Jeanie Hannaman

By Fr. Jerry Pokorsky, Catholic Culture - John the Baptist was a real person. His preaching brought ordinary people, tax collectors, and even soldiers to repentance as they urgently asked, “What should we do?” He taught them generosity: “Whoever has two cloaks should share with the person who has none.” He taught justice: “Stop collecting more than what is prescribed.” He taught honesty: “Do not practice extortion, do not falsely accuse anyone, and be satisfied with your wages.” (Cf. Lk 3:10-18)... John was the voice, Jesus the Word. “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fan is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”... Before LED lights, smartphones, and Artificial Intelligence, bishops and priests handed down these sacred teachings. Moms and dads taught their children how to pray.

By Rod Dreher, from X - I find that this kind of thing deeply irritates Catholics, even those who fully acknowledge how destructive Francis’s papacy has been. They say, understandably, that the Catholic Church has known bad popes before. And this is true! What might be hard for them to grasp is how this looks from the outside. One of the big things that won over Protestants to having a more sympathetic view of Catholicism is the witness of Pope St. John Paul II. What a giant he was! It caused lots of non-Catholics to rethink their hostility to Catholicism — or, as in my case, gave me a massive new respect for Catholicism, to which I had never paid serious attention.