Jeanie Hannaman

By John M. Grondelski, Crisis Magazine - In the West, bishops remained the ordinary minister of the sacrament, which meant opportunities to confer it were less frequent. It also tended to foster an independent sacramental theology—confirmand as “soldier of Christ”—that tended to tally with the later age of the recipient... But we should not forget that, until the early 20th century, Confirmation normally preceded First Communion. It was only after Pope St. Pius X sought to encourage earlier and frequent reception of the Eucharist that First Communion came earlier, pushing Confirmation past it into the anomalous situation of a sacrament of initiation that followed “the source and summit of the Christian life.” 

By Fr. Jerry Pokorsky, Catholic Culture - Sometimes our thoughts are holy and fruitful. Other times they are shameful and destructive. We change the world when our thoughts take flesh: one thought, word, and deed at a time... St. Francis of Assisi famously threw himself into a thorn bush to resist the affliction of impure thoughts. Most of us understand the intensity of the temptation. In the 1980s, a famous young pop star said on TV that she left the Catholic Church as a teenager when she learned that an impure thought, committed with full knowledge and consent, is a mortal sin.

By Emily Mangiaracina, LifeSiteNews - President Donald Trump said Monday that he will look into this weekend’s attack on a Catholic Church in Wichita, Kansas... During a question-and-answer session with the press at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., Trump was asked what the White House can do to “protect places of worship like St. Patrick’s Church in Wichita.”... “Terrible. I think it’s a terrible thing. I’m going to take a look at it,” Trump said... On March 15, one or more vandals broke into St. Patrick Catholic Church, smashing statues, candles, and windows. A decapitated statue of St. Patrick can be seen lying on the floor. They also burned an American flag and spray-painted hate speech in the church.