BIG C CATHOLICS

Via Fr Robert Barron at Word on Fire At the Transfiguration, Moses was there representing the law and Elijah was there representing the prophets. But why were Peter, James, and John present? And what does this event mean to us today? St. Thomas Aquinas devotes an entire section in his Summa theologiae to this event. His treatment sums up much of the wisdom of the Fathers, so looking at his reflections may give us some answers. Aquinas says that it was fitting that Christ be manifested in his glory because those who are walking an arduous path need a clear sense of the goal of their journey. The arduous path is this life, with all of its attendant sufferings, failures, setbacks, disappointments, and injustices, and its goal is heavenly glory, fullness of life with God, the transformation of our bodies. As he makes his way toward the cross, Jesus accordingly allows, for a brief time, his glory to shine through, the radiance of his divinity to appear. We are not meant finally

Here is Bishop Robert Barron's beautiful commentary on the Solemnity of All Saints. If you have ten minutes to spare, His Excellency's cogent insights are worth your time. Explaining that the greatest tragedy in life is not becoming a saint, Bishop Barron urges us to seek out Christ's friendship. He states in part: "At the very beginning of the 20th century, there were two young Parisian students, intellectuals. One was called Jacques Maritain, and his girlfriend was called Raïssa. Raïssa was a poet. Jacques Maritain was a student of philosophy. They were agnostics, more or less, and they decided that life was meaningless. One day in the Luxembourg Garden in Paris, they made a vow, and they said unless we can discover by the end of the school year the meaning of life we will commit suicide. [W]hile they were waiting for the school year to come to an end, Jacques Maritain read a statement by Léon Bloy, who was a French spiritual writer. Léon Bloy said, 'T

With Justice Antonin Scalia's passing, a reliable defender of religious liberty has departed from the Supreme Court. The current president, who stands to name his replacement, has been less than amenable to expressions of Catholicism. During the October 2013 government shutdown, Catholic military chaplains who said Mass faced arrest . The White House asked Georgetown University to cover all religious symbols [i.e. the monogram "IHS”–symbolizing the name of Jesus] at a venue where the president spoke. Bishop Robert Barron in his article " No Room for Catholics in Obama Country ", examines the Obama administration's push for radical secularization at the expense of religious institutions: In short, the slow but steady creep toward secularization of Catholic health-care has already been, for some time, a reality. But now the process has been given a massive push by the Obama administration's recent mandate that all health-care agencies and institutions mus

Fr. Barron on the SCOTUS Same-Sex Marriage Ruling  Ryan Anderson: The Marriage Debate Fr. Barron on Gay Marriage and the Breakdown of Moral Argument How Can Catholics Approach the Topic of Same-Sex "Marriage"? Made for Each Other