Catholic Church

By Hannah Brockhaus, CNA - Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, said Tuesday that he would be willing to hold the hand of someone dying from assisted suicide, and that he does not see that as lending implicit support for the practice… Answering a question about assisted suicide and whether a Catholic or a Catholic priest can be present at someone’s death by assisted suicide, Paglia told a small group of journalists that he would be willing to do so, because “the Lord never abandons anyone.”

By Martin M. Barillas and Pete Baklinski, LifeSiteNews - A U.S. bishop is asking faithful Catholics to join him in a nine-day prayer campaign beginning Dec. 12 “to petition God unceasingly” that the beatification of Archbishop Fulton Sheen will move forward after it was postponed by the Vatican last week… Standing in front of the tomb of the famed televangelist and venerable servant of God, Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria, Illinois explained how “deeply saddened we all are about the postponement of the beatification of Fulton sheen.”

By Fr. Ronald Creighton-Jobe, C.O., Catholic Exchange - It’s very easy for us to want to be like everyone else out there. God chose His people to be uniquely His own, but very often they identified more readily with entirely worldly values. They wanted to be like the other nations — espe­cially in the matter of kingship. The judges who helped Moses in his unenviable task of keeping the people of Israel faithful to the covenant discouraged the people from seek­ing kings. But God relented and gave them their king, and of course, the whole enterprise ended up being a mess from top to bottom.

By Phil Lawler, Catholic Culture - Pope Francis will celebrate his 83rd birthday next week, and his physical condition has never been robust. Although he shows no signs of slackening his pace—and has not recently repeated his earlier suggestion that his papacy would last only “four or five years”—the Pope could be thinking about ways to ensure that his policies will survive beyond his death or resignation—that he will ensure the “irreversible change” that his supporters hoped he would bring to the Church.