CATHOLIC NEWS: Cardinal Ratzinger asked to resign in 1997, become Vatican librarian... PLUS 23 MORE

CATHOLIC NEWS: Cardinal Ratzinger asked to resign in 1997, become Vatican librarian... PLUS 23 MORE

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Cardinal Ratzinger asked to resign in 1997, become Vatican librarian

Posted: 05 Aug 2010 03:08 AM PDT

When Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger turned 70 in 1997, he asked Pope John Paul to relieve him of his duties as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and permit him to become...

The snows of Saint Mary Major

Posted: 05 Aug 2010 04:03 PM PDT

August 5, 2010. Saint Mary Major - one of the prime basilicas of Rome - appeared in all its grandeur today marking its special feast.

Top 10 "Star Trek" Technologies that Actually Came True

Posted: 05 Aug 2010 07:00 AM PDT

The characters in "Star Trek" get to wield all kinds of high-tech gadgetry. Some of these gizmos are purely science fiction. What technologies have actually come to pass?

A Church of sinners or a Church of one

Posted: 05 Aug 2010 07:39 AM PDT

Anne Rice has left Christianity. While the author of vampire novels is not a figure of such towering intellectual stature that I anticipate droves of believers following her, the arguments she gives for leaving the Church are common enough to deserve comment. Rice claims to have "quit Christianity in the name of Christ." The problem,...

Simply powerful

Posted: 04 Aug 2010 05:57 PM PDT

Via someone I'm usually at odds with.

Dolores Hart Left Hollywood to Become a Cloistered Nun

Posted: 05 Aug 2010 02:33 AM PDT

Dolores Hart made her debut in Hollywood alongside Elvis Presley in Loving You. Since 1963, she's inhabited a very different world. She caused a sensation when she became a cloistered nun at the Benedictine Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Conn. Mother Dolores became prioress there in May 2001.

Your Oxymoron for the Day

Posted: 04 Aug 2010 03:36 PM PDT

http://patrickmadrid.blogspot.com.

What Gettysburg Means

Posted: 05 Aug 2010 08:53 AM PDT

My home is a 45-minute drive from Gettysburg National Military Park, a site I've visited many times, never without some emotion. The nature of that emotion crystallized for me a few years ago when I took some Australian friends on an audio tour of the battlefield with the help of Father Scott Newman, pastor of St. Mary's Church in Greenville.

Vacations Can Be Occasions of Grace

Posted: 05 Aug 2010 08:51 AM PDT

I was 22, and it was August 1972. Along with 50 other homesick guys, there I was, brand new as a seminarian at the North American College, jammed into the courtyard at the papal villa in Castel Gandolfo with thousands of others awaiting the noon appearance of Pope Paul VI for the Sunday Angelus. And there he was … the Successor.

The Evangelical Christian Case Against Contraception

Posted: 04 Aug 2010 10:03 PM PDT

The (im)morality of contraception is something the majority of Christians are either uncomfortable discussing or, in some cases, simply not interested in addressing. But they should be, especially if they're truly invested in building a culture of life.

More than 50,000 altar servers on Rome pilgrimage experience communion

Posted: 05 Aug 2010 03:09 AM PDT

Rome, Italy, Aug 5, 2010 / 05:09 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The pilgrimage that brought altar boys and girls to Rome en masse this week concluded on a high note at Wednesday's general audience. Bringing tens of thousands of young people together in what appeared to be a small scale World Youth Day...

The day that Peter Hitchens glimpsed hell

Posted: 05 Aug 2010 05:24 AM PDT

We do not know whether Peter Hitchens was aware of his brother Christopher's illness when he wrote The Rage against God, but the revelation that the great atheist commentator is suffering from throat cancer adds poignancy to Peter's latest book. Peter Hitchens, the younger by two years...

