I've met a lot of crazy people in my life.
Frank from Jersey City comes to mind. A local legend with Elvis hair, a fixture on the corner of Grand and Columbus, who kept a switchblade in his sock and sang doo-wop at passing buses.

Then there was Zef, who ran a gypsy cab company on the Upper East Side. He believed that rules…all of them…were meant for others, as evidenced by how he may/ or may not have ‘edited’ my application so he could hire me back in the day.

And Harry the Trucker. Built like a medieval door. Always sweating, always muttering. One eye pointed towards the sky, the other right through your soul. If you saw him barreling down the block, you instinctively crossed the street or made for an alley.

City life teaches you something early: crazy is relative. And without these people, life would be far less colorful.
But lately, I've encountered a different species of crazy entirely.

The holy kind.

The Other Kind of Crazy​

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In Defense of Crazy

I've met a lot of crazy people in my life.

www.jeffreybrunophotojournalist.com

Pope Leo celebrated Mass ad Orientem- facing East- this morning at the Papal Summer residence. At a moment when bishops are trying to outlaw the ancient posture- such natural moments take on larger significance.





Pope Leo XIV Celebrated Mass Ad Orientem This Morning

With the Trump administration having “effectively achieved control of the border,” Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski is now urging the president and Congress to turn to expanding legal pathways for unlawfully present migrants who have committed no other crimes to obtain citizenship.

In a statement and interview with archdiocesan media, Wenski argued that the U.S. “faces labor shortages in many industries, including health care, service, and agriculture. Removing immigrant workers will only exacerbate these shortages.”

“Rather than spending billions to deport people who are already contributing positively to our nation’s well-being, it would be more financially sensible and more morally acceptable for Congress, working with the administration, to expand legal pathways for noncriminal migrants to adjust to a permanent legal status,” Wenski affirmed.

In an interview with La Voz Catolica, Wenski said that “what makes it cruel right now is the arbitrariness of this push to deport people who have already made a stake here — people who have put in sweat and effort to stay.”

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The Diocese of Green Bay can close down a historic parish in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, the Vatican has ruled, bringing an end to efforts by a small group of parishioners to prevent the permanent shuttering of the church.

The Apostolic Signatura, the highest court at the Holy See, ruled against parishioner efforts to save St. Boniface Church from closure. The ruling affirms Bishop David Ricken’s 2023 orderrelegating the parish building to “profane but not sordid use.”

“Planning for the disposition of the church, contents, and property is underway,” the diocese said in a statement announcing the Vatican’s decision.

“Please continue to pray for the parish and community,” the diocese added.

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Pope Leo XIV celebrated Mass on July 15 in the chapel at the Carabinieri station in Castel Gandolfo, Italy, where he is on vacation. The Carabinieri are the national gendarmerie of Italy, a form of military police.

Reflecting in his homily on the day’s Gospel (Matthew 11:20-24), the pontiff emphasized that there is a bond “stronger than blood” that unites every man and woman who is in Christ.

In this regard, he explained that “we are truly brothers and sisters of Jesus when we do the will of God,” that is, “when we live loving one another, as God has loved us.”

“Every relationship that God lives, in himself and for us,” the pope continued, “thus becomes a gift: when his only Son becomes our brother, his Father becomes our Father, and the Holy Spirit, who unites the Father and the Son, comes to dwell in our hearts.”

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I have recently started a weekly blog on Substack: The New Theonomist

The New Theonomist represents a grassroots political and cultural campaign against the secularism of British governance. Equipping readers with the knowledge and resources to challenge their representatives to govern righteously.

This project is in its early stages, although on-boarding additional writers is the objective.

I would like to know what direction you think Christianity in the UK is going? And what would Christian governance look like?

LAHORE, Pakistan — A judge handed a life sentence to a Muslim man found guilty of abducting and raping a Christian girl, but ignored accusations of forcible conversion and fraudulent marriage, the victim’s attorney said.

Toba Tek Singh District Additional Sessions Judge Jamshed Mubarik on July 9 sentenced Ahmed Raza to life imprisonment and a fine of 100,000 Pakistani Rupees ($351 USD) under Section 376(iii) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) and to 10 years rigorous imprisonment and a 50,000 Pakistani Rupees ($176 USD) fine under Section 364-A for abducting and raping a girl who was 12 years and four months at the time in September 2023, Christian attorney Hanif Hameed said.

