By Thomas Griffin Thomas Griffin teaches apologetics in the religion department at a Catholic high school on Long Island. Read more at www.EmptyTombProject.org. The decline of the Catholic Church in America was happening rapidly before COVID-19. Returning to the methods that produced the radical decline in Sunday Mass attendance along with the low numbers of marriages, baptisms, catechumens, and overall members practicing their faith would be both ignorant and fatal. What we need now is a shift that runs away from the patterns of the previous decades and runs toward the apostolic fervor of the early Church. Now that COVID-19 restrictions …
It’s Time to Brainwash Our Children
By Philip Martin Philip J. Martin is a graduate of both Auburn University and the Franciscan University of Steubenville and is currently residing in beautiful Daphne, AL with his family. He is an award-winning fiction author and has published numerous pieces of non-fiction, fiction, and poetry in various publications. I’ll never forget the look in that engineer’s eyes when he interrupted the professor. “Wow,” he exclaimed, “I get it, I get it!” I know what he was feeling because I felt it too. It was as if the final nail in a bridge between islands in my mind had been hammered …
When Violence Shapes Public Policy
By Msgr. Richard C. Antall Monsignor Antall is pastor of Holy Name Parish in the Diocese of Cleveland. He is the author of The Wedding, (Lambing Press, 2019). It seems like rioting (or the threat thereof) has become a form of participatory democracy. Nothing reveals the disintegration of authority and the common good so much in our society as the more and more frequent resort to violence. That this is particularly connected to police and the use of force, undue or otherwise, is a political problem with philosophical implications. Hannah Arendt, the German-Jewish-American philosopher who wrote much about social issues, published a book …
The Church of England’s Imminent Death Brings Opportunities
By David Larson David Larson is an editor and/or writer for a number of publications and has a master’s in theological studies from Spring Hill College. He lives in North Carolina with his wife and daughter. The Church of England is crumbling so quickly it may barely reach its 500th birthday, in 2034. This is not just my opinion—it’s the opinion of the church itself, which in the United States is known as the Episcopal Church and in Canada and elsewhere is typically known as the Anglican Church. Here in the U.S., the Episcopal Church’s numbers are rapidly spiraling to zero. …
The Battle Against Satan: A Review
By Brian Welter Brian Welter has degrees in history, theology, and (soon) education. He is a Canadian who teaches in Taiwan. His interests include history, philosophy, and critical thinking. Experienced exorcist Fr. Vincent Lampert provides pastoral, theological, spiritual, and biblical insights into the nature and purpose of the Rite of Exorcism. He bases the discussion on his own experience and on the biblical witness, mostly from the Gospel of Mark. The Gospel depicts the reality of evil during the New Testament era and how Jesus triumphantly confronted it. The New Testament world was infested with demons. While Lampert evaluates at length …
Do No Harm. . .To Freedom?
By Brady Stiller Brady Stiller is a Fellow at the Christ Medicus Foundation (CMF). He studied Biological Sciences and Theology at the University of Notre Dame, and he is currently pursuing a Master of Nonprofit Administration degree from the same institution. During this 117th Congressional Session, certain Members of Congress reintroduced the “Equality Act” (H.R. 5, S. 393), which would, among other provisions, amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to prohibit discrimination on the basis of “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.” Adoption of this bill would release one of the final restraints on abuse in health care, which from ancient times has …
Poking Holes in the Koran
By Pio Amalraj Pio Amalraj is a husband and father of three. He loves the Traditional Latin Mass and works in the IT industry as a Google Cloud Platform Something momentous has happened recently that has gone under the radar for most Christians. While the pandemic raged across the globe and a U.S. Presidential election turned into political turmoil, a wall that stood as an impenetrable fortress against the Christian Faith for 1400 years was breached. The very platform of the Tech giants, one that promotes an environment hostile to Christian beliefs and stifles opposing Christian voices, has been instrumental for this …
The Pierced Side of Jesus is a Fountain of Divine Mercy
John M. Grondelski (Ph.D., Fordham) is the former associate dean of the School of Theology, Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey. He is especially interested in moral theology and the thought of John Paul II. [Note: All views expressed in his National Catholic Register contributions are exclusively the author’s.] “O blood and water, which gushed forth from the heart of Jesus as a fountain of mercy for us, we trust in you.” Today is the Second Sunday ofEaster and Divine Mercy Sunday. It’s not a Sunday after Easter but a Sunday of Easter, because the entire Easter Season — the 50 days from …
Merciful Mother: Mary, True Model of Trustful Surrender to Divine Mercy
Joseph Pronechen is a staff writer with the National Catholic Register since 2005 and before that a regular correspondent for the paper. His articles have appeared in a number of national publications including Columbia magazine, Soul, Faith and Family, Catholic Digest, Catholic Exchange, and Marian Helper. His religious features have also appeared in Fairfield County Catholic and in major newspapers. He is the author of Fruits of Fatima — Century of Signs and Wonders. He holds a graduate degree and formerly taught English and courses in film study that he developed at a Catholic high school in Connecticut. Joseph and his wife Mary reside on the East Coast. Celebrating Divine Mercy Sunday …
How a successful district attorney became a priest and promoter of Marian devotion
Jim Graves is a Catholic writer living in Newport Beach, California. Fr. Quan Tran is a parochial vicar at St. Bonaventure Parish in Huntington Beach, California, in the Diocese of Orange. He was born in Vietnam, but fled the country at age six with his family after the fall of Saigon in 1975. Encouraged by his father to be a financial success, he became a lawyer and spent nearly a decade as a deputy district attorney in Orange County. Unfulfilled in his profession, he opted instead for the seminary, and was ordained a priest in 2011. He founded Fullness of Grace to help …