by Deacon Jim Russell There is so much confusion today about what marriage really is. Even faithful Catholics will often struggle to understand the fundamentals of marriage itself. For example: marriage is a Sacrament, right? Well…the better thing to say is that sometimes marriage is a Sacrament and sometimes it Read More
On this day of Christmas, my True Lord gave to me—the Feast of the Holy Family! Not only is today the annual celebration of this special day honoring Jesus, Mary, and Joseph as the exemplary “domestic church,” the church of the home, but this year, the Jubilee Year of Mercy, Read More
Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus! Kyrie Eleison! Lord, Have Mercy! We have endured news of so much violence and hate in recent weeks, near and far, with the presence of terrorism lurking here on the home-front. All this is happening as we Catholics experience our annual encounter with the Church’s Season Read More
Remember the Starbucks cup controversy of last week? In the fickle world of online outrage, it’s already a distant memory. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Paris on Friday, new and more pressing matters have come to the fore. But let’s go back to last week and recap Read More
Around the world, it’s the end of marriage as we Catholics knew it. Right? Well, maybe. It depends on how old you are. Do any of us alive today ever really remember a time when Church and State were completely in sync on the meaning and purpose of marriage? Can you Read More
“Virtual Vestibule” readers may not yet have heard what the U.S. Bishops have been saying about the destructive impact of secular culture upon the family. So, here we go—incredible and insightful words about our contemporary predicament: Secularism has wrought havoc in the family. Even the pagans saw something sacred in Read More
Hey, everybody–#LoveWins! #LoveIsLove! Now we’ve got marriage “equality”! Right? Well…actually, no. The Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage has made clear that secular culture has little or no clue about the real meaning of love. And we Catholics are now struggling to understand how to express lovingly the truth about Read More
Our cognitively dissonant culture would have us believe two contradictory yet unassailable “truths”—first, that “equality equals sameness.” If men and women are equal, they must therefore be viewed and understood as the same, capable of being interchangeably cast in any and every conceivable social role. Mere “biological” difference is totally Read More
Pope Francis did it again. Did what? Gave another Wednesday papal audience, of course! And the media and the pop psychologists—both secular and Catholic—have done it again, too. They’ve responded vigorously and rather alarmingly to the Holy Father’s recent Wednesday audience (Feb. 4, 2015: http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/audiences/2015/documents/papa-francesco_20150204_udienza-generale.html) in which he continued his catechesis Read More
by Deacon Jim Russell So, how do y’all like that Associated Press headline? In case you might have missed it, Pope Francis’ recent return flight from his visit to the Philippines featured an in-flight press conference in which he was asked (according to a widely published translation): A Filipino woman Read More