Pope B16 lay seeds with President Sarkozy

Pope Benedict always links the church’s past with his present action. This coming week he links his
lecture at the University of Regensburg, Germany with his speech to be given at the Collège des Bernardins in Paris. President Sarkozy may be the Pope’s unlikely ally  in a country that has dropped to less then 10% attendance for Mass. I suspect that [...]

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The longer I live,the more I see God’s hand in the church calender

The feast days of the church were drilled into me from an early age. But frankly by the time I was in my 20’s I only paid attention to the 4 major events of the Incarnation, Good Friday, Easter Sunday and Penecost. Of course being Irish-American I have to add St. Patricks day naturally (and [...]

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Why aren’t Catholics and Evangelicals protesting China’s Olympics?

The post-modern culture certainly has “moral” (I know I tried and failed to figure out how a group who rejects any moral absolutes) issues with China towards Tibet. But given the track record China has against suppressing the church for the past 60 years, why aren’t the Catholic and Evangelicals in a moral outrage?
Is it [...]

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Hurricane Katrina, shortage of priests and displaced 100,000 Catholic

Due to these three principle events the Archdiocese of New Orleans announced today numerous closings.
It must be an administrative nightmare to handle all that turn over.

These churches will all be closed by December 31, 08. It’s always sad to see any church close its doors. I hope that diocese like ours will be able [...]

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CARA Reflections on Pew’s survey about Catholic members losses

Much has been written about the Pew Survey and the loss of the number of Catholics in the USA. If they qualified as a separate denomination, the Americans who have deserted the Catholic Church of their childhood would constitute the third-largest religious group in the country, with 10.1% of the population.  For every convert to the Catholic [...]

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Book Review- The courage to be Catholic

Crisis, Reform and the Future of the Churchby George Weigel

Mr. Weigel is a Catholic theologian and a Senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington,D.C. This book was written in 2002 so it’s still very current on the issues facing the church today. The author states that the book is
“For all those [...]

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Rebuilding the faith and trust in Boston

The center of the child abuse cases in the US was the Boston archdiocese. There are too many links to even attempt to select a few that carry what those Catholics have gone through in that area of the country.
The Boston globe however has an encouraging article on the new generation of Altar boys learning [...]

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Chinese Stations of the Cross @ the Vatican

I thought it a stroke of genius to have the stations of the cross performed by Joesph Cardinal Zen of China. The Vatican has a link to the cards them made for this year. It’s in Italian so you’ll have to translate it.
I think this reflects the high priority of the Papacy in praying for [...]

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B16 visit to USA Catholic Universities -the coming storm- why should you exist

I expect that there will be much written about the Pope’s coming visit to the US. I think perhaps the media will focus on social issues or comments the pope may make and how such statements might effect Catholic voters in the coming elections. But for Catholics I think perhaps there will be no greater [...]

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Real-life case of demon possession documented

A Case of Demonic Possession
It seems like there’s a lot of activity going on in New York right now. The individual who observed this excorism is
Richard E. Gallagher, M.D., is a board-certified psychiatrist in private practice in Hawthorne, New York, and Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at New York Medical College. He is also [...]

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