The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith is putting the finishing touches to a new document that sets out clear rules on discerning apparitions and other such supernatural events. The last time the Vatican’s doctrinal office issued a general document on apparitions was in 1978, during the final months of the pontificate of Pope Paul VI.     The post Cardinal Fernández says new document on discerning apparitions ‘being finalized’ appeared first on The Catholic Thing ..read more

Amid pro-Palestine protests at Columbia University that have led to more than 100 arrests, forced classes online, and left Jewish students and faculty feeling unsafe and unwelcome, the university’s Catholic chaplain, Fr. Roger Landry, says the path forward “must first ensure that such malevolent protests, brimming with antisemitism, be stopped.”     The post Columbia chaplain: ‘Antisemitism must be stopped’ appeared first on The Catholic Thing ..read more

After first endorsing and supporting the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA), America’s Catholic Bishops are now opposing the Biden Administration’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) recently published pro-abortion regulations. But these immoral regulations are a direct consequence of the PWFA. They were completely foreseeable, and the bishops ignored many pro-life warnings against supporting the Act. Consequently, regulations will now affect all employers in the U.S. with 15 or more employees and require businesses to facilitate abortion, in vitro pregnancies, and other actions ..read more

She listens, listens, holding her breath. Surely that voice is his – the one who had looked at her, once, across the crowd, as no one ever had looked? Had seen her? Had spoken as if to her? Surely those hands were his, taking the platter of bread from hers just now? Hands he’d laid on the dying and made them well? Surely that face –? The man they’d crucified for sedition and blasphemy. The man whose body disappeared from its tomb. The man it was rumored now some women had seen this morning, alive? Those who had brought this stranger home to their table don’t recognize yet with whom they sit. B ..read more

Holocaust survivor Tova Friedman’s Auschwitz prisoner tattoo is still visible to this day, serving as a “never again” reminder as her Jewish grandchildren face a modern wave of antisemitism. “It’s like a cancer. If you don’t stop it early, it metastasizes. It’s going to kill the body. It’s killing our country.” She says that when she came to the U.S., it was “like I came to the Promised Land, and it was just a fabulous experience. And here it is today. I am shocked, I am pained, I’m scared. I’m scared both for America, I’m scared for the Jews, and it’s very painful for our young people.”   ..read more

Florida will be voting in November on the Limiting Government Interference with Abortion Amendment, which would change the Florida Constitution to include a provision reading: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s health care provider.” Will Florida turn the tide on pro-life defeats in nearly every other state?   The post Will Florida become the first state to defeat an abortion amendment? appeared first on The Catholic Thing ..read more

Jesus, when I see you held by your Mother, Leaving her arms Trying, trembling, your first steps On our sad earth, Before you I’d like to unpetal a rose In its freshness So that your little foot might rest ever so softly On a flower!…. This unpetalled rose is the faithful image, Divine Child, Of the heart that wants to sacrifice itself for you unreservedly at each moment. Lord, on your altars more than one new rose Likes to shine. It gives itself to you…..but I dream of something else: To be unpetalled!….” The rose in its splendor can adorn your feast, Lovable Child, But the unpetalled rose is ..read more

When Rev. Earl K. Fernandes was ordained as bishop of Columbus in 2022, he observed that there were more bishops ordained than priests that year in the diocese since there were no priestly ordinations and just 17 seminarians. But Columbus had 16 men enter the seminary last year and has 12 applications for next year. The diocese had a total of 37 seminarians and five priestly ordinations this year, as well as three men ordained to the transitional diaconate.   The post Ordinations on the rise in Columbus, OH appeared first on The Catholic Thing ..read more

As we get older, the temptation to be dissatisfied with our lives can grow.  A fear of aging, along with memories of past failures and mistakes, can obscure the good in the world around us.  A culture of consumption, distractions, and anesthetics, which is what we’ve created, feeds on that restlessness and profits from the anxiety that so often animates our desires.  In the process, it steals something uniquely human from us.  It reduces us to a bundle of material appetites.  And it resents anything transcendent because questions about meaning threaten the machinery of ..read more

Just north of Bennington, VT, nineteen monks at the Charterhouse of the Transfiguration live and die in seclusion. There are no signs or markers pointing the way there. A bumpy side road passes a small reservoir, turns a corner, and the monastery appears, blank and quiet. At all times monks must “diligently keep themselves strangers to all worldly news.” They cite the model of Jacob, who didn’t see God face to face until he had sent his retinue forward and walked alone.     The post The Carthusians of Vermont appeared first on The Catholic Thing ..read more