Religious Freedom Under Siege

by Maria Wiering BALTIMORE (CNS) – Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore held up statesman Sargent Shriver and other Catholics like him as “a living example of how faith enriches public life” June 21 at a standing-room-only Mass opening the second Fortnight for Freedom. “Faith serves the public life not only by the sheer magnitude […]

Perversions and Purposes in Human Sexuality

by Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk Many of us have probably heard single women talking among themselves about men, where one of them ends up saying, “That guy, he’s just a pervert – he’s only interested in sex.” When women detect that a man’s focus has become the pursuit of pleasure, and that unbridled sex has become […]

Courageous Witness

Jesus prepared His disciples for the inevitability of persecution once He ascended to His heavenly Father. We have been reading John’s account of these warnings in recent days. The experience of the early Christian community, as St. Luke narrates in the Acts of the Apostles, amply confirms both the oppression of the Christians and their […]

Debating Birth Control In the Public Square

by Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk GOVERNOR BOBBY Jindal of Louisiana, in his Dec. 13, 2012 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, argues that the cost of birth control could be reduced by eliminating the required doctor’s visit to get a prescription, or in other words, making contraception available “over the counter.” If it were made available […]

Chronic Illness: A New And Meaningful Life

by Deacon Richard Cheu Living Well with Chronic Illness: A Practical and Spiritual Guide (Dog Ear Publishing, 2012, pp. 240) is written to help chronically ill patients take charge of their health care with the assistance of healthcare providers, caretakers and family members. In this book, readers learn how to: respond to chronic illness in […]

Church’s Role in the Public Square

My dear brothers and sisters in the Lord, Now that the 2012 election is over, our nation must come together and pray for our newly re-elected President and other political leaders. The task before them is daunting. It is self-evident that ours is a divided nation. In a Nation of over 350 million, the difference […]

Vote Your Conscience

This Tuesday, Nov. 6, is a day on which every voting Catholic must make an important choice. We face the civic duty to be faithful citizens and the moral summons to be faithful to our consciences. Of the two, the moral obligation to follow one’s conscience comes first. We may not, in fact, support in […]

Who Owns America?

The incidence of Columbus Day poses the perennial question about what it really means to “discover” America and, by implication to “own” it. While conquest or the glory therein may have been prime among the motives of our earliest European settlers, any fair reading of history cannot so narrowly dismiss higher humane aspirations of the […]

Open Letter to the First Catholic Vice President

by Jerry and Anna Parisella Dear Mr. Vice President: We have been enthusiastic supporters of your and President Obama’s fair and wise domestic and foreign policies. There is one policy, however, that is unsupportable and is considered of such long-term, precedent-setting consequence that it trumps all other issues – the HHS Mandate. We are respectfully […]

Saved from Ourselves

Nothing may irk Catholics more than bishops and priests going public on moral issues with which they struggle (or disagree) except those same leaders staying silent on issues they agree with! Perhaps this is also true for many non-Catholics. The Church is not a democracy and never will be. It cannot be. Unlike the U.S. […]