Mike Sullivan was a married protestant missionary, serving the poor in Mexico, until he read about Mother Teresa. Then he and his family traveled to Calcutta and ultimately to Rome -- both spiritually and geographically. Mike speaks to us about his conversion to the Catholic church and his experience serving the poor.

He discusses the spiritual poverty of the heart; the Preferential Option for the Poor; Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity; his family�s trip to Rome; his call to establish a full time mission organization for families; The Imitation of Christ by Thomas � Kempis; etc....

And, yes...I do know that I talked a little too fast at the beginning of the podcast...

She writes:

"I acknowledge my Pro-Life stance and I accept that not everyone in this country agrees with me, but the use of this drug cannot possibly be defended. I would oppose the use of this drug even if I were Pro-Choice (as do others).

For crying in a bucket, when the Chairman of the Company that manufactures the drug says:

'RU 486 is not at all easy to use. In fact it is much more complex to use than the technique of vacuum extraction. True, no anaesthetic is required but a woman who wants to end her pregnancy has to 'live' with her abortion for at least a week using this technique. It's an appalling psychological ordeal.' ----Edouard Sakiz, Chairman of Roussel Uclaf (The French Company developed and manufactures the RU486 drug in France) in 1989."

Click here to read the whole post

Thanks to the Curt Jester for this link

By MARTA FALCONI, Associated Press Writer

VITERBO, Italy - An Italian judge heard arguments Friday on whether a small-town parish priest should stand trial for asserting that Jesus Christ existed.

The priest's atheist accuser, Luigi Cascioli, says the Roman Catholic Church has been deceiving people for 2,000 years with a fable that Christ existed, and that the Rev. Enrico Righi violated two Italian laws by reasserting the claim.

Click here to view entire article

"Cor Unum" President Sees a Trend Toward Secularization

VATICAN CITY, JAN. 25, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Catholic charitable agencies that lack a solid theological basis run the risk of forgetting their relationship with the Church, warns a Vatican official.

Click here to view whole article

by Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, Senior Fellow in Economics
Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty

When John Paul II published Centesimus Annus in 1991, the encyclical opened new vistas for the understanding the relationship between markets and morals, between respect for private property and consumer habits tempered by Christian moderation. He called for exploring new ways to combine the operation of the market with the support of the weak. John Paul’s challenge is even more urgent today when people understand that communism is not a viable strategy for achieving either economic growth or solidarity with the poor.

Now, the more urgent task is to show that Western European socialism has also failed. Although some aspects of the Western European model originally claimed Christian inspiration and objective, it is now clear that the modern Western European welfare-state is collapsing. And while many modern countries share some of the problems loosely categorized under the “European social model,� it is Europe that most desperately needs a genuinely Catholic alternative.

Click Here to view entire article

25 January, 2006
VATICAN
Deus caritas est: God's eros and agape, medicine for the world

by Bernardo Cervellera, AsiaNews

Benedict XVI's first encyclical is not only the program of his pontificate. It is also the Church's program for the third millennium...

Facing a globalization of the economy that creates enormous masses of impoverished people, states that seem like 'bunches of thieves' for their disregard for justice, the 'vanished illusion' of Marxism and a prevailing materialism that has turned man into a 'thing', the Pope invites Christians to be 'fountains of living water in the midst of a thirsting world' (n. 41).

In reading these pages teeming with culture, social analysis, faith and prayer, one has the sense of being at the start of a new era, of a new and determined way of looking at the problems of the world and at possible solutions. Here and there, the Pope refers various times to the question of a 'new humanism', of a 'true humanism', of a new 'image of man.'

The encyclical is really addressed to man, men and women, seen in their lively reaching out, their eros, their search for happiness and justice. The Pope calls upon this man not to disparage him or to judge him from above with the eye of a puritanical Pharisee, but to appreciate him with tenderness. In eros itself, it his richness and poverty, in his leaps and falls, beyond consumeristic manipulations, the Pope finds all the elements to show that God's eros and agape 'united' fulfill the very expectation of human eros toward fullness and eternity. From now on, thanks to this Pope, it will be possible to once again say 'I love you forever', 'I love you fully' with no need for a smile of irony or conceit. And it will be possible to think of marriage and even of indissolubility not as an 'order' or an external law, but as the fulfillment of a need found in eros itself.

Click here to read the complete text of the encyclical or here to read from the same article that I quoted above.

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
National Catholic Reporter

The Pope offered a foretaste of the contents:

"In this encyclical, I'd like to demonstrate the concept of love in its different dimensions. In today's terms, love appears very far from what a Christian thinks when speaking of charity. For my part, I'd like to demonstrate that it expresses one movement with different dimensions."

Click Here to view the whole article

...From Harper's Magazine...

