New Advent

Pope Benedict breaks silence over Vatileaks scandal

NULL@NULL.COM (NAME)

Pope Benedict XVI broke his silence Wednesday over the leaked documents scandal that has convulsed the Vatican, saying he was saddened by the betrayal but grateful to those aides who work faithfully and in silence to help him do his job. Benedict made his first direct comments on the scandal in off-the-cuff remarks at the end of his weekly general audience. He lashed out at some of the media reports about the scandal, saying the "exaggerated" and "gratuitous" rumors had offered a false image of the Holy See.

Everything you need to know about next week’s Transit of Venus...

NULL@NULL.COM (NAME)

On Tuesday/Wednesday June 5/6, Earth will have the best seat — the only seat — for a great show: the Transit of Venus across the face of the Sun. This is a relatively rare event, and the next one won’t happen until December 10, 2117, so I’m guessing this will be the last time you’ll be able to see it. I have a lot of info below, so I’ve broken it up into sections. Also, a special note: Fraser Cain, Pamela Gay, and I are hosting a live online video chat star party for the transit! That live video feed will be embedded here on the blog at the time of the transit, so if you read this blog — and you do — you’ll see it. I’ll have more info closer to the date.

In defense of the mosquito: 10 things you should know about summer's biggest annoyance...

NULL@NULL.COM (NAME)

Between the itching and the welts and the fears of West Nile, it’s easy to forget that mosquitoes are a wonder of evolution, and maybe they don’t really get a fair shake from us. Of over 3,000 known species, only 80 actually bite people, and at least one eats other mosquitoes for us. They grow from egg to adult in just five days, begin mating within minutes of hatching, and possess, by way of their stinging mouthparts, some of the coolest appendages in the animal kingdom. While I swat at them as much as the next guy, I think maybe it’s time we sit down and give skeeters a little credit for all the wonderful weirdness they’ve got going on.

Ontario considers proposal to force Gay-Straight Alliances on Catholic schools

NULL@NULL.COM (NAME)

The provincial government of Ontario is considering a proposal that would force Catholic schools to recognize Gay-Straight Alliances, causing Catholic leaders to say it risks threatening religious freedom and could allow clubs that undermine Church teaching. Marino Gazzola, president of the Ontario Catholic School Trustees Association, said that the Catholic schools are concerned that the government has proposed an amendment "aimed directly" at Catholic school boards and the trustees' association "as we have been vocal opponents to the imposition of Gay-Straight Alliances on Catholic schools from the outset."

I finally saw George Clooney's 'The Descendants'. Here's what bugged me so much about that movie...

fish@NULL.COM (Simcha Fisher)

There is nothing more frustrating than a movie that could have been good, but just plain isn't. Oh, there were some good things about it. It's beautifully shot, and, as a Reel Faith review points out, it treats both end-of-life decisions and adultery as extremely serious issues. This movie tries so very hard, from the very first moments, to shake you out of your illusions. It warns and warns you that things are not what you think they will be: George Clooney's voiceover as Matt King spells it out for us, explaining that life in Hawaii is no paradise -- that the people there have just the same pain and suffering as people anywhere. “THIS IS GOING TO BE DIFFERENT,” the movie fairly screams.

5 questions to ask before you leave the Catholic Church...

fulw@NULL.COM (Jennifer Fulwiler)

When people cite the pedophilia scandals as a key reason for abandoning the Church, I worry that they're setting themselves up for deep disappointment. The fact that priests abused children is an idea so horrific that one can hardly bear to think about it, and the fact that some bishops didn't take action to stop it is almost worse. But the chilling fact -- perhaps so chilling that we don't can't accept it -- is that this is not a problem with Catholic priests and bishops; it's a problem with human nature. A priest is no more likely to abuse a child than a male schoolteacher, and a bishop is no more likely to cover it up than a school administrator.

It just works...

held@NULL.COM (Brianna Heldt)

You've heard the old adage "Know thyself", right? Well, when it comes to being a mother, I am anything but a recreation director, and am far from being any sort of fun-activities-for-children guru. I make meals and fold laundry and explain arithmetic and writing lessons. I teach my children the Catechism and make sure to have lots of conversations and cuddling with them throughout the day. I allow them to play freely and use their imaginations. We visit with friends. We read. We do life. And it is in this crucible where conflicts are resolved, where hugs are doled out, where owies are kissed and where discipline and training occur. It is crazy simple, but it works.

Vatican academy mulls how pro-life is pro-life enough

alle@NULL.COM (John Allen)

In the normally tranquil world of the Vatican, where keeping up at least the appearance of unity is a fine art, the Pontifical Academy for Life has long been something of an outlier. There, internal tensions have a habit of erupting into full public view. The latest such row, featuring a public call from academy members for its papally appointed leadership to resign, pivots in part on the question of just how “pro-life” is pro-life enough to faithfully represent Catholic teaching.

