I like this picture

After a shooting at Brown University in Rhode Island over the weekend, Providence Bishop Bruce Lewandowski issued a statement asking for God’s guidance and expressing his grief in the wake of the tragedy.

On the afternoon on Saturday, Dec. 13, while approximately 60 Brown students participated in a study session for final exams in the Barus and Holley building, which houses the School of Engineering and the physics department, an unidentified shooter opened fire, leaving two dead and nine injured.

"As are many, I am deeply saddened and troubled by the senseless shooting today at Brown University in Providence,” Lewandoski wrote. “Let us unite in prayer for those who lost their lives, for the injured, for the Brown University community and all affected by this tragedy.”

As of Monday morning, Providence police continue the search for the shooter. According to Boston’s WCBV-5, a person of interest was released Sunday and the search for the killer continues.

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An appeals court panel has overruled a lower court decision stopping the Trump administration from defunding Planned Parenthood.

A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit issued a ruling last Friday in the case of Planned Parenthood Federation of America et al v. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., et al.

At issue was a provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed in July, that bars certain abortion providers from obtaining Medicaid funding for one year.

Circuit Judge Gustavo A. Gelpí, a Biden appointee, authored the panel opinion, which vacated the district court ruling and sent the case back to that court for further proceedings.

Gelpí rejected the lower court argument that the measure was a punishment, noting that it “imposes no fine or other penalty for past conduct” but rather “establishes new conditions on the receipt of appropriated funds in service of a new policy goal favored by Congress.”

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Ceciledemarseilles said:

Wanting to wish a happy Thanksgiving weekend to our mission squads preparing to make the move over. We got word in our own network that we have 5 families on tap coming to join our efforts in progress in next couple of months, in France and where we've fanned out. We've had great success lately with our conversion and new church construction areas of focus, and more and more community participation which makes it even more exciting. Happy to have you all join, you are blessed and you will be welcomed.

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Greetings Cecile,
Thank you much for your kind holiday words and thoughts. The same and a blessed Christmas season to all of you!

An Evangelical theologian has questioned the theological coherence of a recent Vatican doctrinal note addressing the controversial Marian title “Co-redemptrix,” arguing that while the document slows momentum toward defining a new dogma, it simultaneously reaffirms a Roman Catholic framework that leaves the issue unresolved.

Leonardo De Chirico, an Italian Evangelical pastor and scholar, offered the assessment in a commentary published Dec. 1 on his Vatican Files website, responding to a Nov. 4 note issued by the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith titled Mater Populis Fidelis. The note addresses long-running debates within Roman Catholicism over language describing Mary’s role in salvation, particularly whether she can be formally designated as “Co-redemptrix.”

According to De Chirico, the Vatican document signals a temporary pause rather than a definitive rejection of the title, reflecting internal tensions within Catholic Mariology and the absence of a clearly settled position.

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PSALMS 110​

The Priestly King
A psalm of David.
1This is the declaration of the Lord
to my Lord:
“Sit at my right hand
until I make your enemies your footstool.”
2The Lord will extend your mighty scepter from Zion.
Rule over your surrounding enemies.
3Your people will volunteer
on your day of battle. ,
In holy splendor, from the womb of the dawn,
the dew of your youth belongs to you. ,
4The Lord has sworn an oath and will not take it back:
“You are a priest forever
according to the pattern of Melchizedek.”

5The Lord is at your right hand;
he will crush kings on the day of his anger.
6He will judge the nations, heaping up corpses;
he will crush leaders over the entire world.
7He will drink from the brook by the road;
therefore, he will lift up his head.

Michie said:

"I personally very much hope that such a process will be opened": Archbishop Georg Gänswein desires a beatification process for Benedict XVI. In an interview, he also commented on the pope's theology and the Traditional Latin Mass.​

Archbishop Georg Gänswein hopes that a beatification process will be opened for the late Pope Benedict XVI (2005–2013). "I personally very much hope that such a process will be opened," said the former private secretary of Benedict and current Apostolic Nuncio to the Baltic States in an interview with the television station K-TV.

According to the station, Gänswein also emphasized the central element of Benedict's understanding of faith in the interview. A key word in this regard is "joy." For the German pope, faith was both the source and the measure of joy. If faith doesn't lead to joy, "something is still not quite right with the life of faith. Ratzinger, Benedict XVI, is a theologian of joy," said Gänswein, who also reaffirmed the importance of continuity in faith: "We mustn't cut into the substance; rather, we must allow ourselves to be shaped by the Lord, by the faith of the Church."

