September 28, 2015
Categories: Books & Publications, Catholic Theology, Events, Inspirational . Tags: chosen, hate, Jesus Christ, love, papal visit, Pope Francis, the world, United States . Author: Doug Lawrence . Comments: 4 Comments
“Access to inexpensive contraception is a problem nowhere in the United States,” he said. “The mandate is thus an ideological statement; the imposition of a preferential option for infertility. And if millions of Americans disagree with it on principle–too bad.”
The archbishop went on to observe that abortion advocates use fraudulent language in describing their position.
“The fraud at the heart of our nation’s ‘reproductive rights’ vocabulary runs very deep and very high,” he wrote. “In his April 26 remarks to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the president never once used the word ‘abortion,’ despite the ongoing Kermit Gosnell trial in Philadelphia and despite Planned Parenthood’s massive role in the abortion industry.”
Editor’s note: Judging by the revelations concerning the Archdiocese of New York, Obama and his minions already know that coercion is very likely to succeed.
There’s an extraordinary amount of Judeo-Christian religious tradition incorporated into the design elements of the Nation’s Capitol – especially for a nation that is often portrayed today as “secular”.
Submitted by John Z.
Based on culture, history, physical landscape and spirituality, the following list of Top 10 U.S. Catholic Cities — listed in no particular order — highlights American hubs with a Catholic pulse. Each location, whether it be large or small, east or west, contributes to the richness of Catholic life in America.
Should these locations be next door, across the state or across the country, OSV Newsweekly hopes this list will prove useful and inspiring when it comes to incorporating the Faith into your travel plans this summer.
Editor’s note: There’s just one small problem with these venues: It’s almost impossible to to tell the Catholics from the non-Catholics – especially when it comes to Catholic politicians – and the Catholic vote.
(Vatican Radio) Pope Benedict XVI has pledged his support for the March for Life in the United States.
Using his @pontifex Twitter handle, the Pope said, “I join all those marching for life from afar, and pray that political leaders will protect the unborn and promote a culture of life.”
This year’s March for Life is marking the 40th anniversary of the US Supreme Court’s decision in the case of Roe v. Wade, which made abortion legal in all fifty states.
Earlier this week, the Holy Father issued his Message for World Communication Day, in which he called on Catholics to be engaged through all forms of social media, especially new media, in spreading the Good News and building up public discourse.
In a sprawling, 52-minute speech to the House chamber, Paul lambasted U.S. government, politicians and special interests, declaring that the U.S. people must return to virtue before thegovernment allows them to be free, and that the Constitution has failed to limit the scope of an authoritarian bureaucracy.
“Our Constitution, which was intended to limit government power and abuse, has failed,” Paul said. “The Founders warned that a free society depends on a virtuous and moral people. The current crisis reflects that their concerns were justified.”
For the retiring Republican, 77, the “current crisis” isn’t quite what it is for other members of Congress, who routinely use that word to describe the economic recession that followed the 2008 financial crash. To the Texas Republican, that’s part of it, but the causes are deeper, and it’s also a crisis of governmental authoritarianism and the vanishing of personal liberty.
“If it’s not accepted that big government, fiat money, ignoring liberty, central economic planning, welfarism, and warfarism caused our crisis, we can expect a continuous and dangerous march toward corporatism and even fascism with even more loss of our liberties,” said Paul, an obstetrician-gynecologist by training.
Eternity enters into human history in often incomprehensible ways. God makes promises but gives no timelines.
Visiting the shrine at Fatima, pilgrims enter a huge plaza, with the spot of the apparitions marked by a small chapel to one side, a large church at one end, an equally large adoration chapel at the other end, and a center for visitors and for the hearing of confessions. Just outside the main grounds, a section of the Berlin Wall has been re-built, a stark witness to what Mary had talked about almost a century ago. Communism in Russia and its satellite nations has collapsed, although many of its sinful effects are still with us.
Communism imposed a total way of life based upon the belief that God does not exist. Secularism is communism’s better-scrubbed bedfellow.
A small irony of history cropped up at the United Nations a few weeks ago when Russia joined the majority of other nations to defeat the United States and the western European nations that wanted to declare that killing the unborn should be a universal human right.
Who is on the wrong side of history now?
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Reflecting now on the Fourth of July 2012, we have to wonder about a regime now manifesting a growing list of abuses to the fundamental nature of human worth. These abuses are put into effect by elected rulers themselves. They are accepted by many citizens who themselves are “democratic” in the classic Greek sense, that in their soul they have little principle of order.
Hence, they have no reason to object to anything on any other basis than that of personal whim or want. The term “unconstitutional” is meaningless. This situation is not a far cry from that list found in the Declaration. In describing these abuses, it read: “He (the King) has made Judges dependent on his Will alone.” “He has refused to assent to Laws.” And “He has combined with others to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution.”
First, religious freedom is a cornerstone of the American experience. This is so obvious that once upon a time, nobody needed to say it. But times have changed. So it’s worth recalling that Madison, Adams, Washington, Hamilton, Franklin, Jefferson–in fact, nearly all the American founders–saw religious faith as vital to the life of a free people. Liberty and happiness grow organically out of virtue. And virtue needs grounding in religious faith.
Gertrude Himmelfarb, the historian, put it this way: The founders knew that in a republic, “virtue is intimately related to religion. However skeptical or deistic they may have been in their own beliefs, however determined they were to avoid anything like an established Church, they had no doubt that religion is an essential part of the social order because it is a vital part of the moral order.”
Here’s my second point: Freedom of religion is more than freedom of worship. The right to worship is a necessary but not sufficient part of religious liberty. Christian faith requires community. It begins in worship, but it also demands preaching, teaching, and service. It’s always personal but never private. And it involves more than prayer at home and Mass on Sunday–though these things are vitally important. Real faith always bears fruit in public witness and public action. Otherwise it’s just empty words.
The founders saw the value of publicly engaged religious faith because they experienced its influence themselves. They created a nation designed in advance to depend on the moral convictions of religious believers, and to welcome their active role in public life.
Participate in Fortnight for Freedom activities near you
Christians are being systematically targeted for genocide in Syria according to Vatican and other sources with contacts on the ground among the besieged Christian community. According to reports by the Vatican’s Fides News Agency collected by the Centre for the Study of Interventionism, the US-backed Free Syrian Army rebels and ever more radical spin-off factions are sacking Christian churches, shooting Christians dead in the street, broadcasting ultimatums that all Christians must be cleansed from the rebel-held villages, and even shooting priests.
French Bishop Philip Tournyol Clos, a greek-Catholic Melkite Archimandrite, traveled through Syria and, according to the Holy See’s press agency, reported back that Western press was spreading disinformation about the real nature of the uprising in Syria and thereby prolonging and deepening the conflict.
This short history of Catholicism in the United States, during times of great peril, both from within and without, reveals not only the essential goodness of the American people, but the providential hand of Almighty God.
Many of the events you will read about here are both unlikely and implausible, yet all are quite true. Don’t miss a word of it.
May God have mercy on those who fail to learn these essential lessons of history!
A timely article by Frederick W. Marks of the New Oxford Review
Submitted by Bob Stanley
Catholics, generally viewed as completely loyal to the pope—a religious ruler living on another continent of the “Old World”—were labeled as disloyal. How was it possible, many asked, for one to be loyal to the basic precepts of American life—namely democracy, republicanism, and a sense of openness and freedom—while simultaneously holding allegiance to a religious institution that never ascribed to these basic principles? Throughout the 19th century, Americans believed that Catholics could not negotiate this balance—being loyal to both Rome and Washington—and, therefore, could not be both a good American and a faithful Catholic.