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor

pope@NULL.COM (Msgr. Charles Pope)

The Eighth Commandment proclaims the splendor and the beauty of the truth. It is not often that we hear of the truth described in this way, but consider how precious and essential a foundation the truth is for our lives. Without the truth there can be no trust, and without trust there can be no relationships with others. Without the truth there is cynicism, fear, and an atmosphere of exclusion and secrecy. Without the truth, lives are ruined or lost by error and falsehood. Without the truth, countless men, women and children are misled by deceitful and destructive philosophies that sow confusion and error.

In Buffalo, Moving Days

palm@NULL.COM (Rocco Palmo)

Home to some 700,000 Catholics today, the Buffalo church -- which numbered close to a million members in past decades -- is over three times the size of Portland's. Yet in what could be the most emblematic sign of American Catholicism's historic demographic shift away from the old Northeastern bastions toward parts South and West, a metro Atlanta parish has been engaged in a years-long effort to move a closed, basilica-style Buffalo church (above) to the Georgia suburbs to serve as its worship-space.

10 ways for men to fix their family-work balance...

lowr@NULL.COM (Kevin Lowry)

My wife got run off the road today. Some guy was in a big hurry and didn’t like the fact that Kathi had slowed down to merge onto the highway behind a school bus full of children. So he accelerated from behind her car, and drove up beside her, forcing her onto the berm. After almost causing multiple accidents, he weaved his way around further impediments in his road (OK, people in his road) and exited precisely five cars in front of her further down the highway. Unbelievable.

Transcendentalism has its problems, but Catholics shouldn't Thoreau the baby out with the bathwater...

murp@NULL.COM (Micah Murphy)

Transcendentalism seems quite a bit like secular humanism and Unitarianism combined, a boundless confidence in the goodness of human nature and a condemnation of the violence supposedly done to it by social structures, such as political bodies and organized religion. Anti-Transcendentalism, on the other hand, focuses to a Calvinist degree on the sinfulness of man and his inability to change for the better.

The authority of the first popes

long@NULL.COM (Fr. Dwight Longenecker)

Some time ago an acquaintance from my days as a fundamentalist sent me an email. Kevin had become a Baptist pastor and was disappointed that I had been “deceived by the Catholic Church”. He wanted to know my reasons for becoming Catholic. I get such emails from time to time, and rather than get involved in arguments about purgatory or candles or Mary worship or indulgences, I usually cut straight to the point and try to engage my correspondent with the question of authority in the Church.

An interview with Archbishop Timothy Broglio, head of the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services...

NULL@NULL.COM (NAME)

Religious faith is seen by some people as poisonous to good citizenship. One’s religious beliefs are expected to be kept private if they are not in conformity with the secularist mindset. Matters such as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ mandate are seen as demands to which any good citizen would acquiesce.

If hope is certain, why can't I be sure of my own salvation?

erle@NULL.COM (Fr. Ryan Erlenbush)

What makes theological hope different from natural and worldly hope is, first and foremost, the object to which the will is inclined. Natural hope directs us to desire certain natural things – for example, good weather or financial security – and it can even direct us toward God according to our human powers (we can be moved to hope in God as our Creator, as the first Cause, and prime-Mover). However, natural hope cannot move us to desire that which is above and beyond our nature – natural hope will never move us to even desire (much less effectively tend toward) heaven.

Polish historian reveals John Paul II was spied on by the priests closest to him...

torn@NULL.COM (Andrea Tornielli)

The extent to which the communist secret police controlled Karol Wojtyla’s actions was incredible…” Marek Lasota who was born in 1960 and has a degree in Polish philosophy, with a specialism in history, lives among mounds of letters accumulated by the communist regime and kept in the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), where he is head of the Krakow section. After years of patient research, he has gathered a number of reports and dossiers on Wojtyla. Lasota’s “Karol Wojtyla spiato” (Spying on Karol Wojtyla), published by Intercienze, comes out in Italian in just a few days. The book is a collection of the regime’s secret documents on the pope who passed away in 2005.In an interview with Italian newspaper La Stampa the scholar also revealed the names of some collaborationist priests whom he mentions in the book.

Rapture or Rupture?

NULL@NULL.COM (NAME)

A year after Rev Harold Camping’s followers messed up on doomsday and the rapture didn’t happen Patrick Archbold links to a sympathetic article on the followers who were ”left behind” when Jesus didn’t turn up in glory. They didn’t experience the rapture, but they did experience a rupture–in their belief system. Matt notices that this article observes that “most mainstream Christians” believe in the rapture, and he goes on to point out that this just ain’t so. Read his post here.

