Category: MyChurchParish.com

Why We Need to Think Liturgically
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Why We Need to Think Liturgically

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by on Apr 01, 2014 in Catechesis, Featured, Learn & Live the Faith, MyChurchParish.com
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What is the best way to teach the faith?  This is a question that has been on the mind of many thinkers lately, especially in light of what Ralph Martin calls the “institutional collapse” in American Catholicism.  This question should be considered anew in light of recent research into the behavior of young Catholics in […]

The Bad Evangelist Club: Win the Debate, Lose the Soul
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The Bad Evangelist Club: Win the Debate, Lose the Soul

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by on Mar 27, 2014 in Catechesis, Evangelization, Featured, Learn & Live the Faith, MyChurchParish.com
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Before my conversion I engaged everyone I knew to see what they thought about everything I was discovering about Catholics. I had just finished reading Scott Hahn’s Rome Sweet Home and wanted to employ some of the tactics and sayings that worked for him on my opponent.   The usual reaction was one of apathy and […]

Destroyed Wedding Cake
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Pope Francis Tackles the Marriage Epidemic

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by on Mar 20, 2014 in Columnists, Featured, Marriage, MyChurchParish.com
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Much has been made of Catholics’ negativism toward Church teaching and practice on marriage as it was reflected in survey results released by several European bishops’ conferences and some U.S. dioceses. The mostly self-selected respondents predictably disagreed with the Church about many things, leading progressive Catholic media to claim this showed the need for change. […]

The Romance of Religion
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Book Review: The Romance of Religion by Dwight Longenecker

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by on Mar 12, 2014 in Apologetics, Featured, MyChurchParish.com, On Books
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Ever “evolving”, “progressing” — or so he believes — the modern intellectual mentality slithers out of the sea of mystery, clambering from arrogant skepticism to jaded cynicism, until exhausted of wit and verve, it reaches the hard shore of “reason”.  And there on the flat landscape it flutters, just out of reach of the lapping […]

Become Holy This Lent by Being Yourself
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Become Holy This Lent by Being Yourself

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by on Mar 11, 2014 in Catechesis, Featured, Learn & Live the Faith, Live in Christ, MyChurchParish.com
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When Catholics talk about Lent, we usually talk about what we are going to change in our lives.  We view our lives as deficient, and in order to improve them, we must either subtract (give something up) or add (take on extra prayers, devotions, etc) to our lives to grow in holiness.  This has been […]

Change is in Us
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Change is in Us

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by on Mar 10, 2014 in Featured, Live in Christ, MyChurchParish.com
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In a way, the whole message of the Gospel is summarized by the Triduum. Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil are themselves paralleled, too, by long swaths of human history. Humanity was in communion with God, and then fell into sin and denial of God, only to have God go very far to […]

Paul in Arabia: The Wilderness of Damascus
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Paul in Arabia: The Wilderness of Damascus

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by on Mar 09, 2014 in Featured, Live in Christ, MyChurchParish.com
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At once the Spirit drove him out into the desert, and he remained in the desert for 40 days, tempted by the devil.  He was among wild beasts, and the angels ministered to him. —Mk 1:12-13 “A veil of thick darkness hangs over Paul’s visit to the Arabia.” [1]  The Reverend George Rawlinson, a 19th-century […]

Reform of the Reform 2.0?
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Reform of the Reform 2.0?

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by on Mar 06, 2014 in Catechesis, Featured, Learn & Live the Faith, Live in Christ, MyChurchParish.com
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Over the past two weeks, the “reform of the reform” has found its way in the news, and in a lot of discussion within the Catholic commentariat.  It all started when Fr. Thomas Kocik, one of the leading lights of the reform of the reform, wrote an article stating that the current reform movement was […]

Escaping the Catholic Church Through False Justification
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Escaping the Catholic Church Through False Justification

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by on Feb 25, 2014 in Apologetics, Featured, MyChurchParish.com
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Eve knew very well what God had commanded her and Adam, but the text tells us that she had found the tree of knowledge of good and evil good to be pleasing to the eyes and desirable for gaining wisdom (Cf. Gen 3:6). It doesn’t take a whole lot for us to find justification to […]

Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, The Joy of the Gospel
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Front Row With Francis: February 19, 2014

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by on Feb 21, 2014 in Catechesis, Featured, MyChurchParish.com, The Shepherd's Voice
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“Be courageous, and go to confession,” was the message Pope Francis delivered at his Weekly General Audience on Wednesday, February 19, 2014.  This was the seventh General Audience of the year, part of a cycle of weekly talks dedicated to the Church’s Sacraments. In his straightforward way, Francis called on those present to silently ask […]

Reject Pride, Return to Christ
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Reject Pride, Return to Christ

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by on Feb 20, 2014 in Featured, Live in Christ, MyChurchParish.com
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When I was young, it was fashionable to grow a beard and long hair, put on a tie-dyed t-shirt, faded jeans and head off to Europe to “find oneself.” Often I wondered what would happen if those searchers didn’t like the inner-self they found? At a personal level, I had already met my inner self, in […]

The Bad Evangelist Club: How NOT to Refute Sola Scriptura
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The Bad Evangelist Club: How NOT to Refute Sola Scriptura

