New Advent

Archbishop Chaput: "Catholics should not be misled into accepting feeble compromises" on "dangerous and insulting" HHS mandate...

NULL@NULL.COM (NAME)

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services refused on Jan. 20 to broaden the exception to its mandate that nearly all Catholic employers must cover contraception, abortifacients, and sterilization in their health-care plans. An "accommodation" offered Friday by the White House did not solve the problem. Instead, it triggered withering criticism from legal scholars such as Notre Dame's Carter Snead, Harvard's Mary Ann Glendon, Princeton's Robert George, and Catholic University of America president John Garvey, along with non-Catholic scholars including Yuval Levin, the religious liberty law firm the Becket Fund, and numerous Catholic and other organizations.

Pope speaks of leprosy and healing in Sunday Angelus address, appeals for end of violence in Syria...

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A new "urgent appeal" to "end the violence and bloodshed" in Syria, along with an invitation to "give priority to the path of dialogue, reconciliation and commitment to peace "was launched today by Benedict XVI after the Angelus with pilgrims gathered in St Peter's Square.

Victoria’s Secret model quits lingerie modeling "to honor the Lord" and to reserve body "for my husband"...

NULL@NULL.COM (NAME)

One Victoria’s Secret angel might be turning her back on lingerie modeling but she’s not giving up her modeling wings. Model Kylie Bisutti, 21, has decided to leave Victoria’s Secret because it clashes with her Christian beliefs. “I just became so convicted of honoring the Lord and my body and wanting to be a role model for other women out there who look up to me,” Bisutti said today on “Good Morning America.”

Three men who loved lepers: Jesus of Nazareth, Francis of Assisi, and Damien of Molokai

erle@NULL.COM (Fr. Ryan Erlenbush)

Though not the first miracle of his public ministry, Jesus’ healing of the leper is certainly the first miracle he worked after relating the Sermon on the Mount (as is clear from St. Matthew [8:1]). Thus, it is striking to note that, immediately after preaching the great sermon which collects all of his message into one, he shows us the meaning of this preaching by touching a leper with love.

Practical advice on how to know and feel the forgiveness you have received in confession...

long@NULL.COM (Fr. Dwight Longenecker)

“I know I have been forgiven because I’ve been to confession, but I don’t feel forgiven! How can I find peace and know that I’m forgiven? ” This is one of the most frequent questions I get as a priest. A similar question comes up with the problem of forgiving others, “Father,” the person asks, “my business partner screwed me real bad. I’ve tried to forgive him, and I’ve given it all to God, but I still feel resentment and bitterness. I still want revenge. How can I find peace?”

If you listen closely, Sunday's Gospel teaches you how to lose your own leprosy in four easy steps...

pope@NULL.COM (Msgr. Charles Pope)

In today’s Gospel we see the healing of a leper (this means you and me). Leprosy in Scripture is more than just a physical illness, it is also a euphemism for sin. Leprosy itself is not sin, but it resembles sin and what sin does to us spiritually. For sin, like leprosy, disfigures us; it deteriorates us, it distances us (for Lepers had to live apart from the community), and it brings death if it is not checked. Yes, sin is a lot like leprosy.

The sheer grandeur of the Divine Office is overwhelming...

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The Second Vatican Council’s teaching on the Divine Office says: “Christ Jesus, high priest of the new and eternal covenant, taking human nature, introduced into this earthly exile that hymn which is sung throughout all ages in the halls of heaven. He joins the entire community of mankind to Himself, associating it with His own singing of this canticle of divine praise.” The sheer grandeur of this vision of the prayer that we know as the Divine Office is overwhelming.

Mike Huckabee: "Thanks to President Obama, we are all Catholics now"...

NULL@NULL.COM (NAME)

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said President Obama has united the GOP over his proposed rule requiring religious groups to pay for contraceptives in healthcare poliices. Huckabee facetiously thanked Obama for stirring the issue. "You have done more than any person in the entire GOP field, any candidate, has done to bring this party to unity and energize this party as a result of your attack on religious liberty," he said Friday morning.

The Washington post said Obama "shifted" on birth control. In reality, he shifted on nothing. This maneuver was a fraud and an absurdity...

weig@NULL.COM (George Weigel)

Saturday morning’s Washington Post headline and first sub-headline, page one and above-the-fold, nicely captured the confusions that prevailed as of 6 p.m. Friday, in the matter of tweaks to the “contraceptive mandate” issued by the Obama administration’s Department of Health and Human Services: “Obama shifts on birth control / Catholic leaders open to plan.” Well, no, and no.