Extraordinary Rite: Back to Benedict's "wise arrangement"

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Archbishop Gänswein supports Beatification of Pope Benedict and scrapping of Traditionis Custodes

cathcon.blogspot.com

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I will always wonder about Benedict's abdication, not whether it was forced and illegal, but whether it was wise or necessary. It opened up the worst of all possible can of creepy-crawlies. And thus I do not rush to have him proclaimed a saint, especially in these tumultuous times where up is down and Benedict himself would be called a backwardist. But I loved the man, as a brilliant theologian and a wise pope. I miss him badly.

In fellowship,

This article is a long read, but it explains what Sarah Mullally is really facing. What challenges face Sarah Mullally as the new archbishop? | Psephizo . The article covers the significant global and national (within England) resistance to the ordination of women.

Posting purely FYI.

eleos1954 said:

The church is supposed to be 100% about Jesus always ... if it isn't find another church.

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I agree! Sadly I think in the days we're living in many churches don't have a Biblical Worldview. As the bible says:

2 Timothy 3:1 But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days.

I think many of the pagan things we see Christians fixating on in wintertime is a feature of the above verse.

God Bless

Genesis says the ’sons of God’ meet the ‘daughters of men,’ how do we interpret it?​

Recently, I’ve been looking at a mysterious passage in Genesis 6, at the beginning of the Flood narrative. In this passage, the “sons of God” marry “the daughters of men,” and the passage mentions a group of people known as the Nephilim.

I’ve been considering the following questions:

1) Who are the “sons of God” in this passage?

2) Who are the “daughters of men”?

3) Why does God say that man’s “days shall be 120 years”?

4) Who were the Nephilim?

5) What is the relationship linking the sons of God, the daughters of men, and the Nephilim?

6) Why does the text say the Nephilim were on the earth “in those days, and also afterward”?

7) Do these events have anything to do with the Great Flood, which this passage introduces?

In my first post, we answered Question 4 and saw that the Nephilim were a group of “giants” or unusually tall people (at least by ancient standards, when people were a lot shorter than they are today).

In a second post, we answered Questions 3, 5, and 6: it looks as though the 120 years was a grace period before God sent the Flood, the Nephilim were the children of the sons of God and the daughters of men, and they were on the earth both before and after the Flood because these groups mated twice.

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Have you heard the news? The Trump coalition is breaking up. At least that is what the media is telling us. The New York Times, for instance, puts the breakup on podcasters fighting over the assassination of Charlie Kirk:

Kirk:

Battle lines have also been deepening over the investigation of Mr. Kirk’s murder in September, which has been the subject of conspiracy theories, including those spread by Candace Owens, another prominent right-wing podcaster, who speculated about whether the shooter acted alone.

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The Free Press, meanwhile, puts it on President Trump’s flip-flops over Jeffrey Epstein. Here’s the opener of their report on the ground in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Georgia district:

RINGGOLD, Georgia—From behind the counter of a gas station, Lauren Epperson leaned over to tell me that she used to love President Donald Trump.
“Yep,” she said, smacking her lips. “Used to believe every word he said.”
Not anymore. The first nail in the coffin was Israel, which Epperson said she realized has been “blackmailing” the president and the entire federal government for decades. But the death knell was months of resistance by the president to releasing the federal government’s files on sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

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“I don’t like him anymore,” said Epperson, 41 and the mother of two kids, while counting bills near the cash register. Trump is “a sellout—just like all the people I’ve loved and voted for. Oh, they got me good.”

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Guess who’s not breaking up with MAGA? Catholics! According to a recent EWTN poll, an extraordinary 67 percent of Mass-attending Catholics view President Trump “very or somewhat favorably.”

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Trump, Pope Leo, the USCCB, and Catholic loyalty

Why do Catholics remain Trump’s most loyal constituency while other parts of the MAGA coalition seem to be weakening?

www.catholicculture.org

A new poll reveals what mass attendance actually predicts about virtue and deportation policy.

America’s Catholic bishops may incessantly complain about President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda, but American Catholics actually support such measures as mass deportations. EWTN News and RealClear Opinion Research published a poll late last week which found that a majority (54 percent) of American Catholics favor mass deportations, including 27.5 percent (the largest share recorded in the poll) who “strongly favor” the policy, while only 30 percent oppose it and less than 17 percent expressed indifference. Support for the “detention and deportation of unauthorized immigrants on a broad scale” increased to 60 percent among white Catholics and opposition fell to 26 percent.

It just happens that over 300,000 children ended up in a living hell.

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In fact, mass deportations were more popular among American Catholics than Trump himself was. While 54 percent of Catholics endorsed mass deportations, Trump’s support among Catholics only stood at 52 percent, while 37 percent held an unfavorable view of the president — up almost 10 points compared to opposition to mass deportations.