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by on Feb 19, 2014 in Apologetics, Featured, Learn & Live the Faith, MyChurchParish.com
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When discussing the arguments against Sola Scriptura, we Catholics have a lot of strong arguments.  Here at The Bad Evangelist Club, we help you to avoid bad arguments like the one below so the good ones have more credibility. The Argument Any debate around Sola Scriptura will focus on 2 Timothy 3:14-17, which goes as […]

Five Christian Ways to Celebrate Valentine's Day
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Five Christian Ways to Celebrate Valentine’s Day

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by on Feb 14, 2014 in Featured, Live in Christ, MyChurchParish.com
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I am not a fan of Valentine’s Day. I’m not the most sentimental person around so I have always found the day to be not much more than a trite, commercialized excuse to sell greeting cards.  But like most things in life, there are always deeper Gospel connections than what we see on the surface. […]

How Shepherds Smell Like Their Sheep
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How Shepherds Smell Like Their Sheep

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by on Feb 10, 2014 in Catechesis, Featured, Learn & Live the Faith, MyChurchParish.com
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One of the phrases people quote about Pope Francis is his exhortation that “shepherds must smell like their sheep.”  If you ask ten people what this means, you will likely get ten different answers.  Nobody can agree upon what it means, but everyone can agree it is something important.  I believe that as always, the […]

St. Jerome Emiliani
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St. Jerome Emiliani

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by on Feb 08, 2014 in MyChurchParish.com, Saint of the Day
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ST. JEROME EMILIANI was a member of one of the patrician families of Venice, and, like many other Saints, in early life a soldier. He was appointed governor of a fortress among the mountains of Treviso, and whilst bravely defending his post, was made prisoner by the enemy. In the misery of his dungeon he […]

Saint Pope Pius X
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St. Pius X and the Church of Nice

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by on Jan 31, 2014 in Featured, Learn & Live the Faith, MyChurchParish.com
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In today’s polarized Church, we like to label that which we don’t like.  We need to tell people we are the pure, and they are the impure.  A lot of Catholics do this by labeling those they disagreed with “radical traditionalists” or “radtrad”, even though more often than not these Catholics were faithful Catholics in […]

United in Heart and Soul to Our Beloved
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United in Heart and Soul to Our Beloved

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by on Jan 22, 2014 in Featured, Learn & Live the Faith, Marriage, MyChurchParish.com, Vocations
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Aimed at greater intimacy than the one-flesh union, married love “leads to forming one heart and soul,” states the Catechism. (Section 1643). How do married couples become one in heart and soul, especially when the demands of daily life keep getting in the way? Becoming One Heart Talk to your beloved about what’s in your […]

Why Priests Should Celebrate the Extraordinary Form
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Why Priests Should Celebrate the Extraordinary Form

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by on Jan 21, 2014 in Featured, Learn & Live the Faith, MyChurchParish.com, Vocations
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One of the things I enjoy the most about my job here is interacting with priests.  It’s really humbling to know that some of the guys who instruct the souls from the pulpit every Sunday work with me on publishing their next column, or even read my columns and take some of the advice.  Lay […]

A Whale of an Argument
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A Whale of an Argument

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by on Jan 09, 2014 in Apologetics, Featured, MyChurchParish.com, Science
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Have you heard the argument against the existence of God based on the size of the universe? You might find it strange that an argument against God would be constructed based on the enormity of space — something that elicits awe and wonder. But it is, and it goes like this: You see how big the […]

The Bad Evangelist Club: 33,000 Denominations
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The Bad Evangelist Club: 33,000 Denominations

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by on Jan 08, 2014 in Apologetics, Evangelization, Featured, MyChurchParish.com
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*Editor Note:  Starting this month we will be introducing a new series at Catholic Lane.  Known as The Bad Evangelist Club, we will be providing an examination of conscience so to speak for Catholic efforts at Evangelization and Apologetics.  We will do so by reflecting on the bad arguments being made (often by the writers […]

By What Authority - Carousel
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Book Review: By What Authority by Mark Shea

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by on Jan 02, 2014 in Apologetics, Evangelization, Featured, MyChurchParish.com, On Books
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Resolve to read “By What Authority?” in 2014.

Shattered and Reborn
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Shattered and Reborn

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by on Dec 31, 2013 in Featured, Live in Christ, MyChurchParish.com
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I once asked a priest what my life would have been like if I had not experienced suffering, if I had married a well-off dentist, had 1.25 kids and lived in an efficient, modern house. He put on a phony, pious face, put his hands together in prayer, and said in a high, mocking voice […]

The Link Between Catechesis and Liturgy
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The Link Between Catechesis and Liturgy

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by on Dec 20, 2013 in Catechesis, Featured, MyChurchParish.com
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From time to time in various debates about the liturgy, the principle of lex orandi lex credendi surfaces.  While the Latin might be a little off putting, the Catechism of the Catholic Church defines the concept as follows:  When the Church celebrates the sacraments, she confesses the faith received from the apostles – whence the ancient […]

My Son’s Discernment and His Call for Confession
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My Son’s Discernment and His Call for Confession

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by on Dec 13, 2013 in Featured, MyChurchParish.com, Parenting, Vocations
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The art of daily discernment is a practice and a virtue that many of us tend to forget and at times ignore. By definition the act of discernment from the Latin meaning discernere means one’s ability to distinguish what is happening around them whether positive or negative and to move toward a sound resolution of […]