catholic blog
On Being Bubba
Politics is important, certainly, but it is also frequently ugly and even more often amusing. Thus the cover story in a recent issue of Newsweek was devoted to the question of whether Barrack Obama...
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Cardinal Dulles Bids Farewell
I was deeply impressed by Avery Cardinal Dulles’ farewell address as Laurence J. McGinley Professor of Religion and Society at Fordham University. Cardinal Dulles has held this post for twenty...
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Telling the Good News
Occasionally it is worthwhile to remind ourselves that some news is good. For example, in mid-April the Congregation for the Clergy launched a campaign to remind priests that prayer must be their...
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Bishop Fernando Lugo Mendez, President of Paraguay
The election of a Catholic bishop to the presidency of Paraguay last week presents an interesting problem for the Vatican. Bishop Fernando Lugo Mendez led the San Pedro diocese from 1994 until his...
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our articles
Jesus Christ says: “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (Jn 8:32). He also says: “Truly, every one who commits sin is a slave to sin” (Jn 8:34). This does not sound like the American notion of liberty, the freedom from restraint that we are so carefully taught to cherish. Nor does it sound like freedom as discussed in the contemporary culture wars, the freedom to do whatever we want, especially sexually, without regard to the question of virtue. What can Our Lord possibly mean?
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A thousand questions can be raised about Mary, the mother of Jesus. We can discuss what it means for her to be full of grace, or why she was immaculately conceived and assumed body and soul into heaven. We can examine her role in our redemption from the virgin birth to her suffering at the foot of the cross. We can meditate on Mary as the model of discipleship and as both symbol and mother of the Church. We can look at Protestant objections to the emphasis Catholics place on Mary. But I think the first question to be answered is broader and more fundamental than any of these: Why does Mary matter?
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what you need to know [wyntk]
ApologeticsAs soon as one understands that apologetics comes from the Greek word for defense (apologetikos), the term becomes very easy to understand. Apologetics is a branch of study which aims to explain and justify Christian doctrine, demonstrating its reasonableness in the face of objections by those who do not accept it. Doing apologetics means defending the faith through the presentation of evidence and arguments.
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As the name implies, Modernism is an ideology by which religious truths, and especially Catholic teachings, are derived and interpreted in accordance with personal religious experience, under the influence of the spirit of the current age. First emerging in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Modernism was condemned by Pope St. Pius X in 1907. It resurfaced as part of a powerful accommodationist trend in the years following the Second Vatican Council, significantly weakening the Church’s response to modern secularism.
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