The family that sings together...

The hope that is in us...

Read here for yet another reason why the phrase "the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death" is so very important to our culture.

Not so 'brain dead' after all

Epitome of God's Grace

From Fr. Z (blogger magnificent) comes this video of a boy named Garvan Byrne.

What happened to the nuns? UPDATED

I always wondered what happened to them: We Overcame Their Traditions and Their Faith

From the article:
"Coulson deeply regretted the impact they had had on religious communities. He said,

“…it destroyed Catholic religious profession, just as it would destroy the practice of medicine if medicine took seriously the idea that all the answers are within the students; so, too, did it destroy the vows of the nuns. There were many priests who didn’t even bother to get laicized. They just left, saying, “My vows don’t count for anything, because they came from somewhere else; they didn’t come from within.”

 And this:

"Coulson warns that practitioners of humanistic psychology, having wreaked destruction with their self-centered theories, have now moved on to a “fourth plane” that he calls New Age psychology."

There's a video to watch, too.

UPDATE:

Here is George Weigel's article about the sisters: The Vatican and the Sisters

Cleansing Fire weighs in, too: Once in a While....

It's not going away

The religious liberty issue is not going away. The gauntlet was thrown down by our president. Here is a detailed response from the bishops. It is long, but worth the read: Our First, Most Cherished Liberty

Vincent Phillip Munoz at The Weekly Standard has written about the confrontation. Short and to the point. From the article:

To their credit, the bishops appear to understand this and are now willing to lead the battle to preserve religious liberty for all, Catholics and non-Catholics, church institutions and private employers.

But it won’t be without confrontation. This statement from the bishops sets up a dramatic showdown between the leaders of the Catholic Church and the Obama administration, a confrontation that may not be good for either side. It is hard to see what middle ground exists, or even if it does.

The Constitution was designed to prevent such fundamental clashes between church and state. Perhaps the best way out of this thicket would be for the Supreme Court to step in and stop it from happening. Striking down the contraception mandate would avert the disastrous situation of the president sending bishops to jail for being faithful witnesses to their religious convictions.

Traditional Catholicism Waxes Strong

Gotta read this article about how the traditional Roman Catholic faith is on the upswing. The DOR is mentioned. Here's a snippet:

Cardinal Francis George, the longtime leader of the Chicago archdiocese, once gave a homily that startled the faithful by pronouncing liberal Catholicism "an exhausted project . . . parasitical on a substance that no longer exists." Declaring that Catholics are at a "turning point" in the life of the church in this country, the cardinal concluded that the bishops must stand as a "reality check for the apostolic faith."
Such forthright defense of the faith and doctrine stands in clear contrast to the emphasis of an earlier generation of Catholic theologians and historians. Many boomer priests and scholars were shaped by what they believed was an "unfulfilled promise" of Vatican II to embrace modernity. Claiming that the only salvation for the church would be to ordain women, remove the celibacy requirement and empower the laity, theologians such as Paul Lakeland, a Fairfield University professor and former Jesuit priest, have demanded that much of the teaching authority of the bishops and priests be transferred to the laity.
This aging generation of progressives continues to lobby church leaders to change Catholic teachings on reproductive rights, same-sex marriage and women's ordination. But it is being replaced by younger men and women who are attracted to the church because of the very timelessness of its teachings.

Transferring the teaching authority of the bishops and priests to the laity is a losing proposition.

 

April Newsletter in the mail

Yeah, it's been quiet of late. But the April 2012 newsletter is in the mail. Here's the PDF copy of it:

April 2012 fidelis newsletter