In-depth analysis : The bishops' tougher response to the Obama 'compromise' mandate

lawl@NULL.COM (Phil Lawler)

After an initial muted reaction to President Obama’s proposed “accommodation,” the leaders of the US bishops’ conference have released a second, stronger statement, declaring that the mandate for contraceptive coverage in health-care programs remains “unacceptable and must be corrected.” On Friday evening, February 10—several hours after President Obama unveiled his “compromise” proposal—the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) released an official statement signed by five leading prelates. The bishops said that the revised plan “continues to involve needless government intrusion in the internal governance of religious institutions, and to threaten government coercion of religious people and groups to violate their most deeply held convictions.”

Religious, Not Spiritual...

shea@NULL.COM (Mark Shea)

Recently, there was a curious kerfuffle on the Internet when somebody released a “new” video announcing that he loves Jesus but hates “religion.” It is a sentiment older than my great-grandfather’s beard, and yet it was received as a sudden and brilliant meteor of insight blazing across the skies of American religious consciousness and dazzling a moribund Christianity to whom such a thought had never ever been proposed before.

10 pictures in defense of the Catholic Church...

NULL@NULL.COM (NAME)

The HHS mandate has jolted the soporific Catholic Church in America into action. We are at war. We are in a multi-front conflict that cannot be reduced to violations of religious liberty. The Church is calling the faithful to stand against the scourge of abortion, the unnatural and artificial recreation of marriage and family, and the inalienable right for Catholics to worship God in the mass and serve him in the poor according to the truth of the Gospels. As our world abandons God and natural law for the dictatorship of relativism, Holy Mother Church is calling us to defend the faith and to promote that which is natural and rational in man.

Don't be deceived. Obama's evil policy is now even more evil...

akin@NULL.COM (Jimmy Akin)

Attention, Catholics, Protestants, and everyone who cares about the causes of life, religious freedom, and freedom of conscience! Do not be suckered by the “accommodation” announced today by President Obama and spokeswoman Kathleen Sebelius! Under the guise of making room for religious conscience, the President has actually made the policy worse—far worse.

A response to Obama from Mary Ann Glendon, Robert George, John Garvey, and other luminaries...

NULL@NULL.COM (NAME)

Today the Obama administration has offered what it has styled as an “accommodation” for religious institutions in the dispute over the HHS mandate for coverage (without cost sharing) of abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception. The administration will now require that all insurance plans cover (“cost free”) these same products and services. Once a religiously-affiliated (or believing individual) employer purchases insurance (as it must, by law), the insurance company will then contact the insured employees to advise them that the terms of the policy include coverage for these objectionable things.

Professional soccer club Bayern Munich to offer Pope Benedict XVI honorary membership...

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Bayern Munich are willing to offer Pope Benedict XVI an honorary membership, club president Uli Hoeness has confirmed. The Holy Father, Christened Joseph Ratzinger, was born in Marktl, a town 110 kilometres from Munich and Hoeness would be glad to welcome the native Bavarian into the club's 174,000-strong legion of members.

Secularism's Toll on Catholic Americans...

baro@NULL.COM (Fr. Robert Barron)

Some years ago, Holy Cross Father James Burtchaell published a seminal book entitled The Dying of the Light. The central thesis of this study was that hundreds of universities that began under religious auspices and for religious purposes — the University of Chicago, Princeton, Harvard, Yale, to name just some of the most prominent — have undergone so thorough an erosion of their original identities that now they are utterly secular in orientation.

Here are 4 books you should read during Lent...

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Lent is a time for prayer, fasting and almsgiving — and spiritual reflection. We present four new books that could help in that task: John Grondelski recommends A Year With the Angels by Mike Aquilina; Father C. John McCloskey recommends Surrender: The Life-Changing Power of Doing God’s Will by Father Larry Richards; Frank Freeman recommends The Enthronement of the Sacred Heart of Jesus by Cardinal Raymond Burke; and Brian Caulfield recommends The Father’s Tale by Michael D. O’Brien.

Do miracles really help? The answer comes in the Sunday readings for February 12...

berg@NULL.COM (John Bergsma)

In this weekend’s readings, a healed leper disobeys Jesus and spreads the news of his miraculous cure everywhere, impeding the Lord’s ministry. Why did Jesus tell him to be quiet about the healing? What is the role of miracles in the Jesus’ ministry, and in the life of the Church today?

