Catholic Church

By Kristine Christlieb, Church Militant - At 6:18 p.m., a Notre-Dame Cathedral security guard with three days on the job, was forced to respond to a fire alert. He was on his second 8-hour shift because his replacement was absent. He misunderstood the system's message about the location of the fire and went to the wrong building… At 6:48 p.m., precisely 30 minutes after the original "Feu" alert, the fire department was called. When the first truck arrived, photos of the blaze had already lit up all the major social media platforms around the globe, and a large crowd had gathered, stunned by the smoke and fire shooting up into a clear, evening sky.

By Ed Condon, Catholic News Agency - The Bishop of Las Cruces, New Mexico, has lifted a diocesan ban on the public celebration of Mass, issued guidelines for distribution of Holy Communion, and told priests they may resume sacramental ministry if they follow state-ordered health precautions… “It has become increasingly clear that the state shutdown will last for some time. Depriving the faithful of the nourishment offered through the Eucharist was indeed a difficult decision, one that I deemed necessary until I had further clarity regarding our current state of affairs, but it cannot become the status quo for the foreseeable future.”.. Bishop Peter Baldacchino

By Fr. Matthew Solomon, Crisis Magazine - God’s nature requires that He be both infinitely and perfectly just. We know by revelation that God is also infinitely and perfectly merciful. At first glance, it seems that both these things cannot be simultaneously true. He either must be more just than merciful or more merciful than just… Mercy and justice must alternate; one must win, and one must lose as they play out in our temporal world. This is not true in God’s eternity… Knowing perfectly that humans would sin, God also knew that we would need redemption.

By Fr. Nnamdi Moneme, OMV, Catholic Exchange - Why is the Blessed Virgin Mary conspicuously absent in all the Gospel narratives of the Resurrection even though she is the one who is must intimately connected to the body of Jesus? He was conceived in her womb by the power of the Holy Spirit and she bore Him in her womb for nine months. She gave birth to Him in a manger, lived with Him for thirty years in Nazareth, journeyed with Him to Calvary, witnessed His brutal death and received His dead body for burial. Why isn’t she among the women and disciples who go in search for the dead body of Jesus?