BIG C CATHOLICS

Whatever your take on the election results, here is a rare public testimony of faith by Ernie Johnson Jr. on Inside the NBA on TNT. His comments were made last November, just days after the 2016 election. (See full transcript below.) "When this campaign season started, I felt like I’d been dealt a bad hand. I had these couple of choices. And there were trust issues with Hillary Clinton I couldn’t get past. And there was this inflammatory rhetoric from Donald Trump which to me was incomprehensible and indefensible. I couldn’t vote for either one. For the first time in going to the polls for 42 years, I hit the write-in button and I voted for John Kasich. And I left knowing that John Kasich wasn’t going to win, but I left with a clear conscience because I hadn’t settled. Number two, I’m hopeful. I watched the video today at CNN on what was going on at the White House with Donald Trump and President Obama. I was hopeful and I was encouraged that there will be a difference

Saint Proclus, the 5th century patriarch of Constantinople, is best known for his defense of Mary as the Mother of God against the bishop Nestorius. The following reading is excerpted from one of his homilies for the Feast of the Epiphany. ____________________________ Christ appeared in the world, and, bringing beauty out of disarray, gave it luster and joy. He bore the world’s sin and crushed the world’s enemy. He sanctified the fountains of waters and enlightened the minds of men. Into the fabric of miracles he interwove ever greater miracles. For on this day land and sea share between them the grace of the Savior, and the whole world is filled with joy. Today’s feast of the Epiphany manifests even more wonders than the feast of Christmas. On the feast of the Saviour’s birth, the earth rejoiced because it bore the Lord in a manger; but on today’s feast of the Epiphany it is the sea that is glad and leaps for joy; the sea is glad because it receives the blessing of holines

The Young Pope is a ten episode English-language drama television series, directed by Paolo Sorrentino and featuring Jude Law as Pope Pius XIII, who, at 47, becomes the youngest and first American pope in history. From HBO’s website: "Born Lenny Belardo, [Pope Pius XIII] is a complex and conflicted character, so conservative in his choices as to border on obscurantism, yet full of compassion towards the weak and poor. The first American pope, Pius XIII is a man of great power who is stubbornly resistant to the Vatican courtiers, unconcerned with the implications to his authority." But there is much more. As the series gradually unfolds, viewers learn that Pius XIII spends more time contemplating himself than he does praying. He smokes, smirks, connives and chides his way through his first days in office. When someone objects to him breaking long held convention, he snaps: "Well, there’s a new Pope now." In truth, "Lenny is an insecure enigma." We dis

The Adoration of the Shepherds , Mattia Preti, c. 1660. George Weigel, Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, writes in his weekly column The Catholic Difference on December 21, 2016 about a long conversation he had with then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger weeks after 9/11. Ratzinger's observations about Christianity in Europe, moral relativism, and the dangers posed by radicalized Islamists have only grow more salient with time. In concluding, Weigel brilliantly summarizes the state of Western culture as one of loneliness, despair and alienation. Fortunately, for the Christian, the way, the truth and the life is not some abstract or sentimental aspiration. It is a person, Jesus Christ, whose birth is the reason we celebrate Christmas. Weigel writes: "Christmas reminds us what Christians have to say to this pervasive loneliness. We say 'God is with us,' as throughout the Christmas season we celebrate the divine answer to the Advent ple

On October 3rd, 2000, a viewer called into EWTN's  Mother Angelica Live program asking whether Catholics were obligated to vote, and if so, "for whom?". In her answer, the late Mother Angelica urges us to vote judiciously in accordance with the teachings of Christ, and expresses her steadfast opposition to the culture of death, which she condemns as unbending and without love: (See video below.) Beginning at 0:50: "I'm not going to vote for candidates. I vote for life. ... I vote for life. Because it's an abomination to God, the culture of death. ... I cannot vote for death. I vote for life. I vote for the God who gave us life and has a right, the only one who has a right, to create life, and call it forth to Himself. The only one! You don't have a right, I don't have a right, nobody has a right to call death on someone God has called to life. If we don't stand for the principles of God, you will be next, because you're getting too old

Catholics for whom the faith is non-negotiable may feel with Mr. Trump's election that their precariously beleaguered religious liberty was given a much need reprieve. Prior to the vote, it seemed as if, for those who professed traditional Christian values, religious freedom was in grave danger. Indeed, last February, Father Paul Scalia, the son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, delivered a heartfelt eulogy at the funeral for his father in which he observed the following: "[Justice Scalia] knew well what a close-run thing the founding of our nation was. And he saw in that founding, as did the founders themselves, a blessing, a blessing quickly lost when faith is banned from the public square, or when we refuse to bring it there. So he understood that there is no conflict between loving God and loving one's country, between one's faith and one's public service." The problem is that the forces of secularization, and those who occupy the commanding

The 2016 election is almost here. Since the outcome will very profoundly affect religious liberty in the United States, as well as the protection of the vulnerable in our society; the unborn, the ill and disabled, and the elderly, we should pray that God's will be done, and that those who are voting will do so with a well-formed conscience. To that end, Phil Lawler asks a timely question about Progressives and the apparent inability of some to acknowledge God . For examples, (including one referenced by Mr. Lawler ,) go here , here , here and here . Saint Thomas More, Patron of Religious Freedom, Pray for us.