Do you believe us now, America?

NULL@NULL.COM (NAME)

The pro-life movement has long argued the inextricable link between the right to life and the other two rights affirmed in our Declaration of Independence. There is a reason, we have argued, the Founding Fathers intentionally wed “life” to “liberty” and “the pursuit of happiness.” The “unalienable rights” of the Declaration are derived from our being “created equal” by a “Creator” who “endowed” us with “certain unalienable rights.” Without the first of these rights, there is no basis for the second and third. Our liberty as Americans is based upon our identity as human persons. We have been given liberty because we have been given life.

What if arguments for abortion were applied to infants?

NULL@NULL.COM (NAME)

Criminalizing infanticide violates the separation of church and state. Those who oppose infanticide rights do so because they believe it is evil to kill children, but this assertion cannot be proven empirically by the scientific method. Thus it is merely a personal opinion based on religious beliefs, and as such, it cannot form the basis of public policy in a secular democracy.

The president of the United States has decided to go Henry VIII on the Catholic Church...

NULL@NULL.COM (NAME)

Thanks for clarifying that. The church model the young American state wished to separate from was that of the British monarch, who remains to this day supreme governor of the Church of England. This convenient arrangement dates from the 1534 Act of Supremacy. The title of the law gives you the general upshot, but, just in case you’re a bit slow on the uptake, the text proclaims “the King’s Majesty justly and rightfully is and ought to be the supreme head of the Church of England.” That’s to say, the sovereign is “the only supreme head on earth of the Church” and he shall enjoy “all honors, dignities, pre-eminences, jurisdictions, privileges, authorities, immunities, profits, and commodities to the said dignity,” not to mention His Majesty “shall have full power and authority from time to time to visit, repress, redress, record, order, correct, restrain, and amend all such errors, heresies, abuses, offenses, contempts, and enormities, whatsoever they be.”

Marie Collins goes first...

magi@NULL.COM (Sandro Magister)

For the first time at an official assembly of the Catholic Church, a victim of the scandal has spoken, Marie Collins of Ireland, sexually abused by a priest when she was thirteen years old. An even more significant "first" in that it is connected to what has become for the Church the absolute priority in the fight against this scandal: closeness to the victims. Marie Collins recounted her life, marked by that wound, on February 6, the opening day of an international symposium entitled "Toward healing and renewal" organized by the Pontifical Gregorian University, with the participation of other Vatican authorities and representatives of 110 episcopal conferences and more than 30 religious orders.

Explosive sex abuse lawsuit against Vatican dropped

alle@NULL.COM (John Allen)

A Wisconsin sex abuse lawsuit against the Vatican, which helped trigger a global firestorm in early 2010, was withdrawn late Friday. It marks the formal end of a case that seemed to cast doubt on Pope Benedict XVI’s role in the abuse crisis, and shifted focus from local bishops to an alleged cover-up in Rome. Lawyers for the victim filed a notice of voluntary dismissal on Friday, effectively abandoning the lawsuit. It had named not only the Vatican but also Pope Benedict XVI and two senior Vatican officials, Cardinals Tarcisio Bertone and Angelo Sodano, as defendants. The suit had been filed by Minnesota-based attorney Jeffrey Anderson, who has frequently represented sex abuse victims against the church.

“We were getting killed”: the inside story of Obama’s “accommodation”

NULL@NULL.COM (NAME)

For the White House, the decision announced Friday to soften a rule requiring religious-affiliated organizations to pay for insurance plans that offer free birth control was never really driven by a desire to mollify Roman Catholic bishops, who were strongly opposed to the plan.

100 questions Jesus asked and you ought to answer...

NULL@NULL.COM (NAME)

One of the bigger mistakes people make in reading Scripture is that they read it as a spectator. For them Scripture is a collection of stories and events that took place thousands of years ago. True enough, we are reading historical accounts. But, truth be told these ancient stories are our stories. We are in the narrative. You are Abraham, Sarah, Moses, Deborah, Jeremiah, Ruth, Peter, Paul, Magdalene, Mother Mary, and, if you are prepared to accept it, you are also Jesus.

The president and the prophet: Obama's unusual encounter with Eric Metaxas...

