Catholic Church

By Bevil Bramwell, OMI, The Catholic Thing - Today we celebrate the moment when the Holy Spirit became the soul of the Church. This is, to say the least, significant because it puts Catholics squarely in the middle of a great spiritual battle. Jesus told us: “in this world you will have trouble.” (John 16:33) The current pandemic, for instance, is just one among many of the works of “the prince of this world.” And if we are not going to allow the Devil to dictate what our lives in this world are going to be, we cannot let ourselves obsess over worldly evils.

By Jason Gale, Catholic Exchange - First, let us look at the idea that we must get them to love Jesus before we teach them systematically. This idea can be challenged with the simple principle that you cannot love (or love rightly) what you do not know. The idea that we can simply influence the person’s will to love without addressing the intellect is theological backward... To understand this principle, we can look at the Trinity.

By Msgr. Charles Pope - What a wondrous and challenging feast we celebrate at Pentecost! A feast like this challenges us because it puts to the lie a lazy, sleepy, hidden, and tepid Christian life. The Lord Jesus said to the apostles, I have come to cast a fire on the earth (Luke 12:49). This is a feast about fire, a transformative, refining, purifying fire that the Lord wants to kindle in us. It is a necessary fire, for as the Lord first judged the world by fire, the present heavens and the earth are reserved for fire. Because it is going to be the fire next time, we need the tongues of Pentecost fire to fall on us to set us on fire and bring us up to the temperature of glory.

Protestant leaders are outshining Catholics — and especially the bishops — in the fight for religious freedom... As fear of the Wuhan virus quickly closed Catholic dioceses across the nation, Catholic bishops complied... Heavy-handed Democratic governors were more severe with restrictions than Republican governors... a very rare display — one Catholic pastor from the diocese of La Crosse, Wisconsin took the bishops to task for their negligence... Catholic priest: "Turn in your crozier, bishop. You're not worthy of it."