As the moral and linguistic confusions, subterfuges, and just plain falsehoods surrounding a bill to legalize physician-assisted suicide in Colorado graphically illustrate, euthanasia kills more than a disturbed human being facing life’s most challenging moment. The proponents of the culture of death are persistent and assiduous in their efforts to undermine and replace Christian values. George Weigel, Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, in an article for National Review Online , explains what is at stake as Colorado voters prepare to decide on Proposition 106, the "End-of-Life Options Act," that would legalize physician-assisted suicide in the Centennial State. Weigel notes that the citizens of Colorado should bear in mind the unintended consequences and implicit dangers of such a law. He writes: "The more apt mot about all of this lethality masquerading as compassion, however, is from the quotable quotes of... [Fr.] Richard John N

Father George Rutler, pastor of St. Michael's church in New York City, has written a commentary on the martyrdom of French priest, Father Jacques Hamel, at the hands of ISIS terrorists. In " Tolerating Terror ", Fr. Rutler examines the "paradox in the way the self-styled Age of Reason exploded in a Reign of Terror." He takes issue with Pope Francis' remarks equating the present day radical Islamists' Jihad with acts of domestic violence perpetrated by Catholics. From the article: "The slaying of Father Jacques Hamel at the altar of the church of Saint Etienne-de Rouvray in Normandy should be the envy of every priest: to die at Mass, the holiest hour of the world. The president of France was heartfelt in his mourning, but Monsieur Hollande was also historically remiss when he said: 'To attack a church, to kill a priest, is to profane the republic.' He spoke from the comfortable remove of the Fifth Republic, which would not exist were it

Question 45 in the Summa theologiae : 1. In St. Matthew's Gospel (chap. 17) we read that our Lord was transfigured in the sight of his apostles Peter, James,and John. "And he was transfigured before them. And his face did shine as the sun, and his garments became white as snow." Thus the three apostles had a glimpse of such glory as would come to them after their life of fidelity to God, through hardships and trials. Our Lord had told the apostles of his coming Passion before he gave them this encouraging experience of seeing the Transfiguration. Christ as man had the glory of the beatific vision from the first instant of his existence in Mary's womb. But he was not to have the "overflow of heavenly glory into his body" until his Resurrection from the dead. 2. In the Transfiguration, our Lord showed by way of anticipation the clarity of his bodily glory. This was the essential clarity of true heavenly glory, here manifested in a new mode, that is, as

Venerable Fulton J. Sheen discusses the Devil's incessant attempts to turn our heats away from God. May we never forget that Satan, the father of lies, is a cruel deceiver of men whose only desire is our destruction. Below is a partial transcript of Venerable Sheen's remarks. Starting at 4:43: I thought perhaps you might be interested in hearing about the Devil from a sound philosophical and theological point of view. I'm going to describe to you the Devil, first from the psychiatric point of view, and secondly from the biblical. First the psychiatric. It is interesting that as we drop things in the Church the world begins to pick them up and distorts them. Now we, for example, the nuns drop the long habits, the girls put on maxi coats. We stop saying the beads, hippies put the beads around their neck. And, as theologians dropped the demonic, the psychiatrists picked it up. [Dr.] Rollo May of Rockefeller Institute has several chapters in his work on psychia

"Born in Norcia about 480, Benedict's first studies were in Rome but, disappointed with city life, he retired to Subiaco, where he stayed for about three years in a cave — the famous sacro speco — dedicating himself wholly to God. In Subiaco, making use of the ruins of a cyclopean villa of the emperor Nero, he built some monasteries, together with his first disciples, giving life to a fraternal community founded on the primacy of the love of Christ, in which prayer and work were alternated harmoniously in praise of God. Years later, he completed this project in Monte Cassino, and put it in writing in his Rule, the only work of his that has come down to us. Amid the ashes of the Roman Empire, Benedict, seeking first of all the kingdom of God, sowed, perhaps even without realizing it, the seed of a new civilization which would develop, integrating Christian values with classical heritage, on one hand, and the Germanic and Slav cultures on the other. There is a particula

Once when Zechariah was serving as priest he was chosen by lot to enter the sanctuary of the Lord to burn incense. Then, when the whole assembly of the people was praying outside at the hour of the incense offering, the angel of the Lord appeared to Zechariah. Zechariah was troubled by what he saw and fear came over him. But the angel said to him, "Do not be afraid Zechariah for your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall name him John. And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. (Luke 1:8-15) The angel tells Zechariah that his prayer has been heard. We aren't told what Zechariah has been praying for, but now we know. He was praying for Isreal, of course, as a Jewish priest would do. But he was also praying for a son. Sometimes we're afraid to pray for things that seem unrealistic. Three times in the birth story of Jesus we'll hear angels say, &quo

As we discussed here the original Ark of the Covenant was a golden vessel containing the Ten Commandments, the sign of God's covenant with the nation of Israel. In a similar fashion, the Virgin Mary who bore Jesus in her very womb, is the Ark of the New Covenant that is Christ Himself. Both Mary and the Ark of the Covenant were "overshadowed" by a cloud representing the Glory of the Lord. This happened to Mary at the Annunciation. The Ark of the Covenant was overshadowed by the Glory of the Lord on several occasions. During its installation in the Tabernacle and the Temple the Ark was overshadowed just as Mary was. When the gospel writer Luke writes about Mary visiting her cousin Elisabeth (who is pregnant with John the Baptist) he uses suggestive language to point out Mary as the new Ark of the Covenant. Luke reminds us of when King David brought the Ark to Jerusalem. The parallels are unmistakable: "David arose and went" to bring up the Ark (

Fr. Frank Pavone On April 18, 2007, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the federal ban on partial-birth abortion, without the loophole of a health exception. This is an important step forward in Constitutional law toward the ultimate goal of restoring protection to every unborn child. In partial-birth abortion, the birth process itself is hijacked and turned into an instrument of killing. This corrupts the role of the physician and blurs the line between abortion and infanticide. The Court said that this line should not be blurred. The Court rejected the arguments of the abortion industry that the ban should be struck down because it lacks a health exception. The Court said that the abortion supporters failed to prove that the procedure is as necessary for health as they claimed. Visit Father Frank's blog here . For information on pro-life resources see Priests for Life .