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St. Jude and the Shroud of Turin

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This is SO COOL:

A third century Syrian text mentions a cloth that is associated with the miraculous cure of King Abgar V, ruler of Edessa (13-59 A.D.), now called Urfa, in southeastern Turkey. This story was translated almost verbatim by Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, in his Ecclesiastical History in 325 A.D.

...Thaddeus brought a cloth to Abgar [who was ill] bearing an image of the face of Jesus. Upon seeing this cloth, Abgar was cured, and the Christian Faith was established in the city.

RTWT. You know how St Jude is often portrayed holding an image of the Lord over his heart?...

From The American Catholic:

Today is the feast day of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, canonized by Pope Paul VI on October 25, 1970. These very brave men and women were martyred for the True Faith in England and Wales between 1535 and 1679, and they are representative of hundreds of Catholics in these countries who went to their death rather than to renounce their Catholicism.

Quoth my husband: "Bet they're happy this week!"

A list of lists

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Bishop Hubbard supports Cap and Trade.

I guess he thinks upstate NY families don't need to be able to pay their heating bills.

Making Babies: A Very Different Look at Natural Family Planning

But another reason for NFP's allegedly high success rate is that couples who use it are prepared to welcome children and so don't blame NFP for unexpected pregnancies. Four of my own five children came the NFP way -- that is, totally unexpectedly -- and that's a good thing, because without them bouncing in as surprises, excuses to delay (the sort of excuses one might hear from a recruit in parachute training) might have gone on for a very long time. As it is, in a mere matter of ten years, my wife and I assembled a complete basketball team. And if menopause doesn't strike my wife soon, who knows what sort of team we might assemble.
Rather than bite one's nails to the quick at the prospect of baby number ten -- which, if one marries in one's early 20s and practices NFP, is a definite possibility -- we should encourage the attitude of the more the merrier, which is a far more attractive case to make than all the goo-goo language about how NFP helps couples "communicate" and about the joy of charting temperatures and discharges and plotting one's conjugal acts as a captain might chart a course for his ship.

The Anchoress - A Must Read Now!

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Caritas in Veritate, by B-16 & Pixar

The Pixar short is adorable and the tie-in to the new encyclical is inspiring brings tears to my eyes (yeah, a little inspiration goes a long way with me, alright?)

There's also a great round-up of commentary on Caritas in Veritate.

So, you don't want to be a DB?

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Let Mr. Kellemeyer show you how it's done:

For instance, I began to realize that the assertion, “I can have sex without wanting a child” was logically absurd. It’s like saying, “I can eat ice cream all day without wanting to get fat.” Sure, you can. But what does your "want" have to do with it? The biological reality was going to hit you either way.

I thought it was a good analogy, but I quickly discovered a flaw. Having sex was different from eating cupcakes all day. Every time I ate a cupcake, I added calories to my body. Every time. But it is not the case that every act of sex creates a child. The analogy wasn’t perfect.

I gnawed on that for awhile.

And I began to see… something

Something I didn’t expect.

Ultimately, it was this point - the point that sex does not always create children – that converted me back to the Faith.

This is what I saw.

Precisely because sex does not always create children, yet it always holds the promise of creating children, that sex stands for something greater than itself. Because sex is designed to produce children, yet does not always produce them, the act is transformed from a simple biological action into… there was no other word for it… poetry.

Because sex contains not a hard reality, but only a future promise, it becomes a promise, the promise of the man to the woman "I will be with you always, even if this does produce that for which it is designed."

And by this act, the man gives himself not just to the woman, he gives himself primarily to the not-yet-conceived child.

It was the poetic biology of the thing that snared me.

In the end, Ladies, real men are so much more appealing than punks who think women are good for one thing only.

http://www.americanpapist.com/2009/07/photo-archbishop-dolan-prays-at-ground.html#links

Blush

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No, Mr. President

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This gem comes via The Dawn Patrol:

Be a sheep

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As long as we remain sheep, we overcome. Even though we may be surrounded by a thousand wolves, we overcome and are victorious. But as soon as we are wolves, we are beaten: for then we lose the support from the Shepherd who feeds not wolves, but only sheep.

(St John Chrysostom, from Homily 34 on St Matthew)

HT: dylan at phos hilarion

Index ciborum prohibitorum

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"My first pastoral letter's gonna be a condemnation of light beer and instant mashed potatoes -- I hate those two things." -- Archbishop Timothy Dolan, via The Church Ladies

"You Are A Catholic I Thought"

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An extraordinary destiny

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"... Everyone in this mega-community is a somebody with an extraordinary destiny. Everyone is a somebody in whom God has invested an infinite love. That is why the Church reaches out to the unborn, the suffering, the poor, our elders, the physically and emotionally challenged, those caught in the web of addictions..."

--Archbishop Thomas Dolan, in his Installation homily. H/T American Papist


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