NULL@NULL.COM (NAME)

If the organizers of the national prayer breakfast ever want a sitting president to attend their event again, they need to expect that any leader in his right mind is going to ask — no, demand — that he be allowed to see a copy of the keynote address that is traditionally given immediately before the president’s. That’s how devastating was the speech given by a little known historical biographer named Eric Metaxas, whose clever wit and punchy humor barely disguised a series of heat-seeking missiles that were sent, intentionally or not, in the commander-in-chief’s direction.

How the Catholic Church became cool overnight...

barn@NULL.COM (Marc Barnes)

As far as I’m concerned — though I’m certainly open to scientific humanism making a big, total-fulfillment-of-the-human-person comeback — Catholicism is the addict’s fix, the starving child’s Chipotle burrito, and the UVA student’s pastel shorts and button-downs, etcetera, etcetera, ad infinitum et in saecula saeculorum, amen. What I didn’t realize – how could I? — is that the world would catch up to my particularly brilliant brilliance.

Eavesdropping on the Super Bowl sidelines

NULL@NULL.COM (NAME)

“Make them go to Manningham” — five words that will haunt Patriots fans and delight Giants fans for years to come. The sideline instruction to his defense, which turned painfully prophetic, was captured by an NFL Network show that wired several players, coaches and officials in Sunday’s game.

Why the Apostolic Fathers are so important: "Rasputin was my neighbor" and 3 other must-read true tales of time travel...

NULL@NULL.COM (NAME)

He was old, but not ancient, the man next to us at the delicatessen. It was 1973. My then girlfriend (now wife) and I had ordered dinner and this old guy, sitting by himself, seemed lonely, so we got talking and he told us how he had grown up in St. Petersburg, Russia, and that when he was a boy, his next-door neighbor was a famous man, a really famous man. We asked, "Who was it?" And he said, "Have you ever heard of the mad monk, Rasputin?"

"We Reserve Judgment": Bishops "Studying" Feds' Conscience Shift

palm@NULL.COM (Rocco Palmo)

In a piece this morning that tick-tocked the church's months of back-channel engagement with the White House on the thorny issue, the Beltway news outlet Politico said that President Obama "may have discovered his most effective political opponent of 2012" in the cardinal-to-be, adding that Dolan had shown himself adept at "messaging as masterfully as any Washington consultant."

Iran’s President Ahmadinejad invites Pope Benedict to visit Tehran

NULL@NULL.COM (NAME)

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would like Pope Benedict to visit Iran, Tehran’s ambassador to the Vatican has said. “If the pope decides to come, we will welcome him in an excellent way, and, as far as the government is concerned, we will welcome him with enthusiasm,” Ali Akbar Naseri told reporters on Wednesday. Benedict has a standing invitation to visit the Islamic Republic but has so far not accepted. The Vatican has criticized Ahmadinejad for calling for Israel to be wiped off the map. The pontiff has repeatedly encouraged dialogue to resolve differences over Iran’s disputed nuclear program, which the West says is aimed at making nuclear bombs. Tehran denies that.

11 words with a 'Q' but no 'U' acceptable in Words With Friends (and possibly Scrabble, Bananagrams, and others)...

NULL@NULL.COM (NAME)

At this very moment, someone is Googling “Words With Friends words without vowels,” and there’s a good chance they’ll land on this story I posted last year. If your problem isn’t a lack of vowels but a nagging ‘Q’ (and no ‘U’ to go with it), perhaps one of these words will help.

This is suspicious timing. Sr. Carol Keehan started praising Obama's announcement BEFORE he actually announced anything...

zuhl@NULL.COM (Fr. John Zuhlsdorf)

Even before Pres. Obama made the announcement that he is taking his “Plan B” pill, an exponent of the Magisterium of Nuns, Sr. Carol Keehan of the Catholic Health Association (which – against the US bishops – gave cover to Catholic democrats to vote for abortion providing Obamacare) made a statement that she is pleased with Obama’s compromise…

Why is NARAL so gleeful today? Because Obama effectively expanded the mandate to all Catholic parishes, which had been exempted...

stan@NULL.COM (Jill Stanek)

NARAL and Planned Parenthood have joined RH Reality Check to enthusiastically support President Obama’s just announced “accommodation.” The reason? Whereas before at least churches were exempted from providing insurance coverage for contraception, abortifacients, and sterilization, now even church insurance policies will have to cover them. As RH Reality states, “Under this plan, every insurance company will be obligated to provide contraceptive coverage.”