Jeanie Hannaman

By Bénédicte Cedergren, EWTN News - Once skeptical of all things Marian, Dominican Father Lawrence Lew now travels the world, preaching the Holy Rosary, ‘Mary’s gift to the entire Church.’ ... Although Dominican tradition holds that the Rosary was given to St. Dominic in an apparition by the Virgin Mary in 1208, the tradition of praying with beads can be found in the earliest days of Christianity... Fr. Lawrence explained, the Desert Fathers prayed with beads or knotted prayer ropes to count their praying of the 150 Psalms, but also of other prayers such as the Jesus prayer — “Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me a sinner” — and the Paternoster, the Latin name for the “Our Father.

By Fr. Thomas G. Weinandy, OFM, Cap., The Catholic Thing - When asked by Norah O’Donnell about the criticisms he has encountered from American Catholics, Pope Francis first stated that a conservative is someone who “clings to something and does not want to see beyond that.” Conservatism has no future. It only has a past to which it tightly cleaves. In this light, Pope Francis made two further inter-related points. He emphatically stated that to be closed to change is “suicidal.” This suicidal mindset appears to rest on the presumption that, if one is not open to the contemporary work of the Holy Spirit, one dies as the Church continues to develop.