BIG C CATHOLICS

SACRAMENTAL = REAL Fr. Rene Butler Catholics are sometimes disturbed by the claim that in receiving the Body of Christ they can be called cannibals. The reasoning goes: Catholics (and Orthodox, by the way) take literally the words of Jesus, “This is my body,” and “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you,” so they must be cannibals when they take Communion. Such reasoning is based on the failure to understand the sacraments. Jesus is present in all the sacraments. This sacramental presence is real, and not merely symbolic; but it is likewise not merely materialistic. For example, when the minister of Baptism pours water and says the words, Jesus is really – not symbolically, not materialistically, but sacramentally – present, cleansing the soul of all sin. The Eucharist is different in that Jesus is present in the bread and wine, whereas we do not say that He is present in the baptismal water. How can this be? Over 900 years ago t

( This blog is dedicated to the proposition that faith and reason are complementary not contradictory. The following is from the"Theology of the Person, Part One," a series of essays by Father Robert Papi. The first essay deals with Theology as a marriage of faith and reason. We will discuss the "Theology of the Person" more in later posts.) Fr. Robert Papi This series, of which the following will be the first essay, is a work of reflections on Pope John Paul II's Theology Of The Body. I offer it as a means of understanding, and joyfully accepting, our reality as persons. We are persons created, redeemed, and sanctified by the Blessed Trinity. The classic definition of theology, ascribed to St. Anslem is: "Faith Seeking Understanding!" The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines theology as: "Rational analysis of a religious faith." For the Fathers of the Church Theologia (theology) "refers to the mystery of God's innermost life within th

For your information here is the powerful pro-life ad rejected by NBC and CNN that was to run during the 2009 Super Bowl. President Obama's support of abortion is ironic since a disproportionate number of the victims of abortion are female and minority babies.

The Immaculate Heart of Mary, also known as the Sacred Heart of Mary, is a devotion of Roman Catholics that venerates Mary’s maternal love for her Son, Jesus Christ, and her compassion and love for all people. The Immaculate Heart has also been involved in Marian apparitions such as those to Saint Catherine Labouré in 1830. On the Miraculous Medal, the Immaculate Heart is pierced by a sword. The Sacred Heart of Jesus also appears on the medal, next to the Immaculate Heart, but is crowned with thorns, rather than being pierced by a sword. The M on the medal signifies the Blessed Virgin at the foot of the Cross when Jesus was being crucified. Our Lady of Fátima asked that, in reparation for sins committed against her Immaculate Heart, on the first Saturday of five consecutive months the Catholic: Go to Confession (within 8 days before or after the first Saturday) Receive Holy Communion Recite five decades of the Rosary Keep me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on the fifteen m

The First Two Secrets (See original Fátima post here .) The first secret was a vision of Hell, which Lúcia described: "Our Lady showed us a great sea of fire which seemed to be under the earth. Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form, like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, floating about in the conflagration, now raised into the air by the flames that issued from within themselves together with great clouds of smoke, now falling back on every side like sparks in a huge fire, without weight or equilibrium, and amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear. The demons could be distinguished by their terrifying and repulsive likeness to frightful and unknown animals, all black and transparent. This vision lasted but an instant. How can we ever be grateful enough to our kind heavenly Mother, who had already prepared us by promising, in the first Apparition, to take us to heaven. Otherwise, I

Dumb Ox A MESSAGE FROM DUMB OX Regular readers of this blog will notice that I haven't been posting of late. I was away from the "blogosphere" for a while. Starting Thursday, June 11th, I'll be submitting several new posts each day. Thank you for your patience.

Excerpted from Father Michael J. Woolley's Trinity Sunday homily. Read it in its entirety here : [ ... ] And so today we celebrate this wonderful and central mystery of our Faith: that the One True God is a community of Persons, Father Son and Holy Spirit. The Bond of Love that Unites these Three Persons into One is like a Triple Linked Chain that nothing could ever break. This Strong Love of the Most Blessed Trinity has been poured into our hearts at Baptism. And so long as we remain united with the Trinity through loving God and loving our neighbor, even now in this life we get a foretaste of that Love we will abide in forever in Heaven. But while chains of Love uniting the Persons of the Holy Trinity with each other are unbreakable, the chains of Love which unite us to God are not. As the saying goes, a chain is only as strong as it’s weakest link. And when we commit sin, we may break only one link in the chain that binds us to God, but that one link can make our whole relations