BIG C CATHOLICS

The Nationwide Rally for Religious Freedom is being held Friday, March 23 at noon , local time, outside federal buildings, Congressional offices and historic sites across the country . The theme for the Rally is “Stand Up for Religious Freedom—Stop the HHS Mandate!”   Click here for rally locations

Click here for rally locations .

The goal of life is to be with God forever... -- St. Ignatius of Loyola

The number of Catholics in the world and the number of deacons, priests and bishops all increased in 2010, while the number of women in religious orders continued to decline, according to Vatican statistics. At the end of 2010, the worldwide Catholic population reached 1.196 billion, an increase of 15 million or 1.3 percent, slightly outpacing the global population growth rate, which was estimated at 1.1 percent, said a statement published March 10 by the Vatican press office. Catholics as a percentage of the global population "remained stable at around 17.5 percent," it said. The statement reported a handful of the statistics contained in the 2012 "Annuario Pontificio," a yearbook containing information about every Vatican office, as well as every diocese and religious order in the world. Officials of the Vatican Secretariat of State and its Central Office of Church Statistics presented the first copy of the 2012 yearbook to Pope Benedict XVI during an audi

Will you vote the values that will stand the test of fire? Some things are more important than high gas prices or a faltering economy. They are life, marriage and freedom. This November, Catholics must stand up and protect their sacred rights and duties.

The following is from the Media Blog of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. It was posted Friday, March 9, by Sister Mary Ann Walsh, director of media relations for the USCCB. The Amish are exempt from the entire health care reform law. So are members of Medi-Share, a program of Christian Care Ministry. Yet, when the Catholic Church asks for a religious exemption from just one regulation issued under the law – the mandate that all employers, including religious institutions, must pay for sterilization and contraceptives, including abortion-inducing drugs – the Administration balks. The government respects the First Amendment that guarantees the right to freely exercise one’s religious beliefs, but only to a point. In the health care law it picks and chooses which beliefs it respects. The Amish do not believe in insurance, and the government understands. Christian Care Ministry believes people should form a religious community and pay medical bills for one another, and th

By Matthew Balan On Monday's CBS This Morning, correspondent Michelle Miller highlighted one of the 77 married Catholic priests in the U.S. who converted from the Episcopal Church in recent years and boosted a favorite pet cause of left-leaning dissenting Catholics: ordaining married men. Miller trumpeted that Father Doug Grandon's example " begs the question: should all Catholic priests have the option to marry? " Father Grandon himself leaned towards that concept when he stated that "the most we could say is that having a married priest...allows them to look and see how it would work if they wanted to change it." The morning show's religious and faith contributor, Father Edward Beck, also acknowledged that the several dozen former Episcopalian clerics are " bringing a whole liberal notion with them ," but also noted one of the main reasons for Catholic clerical celibacy - that parish priests can devote all 24 hours of each day to their mi