From the transcript of radio communication among Israeli soldiers near Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. The recording was submitted in January in the trial of the company commander, whose name has been withheld due to a military court order. He faces a maximum of three years in prison. Translated from the Hebrew by Nomi Friedman. Originally from Harper's Magazine, May 2005.

SENTRY: We spotted an Arab female about 100 meters below our emplacement, near the light armored vehicle gate.

HEADQUARTERS: Observation post “Spain,� do you see it?

OBSERVATION POST: Affirmative, it’s a young girl. She’s now running east.

HQ: What is her position?

OP: She’s currently north of the authorized zone.

SENTRY: Very inappropriate location.

[Gunfire]

OP: She’s now behind an embankment, 250 meters from the barracks. She keeps running east. The hits are right on her.

HQ: Are you talking about a girl under ten?

OP: Approximately a ten-year-old girl.

HQ: Roger.

OP: OP to HQ.

HQ: Receiving, over.

OP: She’s behind the embankment, dying of fear, the hits are right on her, a centimeter from her.

SENTRY: Our troops are storming toward her now. They are around 70 meters from her.

HQ: I understand that the company commander and his squad are out?

SENTRY: Affirmative, with a few more soldiers.

OP: Receive. Looks like one of the positions dropped her.

HQ: What, did you see the hit? Is she down?

OP: She’s down. Right now she isn’t moving.

COMPANY COMMANDER [to HQ]: Me and another soldier are going in. [To the squad] Forward, to confirm the kill!

CC [to HQ]: We fired and killed her. She has . . . wearing pants . . . jeans and a vest, shirt. Also she had a kaffiyeh on her head. I also confirmed the kill. Over.

HQ: Roger.

CC [on general communications band]: Any motion, anyone who moves in the zone, even if it’s a three-year-old, should be killed. Over.

Click here to see orginal source

Anglican Catholics contend that at the Reformation the Apostolic Succession was not lost within Anglican jurisdictions

by Fr Matthew Kirby Spero News

In the discussion of how to re-unite the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches the greatest stumbling block is the one least addressed. Ecumenically minded theologians on both sides, supported by their respective hierarchies, search for ways to harmonise Eastern and Western understandings of the Trinity, the Papacy, the Intermediate State and so on. And many of them do so in the belief or hope that apparent differences can be reconciled without either Church betraying its principles. But many would say that the most fundamental principle that each Church holds is that it and it alone is the One True Church and that those bodies outside its present communion are thus not so. Why? Because their confidence about their beliefs is founded on a confidence about who they are. And since both sides believe in the Unity and Unicity of the Church, it seems that this in combination with their self-identification as that Church leads logically to a perfectly symmetrical yet utterly irreconcilable understanding of the Church and the goal of ecumenism.

If this is true, it means that, whatever theological and doctrinal barriers are broken, the greatest hurdle that will have to be faced is answering the question �Who is coming back to whom?� In other words, who, if anybody, will admit they were wrong about their basic identity and accept that for centuries they have been outside the Una Sancta, the Catholic Church? Catholic ecumenism is a question then, not just of how to forge a common future, but how to interpret a divided past.

Click Here to view entire article

...This was not how I was supposed to become a mother for the first time. I was supposed to be married to a wonderful man who would love to be a father. We were supposed to be a happy family living in a nice house in the burbs. It didn't happen that way. Instead I was a 21 year old, black, college drop-out, with bad credit...

...Planned Parenthood has it wrong because they think that women are getting pregnant because they don't have access to contraception. In the overwhelmingly vast majority of cases this is false...

...Both young men and woman are not being taught morals and values that are needed to govern their sex life. Parents are partly to blame because they think because their kids are getting sex ed in school that the work is being done for them. Teachers are supposed to teach our kids the facts and parents are supposed to teach them what to do with those facts...

...There needs to be a culture that believes that the males role in raising children is just as important as the mothers...I have heard too many women say that they can raise their children alone without any help from anyone as if its a badge of honor...by advocating the idea that children really only need one parent, we are allowing men to abdicate their roles in the raising of children. We haven't empowered ourselves, we have crippled ourselves under an enormous weight that we should not have to bear alone ...The father should be there taking equal responsibility even if he is no longer in the home...

Click Here to Read the Whole Essay

By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor

PARIS (Reuters) - The Roman Catholic Church has restated its support for evolution with an article praising a U.S. court decision that rejects the "intelligent design" theory as non-scientific.

The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said that teaching intelligent design -- which argues that life is so complex that it needed a supernatural creator -- alongside Darwin's theory of evolution would only cause confusion.

Click here to read this article.

Pope Benedict XVI announces that next Wednesday he will release his new Encyclical, “Deus Caritas Est" ("God Is Love").

