BIG C CATHOLICS

By  George Weigel 1. Has the beatification of John Paul II been a rush job, as some have charged? No one said that the beatification of Mother Teresa was rushed, despite the calumnies against her work and reputation promoted by Christopher Hitchens. This process hasn't been "rushed" either. The only procedural exception Pope Benedict XVI made was the same exception John Paul II made for Mother Teresa: He allowed the investigation to begin without the normal five-year waiting period. The investigative process produced a massive, four-volume study that offers far more detail into the life and accomplishments of Karol Wojtyła, Pope John Paul II, than the American electorate was offered about the life and accomplishments of Barack Obama, or the British electorate was offered about the lives and accomplishments of David Cameron and Nick Clegg. The people complaining about a "rush" are typically "progressive" Catholics who never had much use for

Dr. Robert Stackpole, STD, a university professor and expert on Divine Mercy, addresses questions such as: What exactly is God’s mercy? Where do we find it in Sacred Scripture? What is the basis for it in the life of the Church? He takes the reader on a tour of God’s mercy in Scripture and Church history. In Divine Mercy: A Guide from Genesis to Pope Benedict XVI, journey from the Garden of Eden to the Hill of Calvary. Discover God’s mercy in the writings of the Church’s great theologians, as well as in the life and teaching of many of its most preeminent saints. Learn of St. Faustina’s call to spread The Divine Mercy message in our time and Pope John Paul II’s legacy of mercy, which has influenced Pope Benedict XVI. The Divine Mercy is more than a devotion. It is a veritable attribute of God. Dr. Stackpole has included study questions and a discussion starter at the end of each section in his chapters. I found this volume enlightening and would recommend it for individuals, small

This Easter season, I’ve been praying the Divine Mercy Novena that started on Good Friday and leads up to Divine Mercy Sunday. I’m enjoying praying this novena and I’d like to invite everyone who reads this blog to join me in praying for God’s Divine Mercy. There are thousands of people praying through this novena website and there will be millions praying around the world. + Sign up for handy email prayer reminders here: Divine Mercy Novena + If you have a website, post about it there! + Email your friends and family and get them praying too! Let’s get all the Catholics we know to pray this novena together. If there’s anything we all need more of it’s God’s Mercy

Time Magazine and Rand McNally's Altlas of the Body states, "In fusing together, the male and female gametes produce a fertilised single cell, the zygote, which is the start of a new individual." The Official Senate report on Senate Bill 158, the "Human Life Bill", summarised the issue this way: "Physicians, biologists, and other scientists agree that conception marks the beginning of the life of a human being - a being that is alive and a member of the human species. There is overwhelming agreement on this point in countless medical, biological, and scientific writings."8 Everything that determines the individuality and originality of a person is established at conception. The first single cell contains the entire genetic blueprint in all its complexity. * The heart starts beating between 18 and 25 days. * Electrical brainwaves have been recorded at 43 days on an EEG. If the absence of a brainwave indicates death, why will pro-abortionists not a

The following is taken from Theology of the Body for Teens: Have you ever wondered why the subject of sex is part of nearly every TV show, advertisement, song, and movie? And the sex shown or sung about is usually glorious—with no pain inflicted on those involved. Rarely do we see the pain that comes, for example, from selfishness. Did you ever think about what society would be like without selfishness in relationships? If everyone simply loved the other as he or she wished to be loved, we would have virtually no pain, no problems in relationships. Imagine, for example, if marriages never ended in divorce. Think about the pain that both parents and kids would be spared. Confusion reigns, and it is leading to some seriously broken hearts. People today seem more confused about the meaning of love and the purpose of sex than perhaps ever before. Many people are searching for the meaning of life and love but don’t realize that the answer is actually right in front of us; the key to

He is Truly Risen Fr. Rene Butler Have you ever noticed how repetitious the Psalms sometimes are? For example, Psalm 117 is only two verses long and the first verse says the same thing twice, in different words: "Praise the LORD, all you nations! Give glory, all you peoples!" Here is another example from Psalm 27: "The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom do I fear? The LORD is my life's refuge; of whom am I afraid?" This same kind of repetition occurs often in the Prophets. The reason is simple: this is poetry, and one of the most important aspects of poetry in any language is the imaginative use of language to say the same things in many different ways. Here are some examples from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet: "She doth teach the torches to burn bright!","What light from yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun." Shakespeare gives Romeo numerous opportunities to say, "Ain't she gorge

O Blessed Trinity, we thank You for having graced the Church with Pope John Paul II and for allowing the tenderness of Your Fatherly care, the glory of the cross of Christ, and the splendor of the Holy Spirit, to Shine through him. Trusting fully in Your infinite mercy and in the maternal intercession of Mary, he has given us a living image of Jesus the Good Shepherd, and has shown us that holiness is the necessary measure of ordinary Christian life and is the way of achieving eternal communion with You. Grant us, by his intercession, and according to Your will, the graces we implore..., hoping that he will soon be numbered among Your saints. Amen.

