Catholic Church

By Fr. John Horgan, Catholic Exchange - A helpful spiritual truth to internalize as we grow in our love for God and progress along our spiritual journey: Whatever other purposes they may have, the hierarchy of angels is meant to help us to understand the qualities of God and how we might grow in the ways of holiness. It provides us with a sense of order, progress, and ascent in our understanding of how God’s infinite knowledge establishes and maintains the order and beauty of creation through principles that we can grasp and through the ministry and oversight of His faithful servants, the angels.

By Msgr. Charles Pope - Herod eventually yielded to the machinations of Herodias, and John the Baptist was murdered for upholding the sanctity of marriage. Jesus would later affirm John’s teaching and say, Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if a woman divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery… Jesus suffered rebuke, even from his disciples, for teaching this, but He withstood them and rebuked their error. St. John the Baptist died for this teaching, as did St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher….

By Deacon Greg Lambert, Catholic Stand - Determining whether you are a “Martha” or a “Mary” has become an informal qualifying question in religious circles, particularly for those involved in ministry… Prayer and action should be complementary, and not mutually exclusive… In today’s world, there are plenty of things to be “anxious and worried” about. In the temporal realm, time taken to reflect and plan should precede any important action we undertake. Putting “first things first”, as Mary did, was commended by Jesus, and offered to Martha as a template for discipleship: prayer and counsel first, followed by acting on careful discernment.

By Edward Pentin, National Catholic Register - A close friend of the late Pope St. John Paul II has firmly criticized recent changes at the John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences, saying they are not about renewal, expansion or even change but rather about its dissolution and destruction… Professor Stanislaw Grygiel, who was dismissed last month as a lecturer at the institute along with ten other academics, said he was “surprised by such words as the ‘renewal, expansion and deepening’ of this Institute, which are uttered by those who are destroying it together with its foundation… “Destruction doesn’t equate with renewal,” he said.