Eminence, the Secret Archive is four hundred years old, but has collected documents that are much more ancient. Why has the Church always felt the need to preserve the acts and documents of its business in a systematic way? From the earliest days of the Church of Rome, as the Liber Pontificalis recalls, the popes used to preserve in their own ‘scrinium’ (archive) the gesta martyrum, the liturgical codices, the memoirs of the episcopal consecrations, donations made to the Bishop of Rome and to the Christians in the early centuries.
READ MOREOn December 22, 2024 Debrina Kawam, a 57-year old resident of Toms River, New Jersey, was burned alive and beyond recognition on a Brooklyn F train... The alleged attacker, Sebastian Zapeta-Calil 33. Laken Riley, a 22-year-old Augusta University nursing student, was murdered while she was jogging at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia. Her death was caused by blunt force trauma and asphyxiation. The perpetrator José Antonio Ibarra. At his trial and in the wake of the burning of Debrina Kawan there have been calls for the death penalty for such horrendous murders. There is no doubt that recent Popes, especially Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis, have rejected the use of the death penalty. Pope Francis calls it inadmissible.
READ MOREReal life is the interior life of the Christian whereby an adopted son/daughter, lives in intimacy with God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is called being in the state of grace. I have come that they may have life and have it to the full. John 10:10
1997 Grace is a participation in the life of God. It introduces us into the intimacy of Trinitarian life: by Baptism the Christian participates in the grace of Christ, the Head of his Body. As an "adopted son" he can henceforth call God "Father," in union with the only Son. He receives the life of the Spirit who breathes charity into him and who forms the Church.
READ MOREMadi grew up in a religious home, blessed with attentive parents who took the dangers of technology seriously. They installed filters on her devices and required her to hand in her phone every night. Yet, when she was thirteen, she encountered pornography for the first time through her social media feed. She probed further, finding ways around the parental controls. Before long, she was in the throes of a porn addiction that lasted for five years. The paragraph above describes the depth of the porn addiction problem in our world and the effects of this addiction on young people. This was reported in First Things magazine.
READ MOREQ. The natural law, what is it?
A. The natural law is morality which reason can determine from the nature of man, without the assistance of God's revelation. An example is the right to life. Almost all human societies throughout history, both religious and non-religious, have recognized that it is wrong to kill an innocent person. This is a conclusion which reason can easily come to, since all human beings have an inborn desire to live. From this natural law principle we can easily see that any action that directly kills an innocent person is an unjust taking of a human life. Therefore, withdrawing food and water from anyone who is not about to die and who can still tolerate it, has no other reasonable name than murder. and intentionally
The death of Terri Schiavo years ago raised a number of issues, moral, legal and constitutional, about the right to life and the so-called right to die. Most coverage of the case focused on the question of her guardian's right to decide according to her alleged wishes and the due process of the judicial proceedings. However, at base, the question was a moral, not a legal, one: under what conditions, if any, may a patient, a guardian, medical personnel or civil-authorities, withhold or withdraw nutrition and hydration
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