Catholic Church

By Msgr. Charles Pope - There is a tendency today to trivialize and reduce the human person. One of the ways we do this is by claiming that it doesn’t really matter what people think or believe, only that they behave well. For example, we think that if a man is a good citizen, pays his taxes, doesn’t beat his wife, and is kind to children and animals then it doesn’t matter what he believes. This trivializes the man, because each of us was made to know the one, true God. We were made to know the truth and, knowing this truth, to be set free (Jn 8:32).

Fr. Jerry Pokorsky, Catholic Culture - 2) What does Canon Law say about public officials who promote abortion (or who are “pro-choice”)? “Those who have been excommunicated or interdicted after the imposition or declaration of the penalty and others obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.” (Canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law)

By Randall Smith, The Catholic Thing - Hence, we find Pope John Paul II, in his encyclical on “Faith and Reason” (Fides et Ratio) speaking eloquently of a twofold need, increasingly unmet.  The first is “the need for a philosophy of genuinely metaphysical range, capable, that is, of transcending empirical data in order to attain something absolute, ultimate and foundational in its search for truth.” And the second, the need to “recover the sapiential dimension of study as a search for the ultimate and overarching meaning of life.”

By Derek Rotty, Catholic Exchange - One of the best domestic pilgrimage sites lies in Louisiana, at the mouth of the Mississippi River. New Orleans is far more than Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras, or Saints football. New Orleans is a fascinating city with a great Catholic heritage and plenty of wonderful pilgrimage sites. We should all be so blessed to meet the Lord in this city.