frenetic activity, says Bishop Marcelo Sorondo, chancellor...

A Recent Article Ponders the Rarity of Earth And How Astronomical Are the Odds Against Complex Life in the Universe! By: Msgr. Charles PopeWe have discussed on the blog before the potential flaws in the mere statistical presumption that because there are so many stars there must be billions of other Earth-like planets in the universe that likely support life similar to ours. Why? Because it is not just one or two things that make Earth what it is; it is many, many essential things that make Earth capable of sustaining life for long enough that our civilization has...

Following a visit in March to Tacloban, the Philippine city devastated in 2012 by typhoon Haiyan, the pope will publish a rare encyclical on climate change and human ecology. Urging all Catholics to take action on moral and scientific grounds, the document will be sent to the world’s 5,000 Catholic bishops and 400,000 priests, who will distribute it to parishioners.

He has been called the “superman pope”, and it would be hard to deny that Pope Francis has had a good December. Cited by President Barack Obama as a key player in the thawing relations between the US and Cuba, the Argentinian pontiff followed that by lecturing his cardinals on the need to clean up Vatican politics. But can Francis achieve a feat that has so far eluded secular powers and inspire decisive action on climate change? It looks as if he will give it a go.

<p>William Peters was working as a volunteer in a hospice when he had a strange encounter with a dying man that changed his life.</p> <p>The man’s name was Ron, and he was a former Merchant Marine who was afflicted with stomach cancer. Peters says he would spend up to three hours a day at Ron’s bedside, talking to and reading adventure stories to him because few family or friends visited.</p>

Since 2009, archaeologists have been slowly excavating the ancient town of Magdala—thought to be the home of Mary Magdalene—near the Sea of Galilee. Among their finds has been a first-century synagogue where, experts say, Jesus likely preached. Image: Israel Antiquities Authority Although Jerusalem and Bethlehem are the sites most commonly associated with Jesus, Father Eamon Kelly—vice president of Israel's Magdala Center and vice chargé of the Pontifical Institute Notre Dame of Jerusalem Center—points out that Jesus spent almost his entire life in what is now northern Israel. "Eighty percent of Jesus' public life was here," he tells the Israeli...

At the Extraordinary Synod held at the Vatican in October, several Catholic married couples were invited as “non-voting” auditors to offer some experiences “from the ground up” for consideration by the synod fathers.A Brazilian couple, Arturo and Hermelinda As Zamberline, were exceptional in focusing on contraception as the larger context in which the various problems concerning marriage should be understood. Their experience certainly coincides with the facts of Catholic existence in other parts of the world. As they put it: We must admit without fear that many Catholic couples, even those who seek to live their marriage seriously, do not...

When And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted the woman which brought forth the man child. And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent. And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood. And the earth helped the woman, and the...

Has science now proven that God exists? Douglas Ell, author of the new book Counting To God, will speak about this and other “big questions” related to science and faith in two lectures at Trinity Episcopal Church in Vero Beach. Times: Tuesday, October 21, 2014, 6:00 pm Tuesday, November 18, 2014, 6:00 pm Location: Trinity Episcopal Church 2365 Pine Avenue Vero Beach, FL 32960 Both talks are open to the general public and there is no charge. In Counting To God, Ell applies the lens of mathematical analysis to a series of scientific discoveries, drawing startling conclusions about the relation...

In a dozen polls taken from 1982 to 2014, Gallup has asked Americans to choose among three views of evolution. One view is that humans “developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process.” Another view is that humans “developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process.” The third option is that “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.” In that three-decade span, the young-Earth creationist option has always...

The intellectual role that used to be occupied by theology is now largely filled by science fiction. Wikipedia lists only a dozen of possibly hundreds of books where writers, some of them practicing mathematicians or scientists themselves, examine the consequences of our current understanding of the universe. The familiar, everyday world that we know isn’t what it seems. It is actually a strange place. On large scales it isn’t governed by ‘common sense’ Newtonian physics but by the paradoxes of relativity. At very small scales, perhaps at its foundation, it is governed by quantum phenomena, which is stranger still. Arthur...