Vatican calls attention to recently published norms on presumed apparitions...

pent@NULL.COM (Edward Pentin)

The Vatican drew attention today to the recent publication of hitherto unofficially published norms regarding discernment of presumed apparitions. In a statement, it said the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had recently published the norms which were originally approved by Pope Paul VI and issued by the congregation in 1978. The Vatican said they were not officially released to the public until now because they were “principally intended as a direct aid for the pastors of the Church.” But it added that over the years the document had appeared in “various works” without the permission of the CDF.

From the bench to the pulpit: At 66, former Florida judge is ordained to the priesthood...

NULL@NULL.COM (NAME)

By the time you reach your 60's, you'll probably be thinking about retirement, but not Tim Corcoran. At age 66, he's changing careers to serve a higher authority.

A host of new findings has revealed more weird stuff going on 1,800 miles beneath your feet...

NULL@NULL.COM (NAME)

As if the inside story of our planet weren’t already the ultimate potboiler, a host of new findings has just turned the heat up past Stygian. Geologists have long known that Earth’s core, some 1,800 miles beneath our feet, is a dense, chemically doped ball of iron roughly the size of Mars and every bit as alien. It’s a place where pressures bear down with the weight of 3.5 million atmospheres, like 3.5 million skies falling at once on your head, and where temperatures reach 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit — as hot as the surface of the Sun. It’s a place where the term “ironclad agreement” has no meaning, since iron can’t even agree with itself on what form to take. It’s a fluid, it’s a solid, it’s twisting and spiraling like liquid confetti.

This beautiful 500-year-old painting is the earliest depiction of Down syndrome in art. Which raises an old patristic question: Should such children be baptized?

mars@NULL.COM (Taylor Marshall)

In the painting above, Adoration of the Christ Child by an unknown Flemish painting, you will see that a child with Down syndrome is alongside the Blessed Virgin Mary adoring the Christ Child. This 16th century painting is the earliest clear depiction of Down syndrome - it is here recorded in paint over three centuries before the condition was defined by John Langdon Down in 1866. The painting evokes a common question about the status of mentally handicapped people and their relationship to the Catholic Church. Should mentally handicapped people be baptized? This question was of a subject of debate in the early Church and a topic of great interest in the middle ages.

Disney's Snow White is still the fairest one of all...

grey@NULL.COM (Steven Greydanus)

Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is widely celebrated as a beginning, the first feature-length animated film in Hollywood history. It’s just as correct, though, and perhaps more illuminating, to hail it as a culmination — as the crowning achievement of years of experimentation, discovery, growth and achievement by Disney’s animation team. A decade earlier, with the landmark short Steamboat Willie, Disney had pioneered the union of animation and sound, including synchronized music, opening the door to the groundbreaking “Silly Symphonies” series, and paving the road for the later masterpiece Fantasia. In the 1932 short The Three Little Pigs Disney took animation storytelling to a new level, with a cast of distinct characters with unique personalities and unique body language.

Sigrid Undset’s essays for our time...

scal@NULL.COM (Elizabeth Scalia)

Nearly a century has passed since Sigrid Undset wrote the biographical essays about holy men and women, and the letters, which eventually would be collected and published under the heading, Stages on the Road. It is a title evocative of the life of faith, wholly explored and lived-out—unpacked depot by depot, as it were—from the spiritual nursery, to precarious venturing forth, to stepping back in wonder or doubt, to the nearly inevitable and deepening darkness that, for all its pain, accesses an interior cave of Oneness, solitary yet completed in the companionship of the Christ. This last is something akin to what Saint Catherine of Siena referred to as the inner cell or the “cell of true self-knowledge.” Undset, like Catherine a Third Order Dominican, shared with that clear-eyed Doctor an impatience with the sort of illusions bred by social conventions and encouraged by trends.

For only $2, you can put an entire digital Catholic library in the hands of an African seminarian...

vogt@NULL.COM (Brandon Vogt)

In Cameroon, Africa, books are scarce--especially the good ones. Which means few Catholics have access to quality spiritual reading. Fr. Linus, who is studying at one of the Cameroon seminaries, explains: "One of the key problems the Church in Cameroon is facing, as in many parts of Africa, is that Christians do not read. And if they do, it's very thin. Most know very little about the Catholic faith and the situation is worst among the young people." But what if we could change that, patricularly in the seminaries? What if we could provide good Catholic books to every future-priest in the country? With eBooks and new media, I think we can.

Pope names new bishop for Buffalo, New York: Bishop Richard Malone, formerly of Portland in Maine...