White House Assistant Press Secretary Taylor Rogers responded to the survey results noting that the president “won in a landslide victory with historic support from patriotic Catholics across the country because he promised to fight for people of faith, and he has delivered in record time.”

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My prayers for this nation at the moment.

hedrick said:

First, it's more like 9%.

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Hello! You're right 1.5% was an old figure from a previous UK Census. The last UK census in 2023 gave 3.8% identifying as gay or queer, 10.4% of 18-24 year olds. Still hugely less than the 41% of content on Netflix which means Netflix are promoting an agenda not representing demographics. Their agenda seems to be working, the number of people identifying as homosexual is increasing. God Bless

JimR-OCDS said:

So you went to the vigil Mass and then the Sunday Mass the next day?

Priest usually gives the same homily at the Masses they celebrate that week-end.

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They do but I thought it was interesting how well-done the similarity was considering the length, and not reading off anything.

This is truly a Christmas special and it would do our souls good to think of our brothers and sisters in Christ around the world at this time and remember that God works across the world in different cultures and contexts.

13-year-old Alaia and nine-year-old Manuela have fond memories of Christmas in Nicaragua, but this wasn't to last. As well as the usual festivities, her parents would share the Gospel with others.

One day Alaia and Manuela’s father received a phone call and the father said to the man on the phone he'd be there in a few minutes. The end of the day arrived and the girls and their mum heard nothing. Their mum said “Remember when I told you that something could happen to your dad or me because of preaching about Jesus?” “That day has come. Your dad has been arrested.”

The family didn't hear from the dad- days became months and they did not even know if he was dead or alive. Then he called them- he told them to flee the country.

Alaia, Manuela and their mum fled- miraculously they fled the border with zero papers and soon the father, by God's grace, joined them.

The family are now in a new Country- what a blessing they must be to their church family, they do however miss Nicaragua at Christmas.

I will finish with this quote BY A 13 YEAR OLD Alaia- unbelievably wise beyond her years by God's grace. “I learned that persecution teaches you not to cling to earthly things, one day we’ll die and won’t take anything with us. So, the best thing we can do is live – and even die – for Christ.”

Source:

Open Doors Prayer Diary Nov/Dec 2025

The last quarter century in Western cultural life has been wasted. Everything is a little bit mid, as the kids say. There have been impressive individual works of art and entertainment. But taken as a whole, the picture is bleak: our artistic output is derivative and cheaply didactic, either moralizing or starved for moral judgment and ideas. Now, as cultural criticism confronts this epochal failure, it’s easy to cast partisan blame, with a still-dominant Left critical establishment training its sights on the Right.
Easy — but inaccurate.

Cultural life in the 21st century doesn’t feel tortured or ecstatic so much as muted. We aren’t truly bored anymore; boredom has been technologically abolished. Every stray second can be plastered over with a feed, a notification, a video “For You,” an algorithmic recommendation tuned precisely to prevent mental calm. But neither are we animated. There are widespread predictions of a coming civil war and calls for a political uprising, yet neither is remotely on the horizon — because we aren’t passionate enough. Instead, we drift in a gray zone between stimulation and stupor, provoked but under-engaged, surrounded by infinite novelty that no longer feels all that novel.

Our clothes arrive in two days and fall apart in three. Travel is cheaper, but cities blur into one another, interchangeable landscapes of chain restaurants, and “authentically curated” coffee shops identical from Denver to Dublin. The internet, once a wild frontier, now feels like a series of endlessly recycled aesthetics: girl dinner, cottagecore, blokecore, everything a core, everything a remix.

It’s precisely this sense of living in a stagnant wasteland that Blank Space, W. David Marx’s wide-ranging survey of 21st century-culture, tries to map. In his previous polemic, 2022’s Status and Culture, the Tokyo-based culture-vulture took a sanguine approach to contemporary life, arguing that the omnivorous approach to cultural consumption in the West — where there is no more snobbery, and where elites enjoy “not just high culture, but pop and indie, niche and mass, new and old, domestic and foreign, primitive and sophisticated” — is by and large a good thing for the sake of flattening the class distinctions of old. We were slouching toward equality.

Now, Marx worries that the lack of pretense in contemporary culture is no utopia, that it might mean we’re all eating from the same trough of slop. Across nearly 400 increasingly exasperated pages, Marx convincingly argues that art, entertainment, and fashion since the year 2000 have been some combination of uninspired, recycled, soulless, corporatized, or plainly dumb — so much so that there is a blank space where a distinct cultural imprint should be.

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Archaeologists in Turkey have discovered a fresco of a Roman-looking Jesus as the "Good Shepherd," which is being hailed as one of the most important finds from Anatolia's early Christian era.