While the U.S. networks have big plans for next Friday’s royal wedding (or hadn’t you heard), a mere 48 hours and 1,100 miles away in Vatican City another big event will unfold: the beatification of Pope John Paul II. Beatification is the first step to Sainthood. •FNC will carry the Beatification Mass beginning at 4amET Sunday, May 1. Jamie Colby and Eric Shawn will anchor the Mass from New York while religion correspondent Lauren Green will report from Vatican City. Rome-based correspondent Greg Burke will report and FNC analyst Father Jonathan Morris makes a return to Rome to contribute. •MSNBC’s Chris Jansing who will be covering the royal wedding, travels from London to Rome Saturday morning and will begin appearing on MSNBC Saturday. Jansing will anchor live coverage of the Beatification Mass beginning at 4amET. She’ll be joined NBC’s Vatican analyst and author George Weigel and Vatican Art Historian Liz Lev. Jansing covered the death of Pope John Paul II and the election of Ben

Who is Saint Faustina? Helena Kowalska was the third of ten children, born August 25, 1905, in Głogówiec, Poland. At fifteen she left school to help support her family. Helena felt called by God to a religious vocation. In 1925, she entered the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy, taking the name Sister Maria Faustina of the Blessed Sacrament. This simple nun with only three years of formal education lived a short but consequential life. Through her, God reveled His compassion, His desire to forgive sins, and reconcile mankind to Himself. She endured great hardships in carrying out this Divine mission. Sister Faustina received visions of our Lord, in which, Jesus instructed her to tell the world of His infinite love and mercy. She kept a diary of these visions; later published under the title Divine Mercy in My Soul: The Diary of St. Faustina . Read it online here . Sister Faustina was thirty-three when she succumbed to tuberculosis. Following her death her writings w

An excerpt from the Easter Vigil homily of our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI: [. . .] In the opening words of his Gospel, Saint John sums up the essential meaning of that account in this single statement: “In the beginning was the Word”. In effect, the creation account that we listened to earlier is characterized by the regularly recurring phrase: “And God said …” The world is a product of the Word, of the Logos, as Saint John expresses it, using a key term from the Greek language. “Logos” means “reason”, “sense”, “word”. It is not reason pure and simple, but creative Reason, that speaks and communicates itself. It is Reason that both is and creates sense. The creation account tells us, then, that the world is a product of creative Reason. Hence it tells us that, far from there being an absence of reason and freedom at the origin of all things, the source of everything is creative Reason, love, and freedom. Here we are faced with the ultimate alternative that is at stake in

Fr. Michael J. Woolley The Lord is Risen, Alleluia! This is the Church’s message to our troubled world tonight (this Day) and for the next 50 days: He is truly Risen! He is Risen, despite the treacherous greed of Judas which stripped Him of all He had, He is Risen, despite the cowardice of His Apostles who in the hour of darkness found themselves powerless to aid Him, He is Risen, despite the blindness of His own people who preferred the sham Barabbas to the true Messiah, He is truly Risen, in spite of the excessive beating the Romans gave Him, He is truly Risen, in spite of the four sharp nails that were driven into His Sacred Flesh, He is truly Risen, in spite of the death He truly underwent as a man, in spite of the three days His cold and lifeless Body spent in the tomb. No, not greed, nor cowardice, nor rejection, nor beating, nor crucifixion, nor death itself could overcome Jesus Christ. He has overcome them all, He has trampled them underHis pierced Feet. The

Some Catholics are concerned with what they see as an attempt by environmentalists to hijack Easter for their own Earth Day purposes. In a letter dated April 1 to churches across the country, the environmentalist group Earth Day Network encourages priests to remember Earth Day Sunday, even though Easter is that same Sunday. “This year we again invite you to celebrate Earth Day Sunday and share with your parishioners a story of creation care that will impart to them the importance of protecting a nurturing the planet that was provided to us,” the letter reads. “Earth Day Sunday is a great way to bring your parish together through community building and sharing the faith with those in the community while improving the world around us.” The letter does add that if priests want to celebrate Easter instead, they could consider delivering a climate change sermon on the following Sunday. Michael Voris of REAL Catholic TV, however, is not buying it, calling the campaign a push for a “pag

The gospel writers record seven statements uttered by Jesus while he was on the cross: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."[Lk. 23:34] "Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise."[Lk. 23:43] "Woman, behold, your son!" [Jn. 19:25-27] "E′li, E′li, la′ma sa‧bach‧tha′ni?" [Mt. 27:46] [Mk. 15:34] (Aramaic for "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"). It is also a quotation of the first line of Psalm 22. The latter refers to piercing of hands and feet, and has been interpreted as a reference to Crucifixion . "I thirst."[Jn. 19:28] "It is finished."[Jn. 19:30] "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!"[Lk. 23:46]