NULL@NULL.COM (NAME)

Bishop Richard J. Malone has been appointed as the new head of the Diocese of Buffalo, N.Y. “I am most grateful to our Holy Father for his trust in appointing me Bishop of the Diocese of Buffalo,” he said in a May 29 statement. Although he is saddened to leave the faithful of his current diocese in Portland, Maine, Bishop Malone said he looks forward “with enthusiasm” to taking up his responsibility in Buffalo.

Archbishop-designate Samuel Aquila: "I never, ever dreamed that I would ever return to Denver"...

NULL@NULL.COM (NAME)

As Archbishop-designate Samuel J. Aquila of Fargo, N.D. assumes his role as Denver's new shepherd, the former Coloradan brings with him a love for the priesthood, a passion for pro-life advocacy and a heart for the youth. “I never, ever dreamed that I would ever return here,” he told CNA. “And now in the Father's providential plan and in his love, I'm now the archbishop.” “It's amazing,” he said, overcome with emotion.

It's not just China and India: Undercover video shows Austin Planned Parenthood affiliate arranging sex-selection abortion...

NULL@NULL.COM (NAME)

Today, Live Action released a new undercover video showing a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Austin, TX encouraging a woman to obtain a late-term abortion because she was purportedly carrying a girl and wanted to have a boy. The video is first in a new series titled “Gendercide: Sex-Selection in America,” exposing the practice of sex-selective abortion in the United States and how Planned Parenthood and the rest of the abortion industry facilitate the selective elimination of baby girls in the womb.

The Tuesday Line

NULL@NULL.COM (NAME)

Tomorrow brings the beginning of the much-anticipated Washington board meeting of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, at which the umbrella-group representing the superiors of some 80 percent of the nation's sisters is expected to address last month's CDF order for a sweeping "renewal" of its mission. In the wake of the wildly controversial Vatican move -- which saw protests in a number of US cities last week -- LCWR has refrained from comment on the outcome of the four-year Doctrinal Assessment until this week's gathering, which runs through Thursday.

Democrat committeewoman resigns from party, cites her Catholic faith...

arcm@NULL.COM (Matt Archbold)

Jo Ann Nardelli has been a Catholic Democrat her entire life. Her father was one before her. And she couldn't imagine a day where that wouldn't be true. But that day was Wednesday of last week. I read a story about Jo Ann leaving the Democratic Party and was interested because she cited her Catholic faith as the reason. So I gave her a call. I got her machine and as I was leaving a message she picked up. She said she'd been screening her calls because so many people have been calling to say nasty things to her or just pleading with her to change her mind. But when I called, saying I was with The National Catholic Register she picked up.

How modern heresies have isolated and left us unfulfilled...

NULL@NULL.COM (NAME)

I have mentioned here before a remarkable book by Ross Douthat that I would recommend as required reading for anyone who wants to grasp what has happened faith in the later half of the 20th Century and until now. It is Bad Religion – How we became a nation of heretics. In the book Douthat documents how the churches, (both the Catholic Church and the Protestant denominations), rose dramatically in the years following the War, and then, quite suddenly saw their numbers collapse as they were overwhelmed with successive waves of heresies he describes with great precision.

Imagine Sisters is some awesomeness you should all be aware of...

barn@NULL.COM (Marc Barnes)

Given that nuns are awesome, and that this seems to me to be the first comprehensive, web-based promotion of the female religious life and that nuns are awesome, you should all share this with your family, friends, church, schools, etc. Let’s get these sisters to every campus in the U.S.

Google warns hundreds of thousands that they may suddenly lose Internet in July. Are you affected? Here's what you need to know...

NULL@NULL.COM (NAME)

Google plans to warn more than half a million users of a computer infection that may knock their computers off the Internet this summer. Unknown to most of them, their problem began when international hackers ran an online advertising scam to take control of infected computers around the world. In a highly unusual response, the FBI set up a safety net months ago using government computers to prevent Internet disruptions for those infected users. But that system will be shut down July 9 -- killing connections for those people.

Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary Church becomes the 73rd basilica in the U.S., and Long Island's first...

NULL@NULL.COM (NAME)

During a Mass and dedication Sunday, Diocese of Rockville Centre Bishop William Murphy inaugurated the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary Church in Southampton into a minor basilica, an elevated status from that of a parish church. "In this basilica, the graces of God will fall ever more abundantly," Murphy said during the ceremony, which now means the church can display the coat of arms of Vatican City on its facade and use the crossed keys of St. Peter on furnishings and appointments.

Pope "suffering but serene" as Vatileaks investigation continues...

NULL@NULL.COM (NAME)

Pope Benedict is “suffering” but serene, despite the prosecution of his butler for stealing sensitive papal documents and the continuing police hunt to find any accomplices. “He is aware of the delicate situation that the Roman curia is going through, but he is keeping up his serenity with great faith and moral superiority as you saw in yesterday’s celebrations,” papal spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi said May 28.