The work of art was found in August in an underground tomb near the town of Iznik, where the Nicene Creed, a foundational statement of Christian belief, was adopted in A.D. 325. The tomb itself is believed to date back to the third century, when the area was still under the Roman Empire and Christians faced persecution.



Archaeologists clean and restore frescoes inside a 3rd-century tomb where a rare early Christian depiction of Jesus as the "Good Shepherd" was discovered, in Iznik, Turkey, Friday, Dec. 12, 2025.(Khalil Hamra/AP Photo)

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This image making also includes a nude Pieta. Their website has more.

And if you thought that was shocking, the exhibition has been praised by the Artists' Bishop Glettler, the Parish Priest of the Cathedral Parish and a Jesuit even writes in its praise in the programme.

"'Du sollst Dir ein Bild machen' exhibition at the Vienna Künstlerhaus – well-deserved rating: a must-see! [...] The exhibition is evidence of the endless struggle to somehow do justice to the mystery of God, who has inscribed himself into a wounded world." – Bishop Hermann Glettler, Innsbruck (on Instagram)



Bishop Glettler who was thought in the running for Vienna

BPPLEE said:

I didn’t say anything about 20 million. If you believe that is the total amount of illegal immigrants in the country I believe that the number is higher than that. I wouldn’t try to guess what the actual number is

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Oh okay. I misunderstood when you said you suspected that the actual number [of what? total or recent arrivals?] was "higher rather than lower" without specifically saying higher or lower than what. I just assumed you were referring to the number mentioned rather than some unspoken, unknown. My bad.

Michie said:

Some Protestant scholars who spoke with CNA welcomed a Vatican document that clarified titles for the Blessed Virgin Mary that discouraged the use of Co-Redemptrix/Co-Redeemer and put limits on the use of Mediatrix/Mediator.

The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) issued the doctrinal note Mater Populi Fidelis on Nov. 4. It was approved by Pope Leo XIV and signed by DDF Prefect Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández on Oct. 7.

According to the document, using “Co-Redemptrix” to explain Mary’s role in salvation “would not be appropriate.” The document is less harsh about using “Mediatrix” and says “if misunderstood, it could easily obscure or even contradict” Mary’s role in mediation.

The document affirms Mary plays a role in both redemption and mediation because she freely cooperates with Jesus Christ. That role, it explains, is always “subordinate” to Christ, and it warned against using titles in a way that could be misconstrued to mitigate Christ as the sole Redeemer and sole Mediator.

Catholic reactions have been mixed, with some seeing the clarification as helpful and others defending the titles as consistent with the understanding of Mary’s role as subordinate and asking the Vatican to formally define the doctrines themselves rather than simply issue a note on the titles.

Positive reactions from Protestants​

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Some Protestant scholars welcome Vatican document clarifying Marian titles

Some Protestant scholars welcomed a Vatican document that clarified titles for the Blessed Virgin Mary.

www.catholicnewsagency.com

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The 'clarification' muddied the waters considerably AND actually backfired in raising interest in a very tiny aspect of Marian devotion. Sure, some Protestants will be excited. But it is not an 'advance' as much as a confusion from a very confused and confusing prelate. Diane Montagna asked Fernandez about this in an interview and he retreated to say that we can believe what we want about Mary but for Vatican purposes they just won't say it. It would have been far better to do exactly what pope Benedict did, to rather quietly say that nothing new could yet be defined. OR to have the balls to say that it was just wrong to even think Mary was a co-redemptrix if they thought that to be the case. What we got was weaselly doublespeak confusion. Not an advance. One of the worst sorts of retreats.

André Rieu - Out standing.

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Please pray that my son Jakeb will have a good day mind and body and get to his Doctor appointment. Please pray that he can handle the stress and come home happy. Please pray that he even has the courage to go. I also ask that the Doctor can help him and God shows us what to do and that there is nothing seriously wrong with him and that Jesus will put his healing hands upon my son. I pray that him and his dad get there and home safely. Dear God, please let this go well and heal my son. Please Dear God. I love You Dear GOd and I love You Dear Jesus. In Jesus name I pray. Thank you for prayers and God bless you.

The perennially popular representation of the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ, held every Holy Week in the Iztapalapa sector of Mexico City, has been declared a Cultural Heritage of Humanity by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

The decision was made during a UNESCO meeting in New Delhi, India, where the nomination of the Iztapalapa Way of the Cross was reviewed and approved.

Speaking at the event, Edaly Quiroz, deputy director of Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, said that Holy Week in Iztapalapa is not merely a theatrical performance but a manifestation “of unity, faith, and resilience that brings together thousands of people in a collective exercise of memory, identity, and participation.”

On its website, UNESCO states that this list includes “practices, knowledge, and expressions that communities recognize as part of their cultural identity” and emphasizes the need to protect them for future generations.

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