“Love for his wife as mother of their children and love for the children themselves are for the man the natural way of understanding and fulfilling his own fatherhood. Above all where social and cultural conditions so easily encourage a father to be less concerned with his family or at any rate less involved in…
Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone of San Francisco wrote a masterful summary of the history of violence against Catholics in the U.S., including felony crimes committed recently in San Francisco and other cities. Vandals get off with a misdemeanor charge for defacing a statue as police looked on. Below are clips of the original story that…
WSJ Obituary columnist James R. Hagerty’s book, Yours Truly: An Obituary Writer’s Guide to Telling Your Story, is a thought-provoking and engaging work that explores the importance of crafting our own obituary and telling our own story. Hagerty’s inspiration for writing this book comes from his own experience with his father’s passing. Like many people,…
In October of 2020, a group of protestors trespassed on Mission San Rafael, a Catholic parish in the Archdiocese of San Francisco and desecrated and toppled a beloved statue of St. Junipero Serra. The crime was witnessed by the police, caught on videotape. Five were arrested and charged with felony vandalism. Today in court the…
CNA—A Catholic freelance journalist who has reported on a surge of violent attacks by radicalized Muslims in Nigeria for CNA recently found himself caught in the middle of a firefight between government soldiers and armed militiamen. “With hundreds of bullets flying over my head, and the whizzing gunfire whipping past my ears, lying flat on…
Don’t Miss this film on Catholic businessman Jimmy Lai—WSJ—Currently imprisoned by the Chinese government for pressing the case for freedom and democracy, the defiant entrepreneur and media mogul is the focus of a stirring, free-to-stream documentary. “It would be so boring just being a businessman,” notes the Hong Kong entrepreneur and media mogul Jimmy Lai,…
WSJ—A Hong Kong court ruled Friday that imprisoned newspaperman Jimmy Lai, a devout Catholic, can’t hire the British lawyer he wants for his upcoming national security trial. That came the morning after Mr. Lai’s son Sebastian accepted the Cato Institute’s prestigious Milton Friedman Prize on behalf of his father in Washington. The two events tell…
CNA—Federal government regulators backed off their demands that a Catholic hospital extinguish its chapel candle after the Oklahoma hospital’s lawyers argued that their client’s religious freedom was being violated. The hospital was informed that it will receive a waiver, provided it posts signs warning about keeping oxygen equipment away from the tabernacle candle, which is…
— read latest update here — From time immemorial, Catholic parishes’ sanctuary lamps have signaled the presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. But the current U.S. administration’s federal officials recently told a thriving Catholic hospital to extinguish its chapel sanctuary lamps or stop serving elderly, disabled and low-income patients. Feds threaten to strip hospital…
Denver—Twenty-two states, six Colorado state legislators, and multiple advocacy groups have filed friend-of-the-court briefs with the Colorado Supreme Court, asking it to uphold the First Amendment freedoms of cake artist Jack Phillips and Masterpiece Cakeshop. The case name is: Scardina v. Masterpiece Cakeshop Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) attorneys representing Phillips and his cake shop filed…
CNA—Police were called to maintain order at a Catholic school board meeting in Ontario, Canada, during a discussion about whether the board should fly a gay pride flag at its central office throughout June to support gay pride month. The York Catholic District School Board met Tuesday night to consider the proposal. After hearing two…
St. Joseph the Worker—Hanging on the wall in my childhood home was a simple image of Joseph the carpenter, working with a piece of wood. My dad for most of his life was also a carpenter, building homes for his small business, The Village Carpenter, and thus especially liked this image. On May 1, we…
In a nation founded on the principles of Life, Liberty and OPPORTUNITY to pursue Happiness, What are they thinking?! … CNA—An abortion-inducing drug that is used to kill preborn children up to 10 weeks gestation will stay on the market as a legal battle over the pill continues, following a decision Friday by the U.S.…
Crisis Magazine—“It is a mistake, even heresy,” warned St. Francis de Sales, to “banish the devout life from the company of soldiers.” But the current U.S. administration did just that by evicting priests from the facility, and turned Holy Week into Hell Week for Catholic servicemembers at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. The issue,…
Mark Your Calendars for the worldwide premiere of THE HONG KONGER: JIMMY LAI’S EXTRAORDINARY STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM, to be shown on Tuesday, April 18, 2023, at 8:00 pm ET . Sign up here to get notified of the worldwide premiere next Tuesday: https://www.acton.org/jimmylai Here is where to watch the premiere next Tuesday at 8pm ET: …
CNA, The Guardian and other sources—The last surviving prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials, Benjamin Ferencz, died last week on Good Friday at the age of 103. Ferencz secured the convictions of 22 Nazis for the murder of 1 million Jews during World War II. He spent the rest of his life advocating for human rights.…
CNA—The dictatorship of President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, has confiscated a cloistered monastery and arrested 20 people for activities related to Holy Week in Nicaragua. The Trappist sisters of Nicaragua (see feature photo), who left the country in February after 22 years of service, reported April 11 that the government…
During the COVID-19 pandemic, public health authorities—once relatively obscure government agencies—were given unprecedented power to manage citizens’ lives in the name of public safety. Some critics have argued that this situation brought into focus a number of long-standing trends of modernity: trends toward medicalization, scientific rationalism, and state surveillance in liberal societies. Any plausible analysis…
Can A Dream of a Statue that Recognizes the Dignity of the Human Person Through “Mother and Child” Come True in Today’s America? Some years ago my wife Pat and I were at a Legatus Summit in Florida and on display there were pictures of the beautiful sculptures by internationally known sculptor Timothy Schmalz. We…
CNA—A federal judge in Texas issued a much anticipated ruling Friday that, if it holds up in court, could take the abortion drug mifepristone off pharmacy shelves due to safety concerns and in doing so prevent over half of the abortions that take place in the country. U.S. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s preliminary ruling found that…