A ‘lapse' in Catholic style

Posted: 05 Aug 2010 08:21 AM PDT

Well, the battle over same-sex marriage is right where everyone expected it to be at this point. As the New York Times analysis noted, it's pretty clear that Judge Vaughn R. Walker's opinion was written to an audience of one. Even some of those who applauded the opinion, however, said the path ahead for it is not clear or easy.

The priests who survived the atomic bomb

Posted: 05 Aug 2010 06:18 AM PDT

This Friday, August 6, will see the Feast of the Transfiguration celebrated in the Church. It commemorates the occasion when Christ, accompanied by Peter, James, and John, went up a high mountain - traditionally identified with Mount Tabor in Galilee - and was there "transfigured" before them, so that "his face shone like the sun...

Why Catholics Should Build Beautiful Churches

Posted: 05 Aug 2010 07:07 AM PDT

I used to wonder why the church, in her venerable wisdom, had a memorial feast day for the dedication of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. What's the big deal? It's just a church building right? OK, it's bigger and older and more beautiful than most churches, but so what. The church is really the people right? Well...

Fascinating rare COLOR photos of America 1939-1943

Posted: 05 Aug 2010 08:41 AM PDT

These images, by photographers of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information, are some of the only color photographs taken of the effects of the Depression on America's rural and small town populations. The photographs are the property of the Library of Congress and were included in a 2006 exhibit Bound for Glory: America in Color.

Homosexuality and the Moral Failure of Higher Education

Posted: 05 Aug 2010 01:07 AM PDT

Recently, Kenneth Howell, an adjunct professor who worked for Newman Center at the University of Illinois in Champaign/Urbana, was told by his department chair that he could no longer teach there. His offense: explaining and clarifying the Catholic moral teaching on homosexuality while teaching a class on Catholicism.

Judge Vaughn Walker got it wrong

Posted: 04 Aug 2010 06:47 PM PDT

There is only one issue before each of us Californians: Is Marriage of Divine or of Human Origin? Judge Walker pays no attention to this fundamental issue, and relies solely upon how Prop 8 made certain members of society "feel" about themselves.

"Gender no longer…essential (to) marriage"

Posted: 04 Aug 2010 09:59 PM PDT

In an utterly unsurprising ruling, and one that is inarguable if one is peering through the narrowed prism of stringently secular law, and reducing marriage to a sort of contractual partnering, Judge Vaughn Walker has ruled restrictions against same-sex marriage to be unconstitutional. You can read the whole Prop 8 decision here.

OSV's New Catholic Guide to the Internet

Posted: 04 Aug 2010 02:30 PM PDT

The number of Catholic-oriented websites has exploded, and keeping track of the ones that are truly useful gets harder as they proliferate. Some sites are obvious keepers, like the sites of the Vatican or bishops' conferences. And most Catholic Internet surfers are aware of some of the larger sites.

Saint of the Day: St. John Mary Vianney

Posted: 03 Aug 2010 10:18 PM PDT

Today is the memorial of St. John Vianney, priest. St. John Mary Vianney, (Saint Jean Baptiste Vianney in French), also known as the Cure of Ars, is such a special saint that one post hardly seems enough to write about how holy and precious he is.

Beautiful Bodies; Rotted Hearts

Posted: 04 Aug 2010 02:11 PM PDT

Naive in the ways of the free enterprise system, I couldn't understand why the Chung Brothers stuck around. They hardly ever seemed to get paid anything and their work was really, really good. They we so skilled, that had they been physicians they could have botoxed a fifty year old into a high school prom.

Learning How to Die

Posted: 04 Aug 2010 01:27 PM PDT

The latest issue of the New Yorker has an excellent piece on the current sorry state of end-of-life care in this country -- and not because of politics, or insurance companies, or any of the usual culprits. Rather, Dr. Atul Gawande says that, however good modern medicine has become at prolonging life...

Fr. Barron on The Gifts The Catholic Church Has Been Given

Posted: 04 Aug 2010 09:56 AM PDT