Jeanie Hannaman

By Francis X. Maier, The Catholic Thing - The late great Henry Ford famously argued that “history is bunk.”  The past, so the reasoning goes, is a millstone around humanity’s neck, a depressing, Old World obstacle to progress.  And that’s clearly one of the conceits buried deep in the American psyche. We Americans are different.  We’re a “city upon a hill,” the kind mentioned in the Sermon on the Mount.  We’re an entirely “new order of the ages” – words, in their original Latin, that are stamped right on our nation’s Great Seal.

By Ashlynn Lemos, LifeNews - The Satanic Grotto is set to “dedicate the grounds and [the Kansas]legislature to the glory of Satan,” later this month... In a statement posted on Facebook, the group announced its intentions, saying, “We will be performing rites to the Black Mass and indulging in sacrilegious blaspheme. God will fall and Kansas will be embraced by the black flame of Lucifer. Hail Satan.” ...

By Fr. Kevin Drew, Catholic Exchange - Eight hundred years ago in Belgium, as a third of Europe was dying of the Bubonic Plague, a group of men quit their jobs and dedicated themselves to tending the sick and the dying.  They became known as the Alexian Brothers, named after St. Alexis of Rome... The new religious order distinguished itself by accepting patients no one else wanted, including those who suffered from mental disorders.  Caring for the mentally ill then became a charism of the Alexian Brothers. They came to America in the 1800s, starting hospitals in Chicago in 1866 and St. Louis in 1869.

By Phil Lawler, Catholic Culture - The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas Kuhn, had an enormous influence on academic discourse in the 1960s and 1970s, introducing the concept of the “paradigm shift” into common usage. Kuhn argued persuasively that scientific progress occurs not steadily, but in leaps and bounds, as new discoveries and/or new theories force researchers to abandon old assumptions and look at the world in entirely new ways. The new paradigm is accepted if it explains that world more successfully—in other words, if it produces better results. Hold that thought.