BIG C CATHOLICS

George Weigel The sexual and physical abuse of children and young people is a global plague; its manifestations run the gamut from fondling by teachers to rape by uncles to kidnapping-and-sex-trafficking. In the United States alone, there are reportedly some 39 million victims of childhood sexual abuse. Forty to sixty percent were abused by family members, including stepfathers and live-in boyfriends of a child's mother-thus suggesting that abused children are the principal victims of the sexual revolution, the breakdown of marriage, and the hook-up culture. Hofstra University professor Charol Shakeshaft reports that 6-10 percent of public school students have been molested in recent years-some 290,000 between 1991 and 2000. According to other recent studies, 2 percent of sex abuse offenders were Catholic priests -- a phenomenon that spiked between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s but seems to have virtually disappeared (six credible cases of clerical sexual abuse in 2009 were repor

Fr. Phillip Neri Powell The following is an excerpt from the article “Advice from Fr. Philip Neri’s Confessional,” by Fr. Philip Neri Powell, O.P., Ph.D. It's quite long but well worth the read. Visit his website here . Go here for the previous post in this series. II. The Sins (in order of frequency heard in the Box) 4. Lust . What gift does lust pervert? You might be tempt to say “love” or “sex,” but I would say “beauty.” We know from the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei verbum) that God reveals Himself to us through His creation, His only Son, and scripture. As the rational members of His creation, we humans are particularly capable of revealing Who God Is, that is, of revealing Divine Beauty, Goodness, and Truth to others. In other words, you are a revelation of God to me and I to you. When you see a beautiful woman (or man) she is beautiful b/c God’s beauty is being revealed through her. She serves as an icon through which God shines His beauty and through wh

Thought of the Day It is clear through unlearned men that the cross was persuasive; in fact, it persuaded the whole world. - St. John Chrysostom

Recently, a friend asked me what the nuptial meaning of the body means for single people. The nuptial meaning of the body is the body's capacity for expressing love, that love precisely in which the person becomes a gift and fulfills the very meaning of his being and existence. Single people had a unique capacity to express love in a variety of different self giving functions: helping those in need with their time and attention, being concerned with the poor and sick and helping others through the gift of self. The nuptial meaning of the body in this sense can be more closely assigned with agape than eros. The forgetting of self helps to bring concern and care for others. Even if one is not married, our bodies have a spousal sense in that as a member of humanity there are countless ways of giving ourselves to others. Loneliness is an invitation to self gift, inviting ourselves out of oneself to find communion and reconciliation in the communion of persons that makes humanity. The

Pope Benedict XVI will be releasing a new document, an Apostolic Exhortation, on Scripture. The document is a follow-up to the recent Synod on Scripture. Here's more information on the new document from Rome Reports: H/T the Sacred Page

The Annunciation is the Christian celebration of the announcement by the angel Gabriel to Mary that she would become the Theotokos (God-bearer). Despite being a virgin, Mary would miraculously conceive a child who would be called the Son of God. Gabriel told Mary to name her son Jesus, meaning “YHWH delivers”. Most of Christianity observes this event with the Feast of the Annunciation on 25 March, nine full months before Christmas. According to the Bible (Luke 1:26), the Annunciation occurred in “the sixth month” of Elizabeth's pregnancy with the child who would later become known as John the Baptist.

Men were made to love women just as women were made to love men. We were all made to love as God loves. To love the way God loves is to love completely, holding nothing back from the other. Adam and Eve knew this immediately upon seeing each other for the first time. It is inscribed in our bodies; their very physicality speaks this truth. Sex is sacred. It must be protected and revered as a holy and mysterious union. Women express the unrepeatable feminine incarnations of the human person that they are when they love their husbands. In so doing they honor and love God. Men express the unrepeatable masculine incarnations of the human person that they are when they love their wives. In so doing they also love God. The celibate is called to love through their bodies by offering up their masculinity or femininity to God. Nuns live a beautiful vocation by being spouses to Christ. This is not a sexual union but a profound spiritual union. Likewise, priests and religious brothers off