July is the month of the Precious Blood. In the traditional rite, the first day of the month is the feast of that name. In the Roman Martyrology, July 1 also commemorates Aaron the High Priest, the brother of Moses. This liturgical concurrence is appropriate, since Aaron’s priesthood — part of the alliance mediated by Moses — was a priesthood that offered many sacrifices prefiguring Christ’s Precious Blood.
In his Making a Monkey Out of Darwin, the formidable Buchanan reviews a recent book by Eugene Windchy, The End of Darwinism: And How a Flawed and Disastrous Theory Was Stolen and Sold. You gotta give it to Pat; he’s not afraid to slaughter a sacred cow… or …
It would take too long to point out all that’s wrong with Laurie Goodstein’s New York Times piece, “U.S. Nuns Facing Vatican Scrutiny,” so I’ll cut to the chase. The last sentence of the article reads:
But the investigation of American nuns surprised many because there was no obvious precipitating cause.
The same article reports that vocations in the group in question are down from 180,000 in 1965 to 60,000 today. It also mentions that
Brother Francis has taken a downturn. We received news last week that Brother has “a couple of months” to live, due to his worsening aortic valve stenosis. This prognosis is from his very competent cardiologist at Cheshire Medical Center in Keene, New Hampshire. As those who know Brother Francis can well imagine, he is taking the news very “philosophically.” Showing his resignation to the divine providence, he told one of the doctors, “I am in the Hands of God.”
Just after I posted an appreciation of the recent USCCB document clarifying the Church’s teaching on her mission and the Jewish People, I checked my familiar news sources to catch up on what’s going on.
Coincidentally, I discovered that “ADL president Abraham Foxman said that the bishops’ statement might be …
Our beloved Superior, Brother Francis, who will be 96 years old on July 19, is in need of prayers for his health. Brother was in the hospital last week with congestive heart failure, a condition he is prone to because he has long had aortic valve stenosis. He was discharged from Cheshire Medical Center last Friday, the Feast of the Sacred Heart. He is now at home, where the brothers and visiting health-care professionals are attending to him.
If you’ve not read Brian Kelly’s brief and delightful biography of Venerable Solanus Casey, please do yourself the favor. This Irish-American Padre Pio ought to be better known and loved across the nation.
Please Note: if any of our readers know some GM execs, could you please put a bug in their corporate ear? With all the trouble the auto-making giant is having these days, they should be reminded of Venerable Solanus’ past benevolence to Chevrolet, one of General Motors’ subsidiaries. As Brian writes:
Father Kenneth Baker, S. J., has written a short and delightful review of a recent book on Saint Francis of Assisi: “Preach Christ to the Muslims” The volume in review is St. Francis of Assisi and the Conversion of the Muslims, by Frank M. Rega, S.F.O.
These two excerpts are worth savoring:
Trusting absolutely in God and willing to die for the faith, Francis was at first beaten by the guards but eventually taken to the sultan.
Over at Taki’s Magazine, Charles Coulombe playfully takes readers on a fast-paced romp through the unfamiliar (for most people) political spectrum of what is called “Paleoconservatism.” His article, The Old Paleos and the New, seeks to explain the contrasts and often bizarre alliances within this recently-coined label.
Kirkians, Burkeans, the descendants of the Old Right, Monarchists, Strict-Constructionists (like Birchers), devotees of Richard M. Weaver, and even certain Libertarians — all these find a home under the Paleo umbrella.
A magnificent writer, Elizabeth Thecla Mauro, has a passion for the sport, and boy is she good at her craft. Her team? The Yankees. Well, that’ll just have to be overlooked. She finds a nobility in the game and in the players, or in many of them that is, and …
The annual Pilgrimage for Restoration is a sixty-five mile walk from Lake George to the Shrine of the North American Martyrs in Auriesville, NY. For four days, pilgrims attend Mass together, walk, camp, sing pray, and compare blisters! It’s an unforgettable experience. This year’s dates are Wednesday, September 23 to Saturday, September 26.
This event is not sponsored by Saint Benedict Center, but we participate in it every year, with great enthusiasm. The sponsors are the Company of St. René Goupil, with the…
When Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi appeared on Meet the Press a few weeks ago, she was asked about her consistent approval of abortion. Repeating her frequently stated stand, she insisted that she is “an ardent, practicing Catholic” and then claimed that no one knows when life begins. Moderator Tom Brokaw promptly told her that the Catholic Church holds that “life begins at conception.” Her response to that included her contention that such a position had only been uttered for “maybe 50 years or something like that.”
Ms. Pelosi needs to know that the very first catechism compiled by the Catholic
Church, the Didache, issued in 70 A.D., forbade abortion by name. Also Tertullian, one the earliest Fathers of the Catholic Church, wrote at length about the horror of destroying life in the womb in the year 197. Numerous other individuals throughout the ages, not all of them Catholic, though they surely agreed with the Catholic Church on the matter, have also condemned the practice.
Even though most Catholic leaders don’t use the following argument, a hugely important definition of when life begins came from heaven itself. Any “ardent, practicing Catholic” like Ms. Pelosi surely knows that one of the great feasts Catholics celebrate each year makes note of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Always believed by Catholics from apostolic times, this dogma concerning Mary’s exemption from any sin was formally and infallibly defined by Pope Pius IX on December 8, 1854. He thereby settled the matter for all questioning Catholics even though some theologians in that period expressed their unhappiness that the Pope had used the unique power of his office to do so.
If Mary was free of the stain of original sin from the moment of her conception, the matter of when life begins can no longer be disputed by “an ardent, practicing
Catholic.” Mary’ s life surely began at her conception in the womb of Saint Ann, not at a later point when existence outside the womb began. She was free from sin at the very moment of conception. And the Catholic Church indirectly, though positively, thereby rendered its view that conception is when life begins.
Four years later, when some skeptical theologians were still expressing doubt about the Pope’s declaration, the Blessed Mother appeared to Bernardette Soubirous at Lourdes in France. When the 14-year-old girl asked the apparition to identify herself,
Mary responded, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” The many miracles continually occurring at Lourdes have always supplied unquestionable testimony that the Blessed
Mother did appear and did cause the miraculous spring to begin flowing. The Church later elevated Bernardette to sainthood.
While the preponderant majority of medical authorities supports the belief that life begins at conception, there’ s no need for a Catholic to rely only on them. Life begins at the very instant of conception with the infant growing for nine months (or fewer) before birth and eventual separation from its mother. A Catholic has the infallible statement of a Pope and, even more, a statement from heaven itself that life begins at conception.
Speaker Pelosi, vice presidential nominee Biden, Massachusetts senators Kennedy and Kerry, and many others in public and private life repeatedly claim to be Catholic and yet tolerate and even promote abortion. They should be told by Catholic prelates that they have separated themselves from the Church. Abortion is the taking of innocent life, an unconscionable crime. A babe in the womb is the most innocent of all human beings.
That Catholic prelates do not make the heaven-confirmed point that life begins at conception and do not remind pro-abortionists that they have separated themselves from the Church is a deficiency long needing correction.
Tags: abortion, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy
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As this is one of the 10 best refutations of arguments for abortion, I would love to see this article in my diocesan newspaper The Catholic Miscellany (Diocese of Charleston, SC).
I think it would be appropriate for you to submit it directly to
But, I can submit it if you’d rather….
Please let me know your decision.
Best Regards, Michael Meder
Mr. Meder,
It would probably be better if you were to submit this yourself, as a local reader. We would appreciate it, in fact, if you would do so.
God bless you.