Planned Parenthood employee converts after seeing ultrasound

Traditonal Anglicans come home to Rome

The Traditional Anglican Communion has had enough. Enough of the immorality which is accepted by Anglicans in their clergy. Homosexual bishops, divorced and remarried priests, abortion, contraception. They want to come home to Rome, they feel that they are more in tune with the morality of the Catholic Church than their own congregation.
" Bishop Carl Reid of the Traditional Anglican Communion in Canada, told LifeSiteNews.com (LSN), "When it comes to issues of morality, especially family and pro-life, our membership is very strongly on the same page as are Roman Catholics."'
It remains to be seen how many Anglicans will accept the offer made by the Holy Father to allow Anglican converts to retain some structures of their traditon, but my guess is that there will at first be a trickle that turns into a torrent.



Read the entire story on Life Site News.com.

Catholics old and new

I may have expressed hesitation at the news of Newt Gingrich's conversion to Catholicism. But what I have read here is encouraging. According to recent comments made by Newt about his conversion, it seems that the ancient origins of the Church and the rich liturgical tradition were what attracted him to the Faith. But they attractted Dan Brown too, and made a fascinating backdrop to his anti-Catholic novels. What makes Newt different? He was impressed by a modern example of our ancient faith. Pope Benedict XVI.
"The moment that finally convinced me [to convert] was when Benedict XVI came here [to the United States] and Callista in the church choir sang for him at the vespers service and all the bishops in the country were there. As a spouse, I got to sit in the upper church and I very briefly saw [Benedict] and I was just struck with how happy he was and how fundamentally different he was from the news media's portrait of him. This guy's not a Rottweiler. He's a very loving, engaged, happy person."
Contrast this with the shallow faith of Chris Matthews, a lifelong Catholic, who compares himself with St Francis of Assisi because he likes to watch deer. "I'm one of those people who just stands there, like St. Francis. I just want to stand there and look at the animals "
," he says, referring to the patron saint of animals. "I love them."
Every time there is a papal visit to America, Matthews injects his opinion into the discussion about how the Holy Father show lower the moral standards of the Church, accepting abortion, contraception, gay marriage, etc. He can't get it through his head that his opinion may influence national elections, but the Church has a higher authority to answer to than some pundit on a dying cable news outlet. Just be quiet and enjoy the wisdom of an ancient Faith founded by Christ himself.
Newt could teach him a thing or two about the Faith.


Read more at US News and World Report.

Newt Gingrich the next big name to swim the Tiber?

According to Christianity Today Blog, Newt who has never had a home church and has been married three times, is becoming a Catholic, perhaps because of his Catholic wife Callista. I hope he gets some good catechesis on marriage.
Read the entire story here.

RIP: Fr. Richard John Neuhaus

I have been an admirer of Fr. Neuhaus for years, in fact he helped inspire me to get involved in writing in what he calls the "Naked Public Square". It was my great honor to tell him so in person at the Society of Catholic Social Scientists Gathering at St John's University in October of 2007.
As a world class intellectual and apologist, he has done so much good for the public image of the Church, so you should not be surprised to learn he was a convert, having been a Lutheran minister. He knew and appreciated the great deposit of faith we have in Catholicism, as anyone who has read his journal, "First Things" will attest. Here is his meditation on his conversion from which I take this quotation,
"As for now, I end where I began—as in my life’s course I began where I have ended—by saying again: “To those of you with whom I have traveled in the past, know that we travel together still. In the mystery of Christ and his Church nothing is lost, and the broken will be mended. If, as I am persuaded, my communion with Christ’s Church is now the fuller, then it follows that my unity with all who are in Christ is now the stronger. We travel together still.”
We still travel with you, Fr. Neuhaus, in the Mystical Body, and ask for your prayers as we, the Church Militant, try to uphold your legacy here in the Vale of Tears.
May the angels lead you into Paradise, Fr. Neuhaus!
Related post: Acton Institue Blog
Brownback Mourns the Passing of Father Neuhaus
Contact: Brian Hart, Becky Ogilvie; both with Sam Brownback, United States Senator - Kansas, 202-224-6521
WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 /Standard Newswire/ -- U.S. Senator Sam Brownback yesterday offered his condolences on the passing of Father Richard John Neuhaus.
"I offer my condolences to the family and friends of Fr. Richard John Neuhaus. For several decades, he has been a critical voice in our national discussion of religion and public life. He taught us that our public conversation must always be about the 'first things' of how we ought to order our lives together. He wrote more persuasively than perhaps anyone today of the need for democracy and free markets to always be sustained by a vibrant moral culture. We are a grateful nation because of the witness of Father Richard John Neuhaus. May he rest in peace."
Father Neuhaus founded the popular journal First Things and was credited with bringing together Evangelicals and Catholics into an effective coalition. He was a prolific and influential writer focusing on religion and public policy and he argued that faith should not be excluded from the public square. Father Neuhaus died due to complications with cancer. He is survived by four brothers and two sisters."
Senator Sam Browback
Read the entire article here.

