Learning to be Quick to Listen

More than a million young Catholics learned the hard way about a venerable Catholic tradition: "spiritual Communion" or the "Communion of desire." After a wild storm August 20 at World Youth Day in Madrid left six people injured -- including two with broken legs -- Spanish police collapsed the tents where most of the unconsecrated hosts for the next morning's Mass were being kept. Without the hosts in the tents, organizers had 5,000 ciboriums holding 200 hosts each; they were consecrated by the pope at Mass Aug. 21 and distributed to pilgrims in the section closest to the altar. Distributing Communion to just 100,000 people wasn't a decision anyone took lightly, and apparently there were long discussions with World Youth Day organizers and Vatican officials trying to find a solution. In the end, it just wasn't possible logistically to locate another 1.5 million hosts. A couple of hours before the Mass, organizers announced that most of the people present...

I must say I feel like the Israelites wandering the desert. I am dry and hot. Perhaps it is the ongoing drought. Perhaps it is the heat. Perhaps it is the economy and lack of leadership in the White House. I was heartened that Rick Perry did participate in a day of prayer in Texas. It is about time that Christians stand up for themselves and deal with the radicals who want us to deny our Lord and Savior. I saw that Jerry Buell, a veteran American history teacher at Mount Dora High School, was removed from his teaching duties this week as school officials in Lake County investigate allegations that what he posted was biased towards homosexuals. What is going on in Florida? Can people not have personal opinions anymore? I don't know Jerry Buell but I'll bet his convictions are based on his religious beliefs. That sounds like harassment based on his beliefs as a Christian. I for one am praying that the Lake County Florida officials will come to their senses and leave this former t...

Despite the current focus on the issue of fatherlessness (or the lack of fathers in many homes) is really is an age old problem. The scope of the problem has just grown to enormous proportions and is very alarming. But the Old Testament addresses this issue in the Book of Malachi 4:56 which says, God will send a prophet to “turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers,” lest the land be struck “with a curse.” Few can deny that there seems to be a social curse on America when it comes to the plight of fatherhood, or lack thereof. Not only are many families lacking a father but very often we fathers are struggling under the pressures of the day. We struggle to become the leaders that our God demands. The structure of the world today creates inherent problems for fathers. So how do we overcome these issues and grow into the father that our children require? How do we support the mothers of our children? How do we model the behavior that...

Hidden among the paving stones of St. Peter's Square there is a simple clock and calendar. All you need is a sunny day. The 83-foot stone obelisk in the middle of the square acts as a sundial that can accurately indicate midday and the two solstices thanks to a granite meridian and marble markers embedded in the square. Pope Benedict XVI proudly pointed out the hidden timepiece during an Angelus address he gave on the winter solstice a few years ago. "The great obelisk casts its shadow in a line that runs along the paving stones toward the fountain beneath this window and in these days, the shadow is at its longest of the year," he told pilgrims from the window of his library. In fact, at noon on Dec. 21, the obelisk's shadow falls on the marble disk furthest from the obelisk's base, while at noon on June 21 -- the summer solstice -- the tip of the shadow will fall just a few yards from the obelisk. In between are five other disks marking when the sun enters into ...

Mike D'Avria recently did some research on the message that most TV programs are pushing. As you can guess, sex is the most popular and he notes that there is always at least one character on each show that brags about their numerous sexual conquests. What he uncovered is that the show with the highest number of sexual liaisons was Friends. It seems the cast of friends had at least 85 different partners. Remember, this is only six people. By the way, these are the partners we saw on the show. It doesn't even touch the ones they had prior to the show's beginning. Now that is really alarming in itself. Worse still, they never talked about what can happen as a result of all of this sex, in this case outside of marriage. A 2008 study published in the American Journal of Pediatrics highlighted this fact and said that Friends is noted for “glamorizing sex while hardly mentioning its downsides, such as pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.” If you remember, Friends did not...