Catholic Church

By Ven. Fulton J. Sheen, Posted at The Catholic Thing - (The bitterest enemies of the Church) cannot hate the Church any more than they can hate Christ; they hate only that which they mistakenly believe to be the Catholic Church, and their hate is but their vain attempt to ignore. Charity, then, must be shown to persons, and particularly to those outside the fold who by charity must be led back, that there may be one fold and one Shepherd.

By Michael Pakaluk, The Catholic Thing - I find a common confusion in the use of the phrase “free gift.” Someone gives a free gift, properly speaking, if he was not bound to give it. No legal constraint or moral obligation or physical coercion dictated the gift. The giver gave it freely, perhaps because it struck him as good, or he felt pity. But people get confused and think that a “free gift” means that the recipient is not bound through receiving it. All gifts bind, however. There is no such thing as a gift with “no strings attached.”

By Casey Chalk, Crisis Magazine - Distributism often has poor economic reasoning behind it, but it also posits important points about the role of economies in a just society... The Cold War (and even the Global War on Terror) American Catholic consensus regarding the objective goods of capitalism now seems a relic of the past. Gone are the days, it would appear, of Catholic thinker Michael Novak’s The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, which during the pontificate of John Paul II sought to place the Church squarely in the camp of unfettered free markets.

By Fr. Jerry Pokorsky, Catholic Culture - In Luke’s Gospel, there is a significant reinforcement of Mary’s exalted role as the maternal “Defender Against Demons.” During her visit with Elizabeth her cousin, Mary responds with a spontaneous prayer rooted in her familiarity with Scriptures. Mary’s Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55) not only anticipates the Devil’s temptations of Jesus thirty years later but prophesies victory over evil in “every generation.”