Converts make the best Catholics

Magdi Allam, the Muslim who was baptized a Catholic by the Holy Father at the Easter vigil this year, is financing a pro-life politics in Europe. He is a another example of how converts make the best Catholics. They appreciate the richness of the fullness of truth.
Speaking of his encounter with Jesus Christ and entry into the Catholic Church, Magdi Allam wrote: "I converted to the Catholic Christian religion, renouncing my previous Islamic faith. Thus, I finally saw the light, by divine grace. On my first Easter as a Christian I not only discovered Jesus, I discovered for the first time the face of the true and only God, who is the God of faith and reason."
Now, this former Muslim who bears the new name of “Christian” has formed a new Political Party to help Europe. This Party will put forth an entire slate of candidates in the European Union elections next year. The Party is called “Protagonists for Christian Europe”. It is explicitly and unapologetically committed to promoting and defending Europe’s Christian values and the Western culture which was informed by and built upon them. Magdi Allam openly declares that these values are the path to true and authentic freedom for all men and women. He also asserts that they are under a fierce assault by the forces of secularism and moral relativism.
Read the entire story on Catholic Online.

Tony Blair swims the Tiber!

I just love how the author of this article lists Mr. Blair's sins for him, and gets so many wrong, by Church teaching though she is a Catholic. Ihope Mr. Blair found profound peace in confessing his sins and receiving absolution and Holy Communion with his family.
I found it incredible that there are more Catholics at Mass each Sunday in the UK than Anglicans at their services. It just proves how attractive is the fullnes of Truth.
Welcome home to Rome, Tony!
We are a hospital for sinners, not a hotel for saints, as you must already know. I am grateful this didn't keep you away from Holy Mother Church.

Review of Guerrilla Apologetics for Catholics

I have always meant to compile a cheat sheet for apologetics, ready answers, complete with Scripture references in case I'm asked one of the 'big questions' like: "Why do Catholics believe in Purgatory?" Well, thanks to Guerrilla Apologetics for Catholics, I no longer have to write my cheat sheet. It's all here, by topic, and full of Scriptural references. The Catechism of the Catholic Church is not referenced because, non-Catholics don't accept that as valid, and discussion must stem from a source both believers trust, the Scriptures.

As with Guerrilla Apologetics for Life Issues, this book teaches how to frame the discussion, not merely respond to innumerable questions until your opponent is worn out. In fact, he teaches how to turn their question into our question.

A great jumping-off point for a beginning apologist, or handy pocket guide for a seasoned apologist. It covers all the basic points of discussion, Purgatory, the doctrine of "faith alone is necessary for salvation, the doctrine of "Scripture alone", the Papacy (with a handy list of every pope since St. Peter), divorce, the saints, the Blessed Mother, and the Eucharist.

Once you get these basic points down, or become proficient at looking them up in this user-friendly book, you can correct 90% of Protestant misconceptions about Catholicism.

Archbishop Fulton Sheen once said, "most people don't reject Catholicism, they reject what they misinterpret as Catholicism". Correct the misconceptions, and your job is done.

What else is there?

Mark Shea has a great post on Catholic Exchange which discusses the issue of sinners in the Catholic Church, which are so often paraded through the media, and their effect on converts, like himself.
What we need to remember is that the Catholic Church is and always has been the vessel of salvation for the world. That means that most of the people you meet are going to be ordinary — like you and me. They are going to have the ordinary tastes, prejudices, mediocrities, failures, and virtues of their time and place. There are, to be sure, great heroes and extraordinary people in the Catholic communion. But to expect that as the norm and then be outraged and disappointed when it is not is, I think, great folly and, in the end, great pride. Remember the hellish "wisdom" of C.S. Lewis' Uncle Screwtape, who would keep far from our minds the thought, "If I, being what I am, can consider myself in some sense a Christian, then why can't these people next to me in the pew"?
So though I have been appalled by some of the sins that have been revealed in the ranks of the Church in the past few years, I've never been shocked. What did I expect? They're just sinners like I am, and I know what I'm capable of. In the same way, dreadful liturgical music, suburban "Church of Aren't We Fabulous" smugness, Our Lady of Pizza Hut architecture, and "True Meaning of the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes is Caring and Sharing" homilies, and the other stuff that sometimes ails the Church has never turned me away. For averageness is just a reminder that the Church, thank God, has room for mediocre folk like myself.
"Well then," it may be asked, "if the average Catholic is so average, why bother joining the Church?" To quote Walker Percy, "What else is there?" After all, it is not the Church that is mediocre, but only we, her members. The Church is, curiously, something that exists before she has any members, because She is founded not by us, but by Christ. The Church is the spotless Bride of Christ, made so by the Holy Spirit in the washing with water and the Word. We, Her members, are generally nebbishes and schleps. But She is glorious and beautiful, terrible as an army with banners. And in Her all the fullness of the Faith subsists.
(This piece was first published in the National Catholic Register.)
Mark Shea is Senior Content Editor for Catholic Exchange and a weekly columnist for the National Catholic Register. You may visit his website at http://www.mark-shea.com/ check out his blog, Catholic and Enjoying It!, or purchase his books and tapes here.

Coming Home to Rome