News - May 2014 RSS Feed

If there’s one thing that Lent and this Easter season has reminded me of, it’s that we’re at war. We’re in the thick of a battle for souls, and our eternal destination is one of two places.

Hailing from a small town in Kansas north of Wichita, Fr. Aaron Vinduska’s blood does not run green, but now he calls the Emerald Isle home. Again. He spent two years in novitiate there before taking a “worldwide tour” along the priestly path, having spent time in Spain, Italy, then back in the States and Canada. In addition to serving as Legatus chaplain, he is director of Dublin’s Faith and Family Centre, which provides retreats, formation courses, and youth activities directed toward leavening Irish society one soul at a time.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a new comedy that I felt comfortable taking my 10-year-old to see. Sadly, most Hollywood writers and producers are unable to rise above the basest humor, resorting to extreme crudity.

In his revealing new book, O’Neel tells the stories of martyrs associated with North America. Some are from other countries and died spreading the faith here. Some were born here but died doing missionary work abroad. Some were individual martyrs, some were part of a heroic group, and some were “white martyrs who, although they did not shed their blood for the faith, suffered much for the spread of Catholicism.

In 1448, a team of architects and engineers determined that the 1,100-year-old Basilica of St. Peter was beyond repair. The only solution was to pull down one of the most venerable churches in Christendom. Incredibly, one of the tombs the builders paved over was St. Peter’s.

Subtitled How Rationalizing Homosexual Behavior Is Changing Everything, Reilly tackles the tough questions head-on: Why are Americans being forced to consider homosexual acts as morally acceptable? Why have the courts accepted the validity of same-sex “marriage,” which, until a decade ago, was unheard of in the history of civilization?

The Mass is the fulfillment of many of the Israelite rituals of the Old Testament. The Passover is probably the most important of these. The Last Supper was a Passover meal. For Christians, it was the last Passover meal because it fulfills the Passover.

Millions of Americans undergo surgery each year. All surgeries have risks and benefits, and the more you familiarize yourself with the procedure, the better.

May is an especially significant month. It’s a month that begs us to recall so many aspects of our nation, our culture and our faith that we hold dear.

ObamaCare has caused confusion and reams of additional paperwork for Americans. The National Catholic Bioethics Center (NCBC) continues to review the various enrollee registration roles developed to implement this law and is advising Catholic agencies to exercise caution.

Concern for the poor is at the heart of Christianity. Saint John Paul II called poverty one of the greatest moral challenges of our time, and to ignore the plight of the poor has consequences for our eternal souls.

There has been much talk in the past year about “the Francis revolution,” with commentators of widely varying perspectives trying to pin down the exact nature of this “revolution.”

A late vocation, Richard Pampuri was an Italian spiritual physician as well as a doctor of medicine. Orphaned by age 10, the young Erminio Filippo Pampuri (Richard was his religious name) dreamt of becoming a missionary priest, but was dissuaded from it because of delicate health. However, he served in the army during World War I and later graduated from medical school at the top of his class.

Father John Riccardo, who many of you may be familiar with from his radio program, Christ is the Answer, recently gave a talk to Legatus’ Ann Arbor Chapter. He used his father as an example for Legatus.