No one knows exactly when Christ’s resurrection took place only that it was sometime between his burial late on Friday and the discovery of the empty tomb early Sunday morning. There were no eyewitnesses to describe the Resurrection itself. Instead, there are descriptions of appearances of the Risen Lord after the Resurrection. The account of the Passion is one continuous narrative, very similar in all four Gospels. Not so with the narratives of the Resurrection appearances. These are isolated scenes and, while there are some similarities, each Gospel has its own stories to tell. Luke’s Gospel account can be divided into five episodes, all taking place on Easter Sunday: 1) the finding of the empty tomb at dawn, 2) the appearance of the Risen Christ to two disciples walking to Emmaus, 3) the appearance to the disciples gathered in Jerusalem, 4) the commissioning of these disciples to witness and preach in his name, 5) the end of the visible appearances as Christ is carried

Judas is neither a master of evil nor the figure of a demoniacal power of darkness but rather a sycophant who bows down before the anonymous power of changing moods and current fashion. But it is precisely this anonymous power that crucified Jesus, for it was anonymous voices that cried, "Away with him! Crucify him!" -- Pope Benedict XVI

Heavenly Father, You lifted your dear Son from the grave and made Him a beacon of hope for all mortals. By overcoming sin and death and hell, may He take us by the hand and lead us into the land of bliss and glory where we shall enjoy forever the company of the whole heavenly host. May we trust with all our hearts in His glorious wounds by which He ransomed us for everlasting life. Blessed be the name of Jesus, now and forever. Amen.

Lord Jesus Christ, You are the Author of Life, Who died and now lives forevermore. May we who work and pray That children in the womb may be protected Always draw strength, confidence, and joy From Your victory over death, For you are Lord forever and ever. Amen.

Father Rene Butler We are so used to the story of the Passion of Jesus that we forget that each of the four Gospel accounts contains material not found in the other three. Unique to Matthew is the scene where Judas brings the money back to the chief priests and then hangs himself, and the chief priests buy the potter’s field. Likewise, there is the moment when Pilate’s wife sends him a message to have nothing to do with Jesus. Most troubling is the verse which reads: “The whole people said: ‘His blood be upon us and upon our children.’” It is troubling for two reasons: First, because it was a terrible thing to say. Second, and most important, this verse has historically been used – abused – to justify hatred and persecution of Jews over the centuries. We forgot what Jesus said in Luke’s Gospel, as he was being crucified: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” In the Old Testament, we have the image of the saving blood of the paschal lamb, the blood wh

Wow! is all I can say H/T Big Blue Wave

Lord of Life and Truth, Your Providence guides the course of history. You have conquered death And have made us the People of Life. You call us to fight the evil of abortion And the forces that promote it. We therefore ask you to grant wisdom and mercy to our nation. Give our government leaders the courage To put an end to the funding Of the largest abortion business in the world. Give all of us the courage to insist That public funding only be used For the protection and promotion of life Rather than for its destruction. Give us hopeful hearts and joyful spirits As we continue to proclaim, celebrate, and serve The Gospel of Life. We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Courtesy Priests For Life

This is just to revisit what the Pope said about condoms from noted Catholic apologist and Catholic scholar extrodinare Jimmy Akin. He appeared on an addition of Catholic Answers Live to explain that Benedict did not change the Church's position on condoms as was widely reported by the media at the time.

Have you ever wondered what life is all about? What's the point of it all? For Catholics the short answer is Heaven. We are all called to be saints. A saint is someone who resides in Heaven. At the end of time all those who live in the company of God for all eternity will be saints. This is what paradise is all about. In the meantime, we are pilgrims here on earth. After our earthly journey we will go to Heaven. Hell, or Purgatory. The souls in Hell are destined to be there for all time. The souls in Purgatory are destined to go to Heaven; their salvation is assured. We can pray for the souls in Purgatory. It is the earthly part of the journey that concerns us now. What must we do to go to Heaven? The answer is diseptively simple: live in the moment. This is what all saints did to perfection. They didn't concern themselves inordinately with the past. The past is in a very real way dead to us. The future is a mystery that has yet to be revealled. We must live in the moment bec

Lord Jesus, You who faithfully visit and fulfill with your Presence the Church and the history of men; You who in the miraculous Sacrament of your Body and Blood render us participants in divine Life and allow us a foretaste of the joy of eternal Life; We adore and bless you. Prostrated before You, source and lover of Life, truly present and alive among us, we beg you. Reawaken in us respect for every unborn life, make us capable of seeing in the fruit of the maternal womb the miraculous work of the Creator, open our hearts to generously welcoming every child that comes into life. Bless all families, sanctify the union of spouses, render fruitful their love. Accompany the choices of legislative assemblies with the light of your Spirit, so that peoples and nations may recognize and respect the sacred nature of life, of every human life. Guide the work of scientists and doctors, so that all progress contributes to the integral well-being of the person, and no