…The topic is not directly ecumenical, but the framework and background are ecumenical, as God and our love are the condition for the unity of Christians. They are the condition for peace in the world…

Click here to read the complete release from Zenit News Service

From Boston College to Georgetown University, Minors in Jewish Studies Take Root on Campus

By Jeri Zeder
Forward Association, Inc.

A cross balances atop the spire of Lyons Hall on Boston College's campus. But a hint of a Jewish presence - a small Israeli flag - is visible through one window of the Gothic-influenced building. That's the office of Maxim Shrayer, chair of the Slavic and Eastern languages department which is also the home of Boston College's new Jewish studies program.

Click here to see the rest of the article

By GINA HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court steered clear of a major ruling on abortion Wednesday, instead giving New Hampshire a chance to save its parental notification law.

Justices, in a rare unanimous abortion ruling, agreed that the New Hampshire law could make it too hard for some ill minors to get an abortion, but at the same time they were hesitant about stepping in to fix the statute. They told a lower court to reconsider whether the entire law is unconstitutional.

Click here to read Article

Race and Catholic Hierarchy Inflame Dispute in D.C. Parish

By Robert E. Pierre Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, January 18, 2006

The order from the archdiocese had been clear: Stop the accusations, the name-calling, the disobedience to the authority of the Catholic Church. But parishioner Bill Alston, bundled against the cold outside a church, didn't care as he passed out fliers alleging to his fellow Catholics that a leader at his nearby home congregation, Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Anacostia, was "disrespectful, insulting and profane" and that the diocese was sweeping it under the rug.

Click here to read the rest of the Article

Note: This is a long article, but you should read the whole article before drawing any conclusions.

What has clearly changed are the numbers and status of laity, religious, and clergy in the mystical Body of Christ. Related to this is the altered understanding of their roles in the Church

by Father John McCloskey

The Catholic Church in the United States is in a state of profound transition. A priest or layman transported through time from 1965 to 2005 would be astonished and most likely disconcerted by the dramatic changes that have taken place in the 40 years following the close of Vatican II.

Of course, the hierarchical and sacramental nature of the Church remains unchanged. What, however, has clearly changed are the numbers and status of laity, religious, and clergy in the mystical Body of Christ. Related to this is the altered understanding of their roles in the Church.

Click here to read the rest of the article

By MARGARET RAMIREZ and MANYA A. BRACHEAR Knight Ridder Tribune

“To the degree that justices do their job of applying the Constitution to cases, the religious makeup should make no difference. The real issue is how their faith shapes the way they interpret the Constitution.�

DAVID MACHACEK, associate professor of public policy at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.

If Samuel Alito Jr. is elevated to the U.S. Supreme Court after this week’s hearings, he would become the fifth Roman Catholic justice on the bench, marking the first Catholic majority in history at a time of heightened debate on abortion, same-sex marriage and religious liberties.

Click Here for the rest of the Article

Interview with Tim Hayes, Father of 11. Tim discusses the spiritual dynamics of raising a large family. He discusses Church teaching in regards to openness to Life, Evangelium Vitae (the Gospel of Life) Encyclical by John Paul II, how a large family in today's world requires faith, how he connects with/teaches/listens to his Children, how to listen for God's voice in in the midst of a busy household, time management, etc...

I decided to NOT make this a 2-parter like I mentioned in a previous post. (I just couldn't find a good breakpoint.) If you want more of Tim later, drop me a line and we'll see if there is anything else he might want to talk about.

Article Here

Click here to read LA Times article

Click here to read full text of Bishops' statement

I should have Tim Hayes' interview posted by this weekend. It was a great conversation and I am considering providing it to you as a 2-part podcast. I look forward to hearing your comments.

Tonight I will be interviewing Mother Antonia. If there are any questions that you suggest I ask, leave them in the comments section for this post.

We are hearing that the Church is getting ready to make a statement in regards to "Limbo". If you know of anybody that can speak on this with authority, send me an email.

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - A western Columbian town has angered the influential Catholic Church with a novel scheme to cut AIDS infections, threatening males over age 14 with fines if they fail to carry a condom.

Click here to see article

Article Here

Article Here

Article Here

--Tim Hayes, Father of 11 who will discuss the spiritual implications of raising a large family.

--At 77, Mother Antonia lives among drug traffickers and other criminals in a jail cell in La Mesa prison in Tijuana, Mexico, dispensing spiritual and material care to prisoners and their families.

NPR interview
Book about Mother Antonio at Amazon

--Renee Bondi is a gifted Christian singer beset by an accident that has left her paralyzed. She will be discussing her fortitude and sharing her profound and victorious story.

Renee Bondi's home page

Article Here

Article Here

Terry speaks about how he started St. Joseph's communications; how the content is vetted for orthodoxy; the current campaign to provide catechesis to parishes, e.g. Lighthouse Catholic Media; the combination of business and personal apostolate, etc...