News

By Marcel LeJeune, Catholic Missionary Disciples - WHAT IS CONVERSION? The root of the word “convert” means to “turn around”, “change”, or “transform”. Think of turning from sin, death, evil, and hell to now orient yourself toward grace, goodness, virtue, heaven, and everlasting life. It is the transformation of the human heart, by an act of God's grace… Thus, we sometimes call one who becomes Catholic a “convert” which means they have turned from their previous beliefs and now are Catholic.

By Anita Carey, ChurchMilitant - For several months, Abp. Michael Jackels of the archdiocese of Dubuque, Iowa has been working with the Catholic hospitals and health care facilities in the state to implement the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' (USCCB) revised guidelines for Catholic health care services… While the main focus of the revisions centered on the aspects of new partnerships between health care providers, these guidelines reaffirmed the pastoral and spiritual responsibilities of Catholic health care and the necessity of care for the patient from the moment of conception to the point of natural death…

By Msgr. Charles Pope - I first saw this quote on the frontispiece of a book by Adrian Fortescue. Fortescue applied it to the intricate details of celebrating the Old Latin Mass. That form of the Mass has an enormous amount of detail to learn: how exactly to hold the hands, when and how to bow, what tone of voice to use, what fingers should be used to pick up the host, and on and on. Some might see these details as picky and overwhelming. But as the quote above states and Fortescue apparently wanted us to think, love is often shown through reverence for the little things.

By Denise Donohue, Ed.D., Crisis Magazine - There have been plenty of examples of our secular culture’s antagonism toward Catholic education: from the Covington School-Nick Sandmann debacle, to activism against the admissions policies of Kansas City’s Catholic schools, and to numerous lawsuits by employees fired from Catholic schools for moral indiscretions… The greatest danger in these situations is not the secularist’s desire to be rid of authentic Catholic schools—the Church has, after all, survived great repressions and persecutions across the ages—but the possibility that poorly formed educators will readily compromise the formation of young Catholics, rather than risk public ridicule and marginalization.