Blogposts

Artificial Intelligence and the Catholic Faith

02-23-2025Weekly ReflectionFr. Leonard F. Villa

*Artificial intelligence must only be used to complement human intelligence rather than replacing it, as a replacement would enslave humanity and serve as a "substitute for God

**AI should not be seen as an artificial form of human intelligence but as a product of it.

READ MORE

Apparitions True and False - Public Revelation and Private Revelation

02-16-2025Weekly ReflectionFr. Leonard F. Villa

The Church teaches a distinction between public and private revelation. Public revelation is defined as follows: God, in His infinite goodness and wisdom, chose to reveal Himself to mankind; in accord with God’s divine plan of salvation, Jesus Christ– true God who became also true man, the Word of God incarnate– perfectly and fully revealed the Father to us in union with the Holy Spirit.

READ MORE

The four hundred years of the Vatican Secret Archive – Lux in arcana The propensity of the Church for memory

02-09-2025Weekly Reflection Interview with Cardinal Raffaele Farina by Roberto Rotondo

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 MORE

God and the Death Penalty

02-02-2025Weekly ReflectionFr. Leonard F. Villa

On 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 MORE

Real Life, Its Enemy, and the Mass

01-26-2025Weekly ReflectionFr. Leonard F. Villa

Real 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 MORE

Kids & the Other Addiction…….Porn

01-19-2025Weekly ReflectionFr. Leonard F. Villa

Madi 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 MORE

Natural Law, Living Wills, the Fifth Commandment

01-12-2025Weekly ReflectionFr. Leonard F. Villa

Q. 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

READ MORE

End of Life Decisions

01-05-2025Weekly ReflectionFr. Leonard F. Villa

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

READ MORE

St. Ambrose on Christ and Salvation

12-29-2024Weekly ReflectionVery Rev. Richard C. Wilson, VF, Pastor

The central question of our time is that of Christ, even within a sickly Christianity. We do not realize that by dint of opening ourselves to everyone, we end up marginalizing Christ, we consider him superfluous, optional in the mechanism of salvation.

By Giacomo Cardinal Biffi (excerpts)

READ MORE

The Teaching Authority (Magisterium) of the Church

12-22-2024Weekly ReflectionFr. Leonard F. Villa

The three levels of Church-authority:

1. The Extraordinary (or Solemn) Magisterium: This category of magisterial teaching is infallible and is the easiest to identify as being such because of its explicit and definitive nature. It is exercised by either the pope alone (e.g., the papal definitions of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary), or by the whole college of bishops, with the pope as their head — as, for example, when specific doctrines are defined in an ecumenical council (e.g., the Council of Florence on the necessity of the Church for salvation, Vatican I on papal infallibility, etc.).

READ MORE

Truth

12-15-2024Weekly ReflectionFr. Leonard F. Villa

“Again you have heard that it was said to the men of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ 34But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, 35or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. 36And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. 37Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.[i] Matthew 5:33- 37

The numbers in parentheses refer to the Catechism of the Catholic Church

READ MORE

Pray for the Persecuted Church

12-08-2024Weekly ReflectionVery Rev. Richard C. Wilson, VF, Pastor

Pope Francis writes letter in support of persecuted Catholics in Nicaragua

A report from Life Site News edited

'I wish to convey to you my closeness and the assurance that I unceasingly pray to the Blessed Virgin to console and accompany you, confirming you in your faith,' Pope Francis wrote to Nicaragua's Catholic community.

READ MORE

The Sanctuary, the Holy of Holies

12-01-2024Weekly ReflectionFr. Leonard F. Villa

Visiting a Greek Orthodox or Byzantine Catholic church, you will find an iconostasis, or screen of icons, placed in between the nave and the sanctuary, separating off the “holy of holies” from the rest of the space. The sanctuary represents the divine liturgy in the heavenly Jerusalem, in which we participate “at a distance” while we are still in this life of pilgrimage. Meanwhile the clergy can enter through the iconostasis and go even unto the altar, because they are acting in persona Christi, in the person of Christ and as His representatives…

READ MORE