Both sentences shall run concurrently, according to the court order.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released an English-language video on Monday evening in which he again denied any personal responsibility for the Hamas invasion of Oct. 7, 2023, while also claiming full responsibility for Israel’s achievements in its various conflicts against Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran since then.

The video was posted on Netanyahu’s personal social media platforms Monday evening before he held meetings with the chairman of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Security Committee, Yuli Edelstein, and leaders of the United Torah Judaism party, in which he attempted to prevent the ultra-Orthodox parties from leaving the coalition.

In the video, Netanyahu is interviewed by his recently appointed international affairs advisor, Caroline Glick, who has long been an apologist for the embattled leader as he has faced opposition regarding his legal challenges, the Judicial Reform laws, and his handling of the Gaza War, before her appointment as an advisor.

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Fulani herdsmen on Friday killed five Christians and wounded three others in an area of northwest Nigeria’s Kaduna state where at least 110 others have been kidnapped in the past six months, sources said.

In Kajuru County, “Fulani bandits” on Friday attacked an Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) Bible study and prayer service in Kampani village, killing Victor Haruna, Dogara Jatau, Luka Yari, Jesse Dalami and Bawu John, said resident Philip Adams.

He identified those wounded as Samuel Aliyu, Philip Dominic and Jacob Hussaini. Residents said the attack at the church site took place at about 3:30 p.m.

“This is the present predicament of most communities within Kajuru and Kachia Local Council Areas in southern part of Kaduna state,” resident Happiness Daniel told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News in a text message. “We constantly live in fear every day. We can’t sleep in our homes and we can’t go to farms.”

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Deacon Richard Pryor of CrossPointe Community Church in Wayne, Michigan, has been blessed with a new truck weeks after his vehicle was totaled while helping to stop a man who attempted to carry out a mass shooting during the church's worship service on June 22.

A police report cited by the Detroit Free Press states that 31-year-old Brian Browning, who was fatally shot by a member of the church’s security team, was witnessed erratically driving a silver SUV before parking it on the west side of the church building. Dressed in camouflage clothing and a tactical vest, Browning approached the church entrance armed with an AR-15-style rifle and 500 rounds of ammunition. He opened fire at the church before being run over by Pryor, who was arriving late for church at around 11 a.m. that day.

Pryor’s quick thinking in using his vehicle to stop Browning’s attack on the church gave the congregation’s security time to take him down while getting members to safety.

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Pope Leo XIV brings to the papacy his roots in the United States, an Augustinian religious vocation, decades of ministry in a poor diocese in Peru, and service to Pope Francis at the Vatican. He began his papacy by calling for peace, mercy, and justice in our hurting world. He spoke of the importance of building bridges and has a track record of doing so.

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There are people living on this planet earth who give lip service to the Lord Jesus, but whose hearts are far from him. They fake their Christianity to make others think that they are good Christians, but while, behind closed doors, they are sinning in secret, and they are plotting evil against others, some of whom are those who are walking in obedience to the Lord in holy living. Just like Jesus’ opponents, they are jealous of the truly righteous, and so they hate them, and they want to destroy them any which way possible.

These are people who are, by nature, liars, manipulators, the addictive, the unfaithful, and abusers who put on a mask (pretense) to cover up who they really are and what it is they are really doing when no one else is watching. So they perform for an audience, and they may even be people who lie to get the sympathies of others, posing as though they are the victims, but they are the perpetrators. For these are people for whom lying, trickery, and deception are what they practice, to present a false image of themselves.

In character, many of these people are morally corrupt, malicious, liars, egocentric, opportunistic, cunning, crafty, and predatory, who catch people in their webs of deceit. And many of them are those who are teachers of the Scriptures and ministers of “the gospel” who are altering and diluting the truth of the gospel to make it more appealing and acceptable to human flesh and to the ungodly. And so they teach God’s grace as though it is a free ride to heaven with no requirements for death to sin and obedience to God.

Many of them are chameleons who blend in with their environment and who wear many “different hats,” i.e. characters. For they like to be approved of others, and they seek attention, and they want praise. And so they feed off the attention and the approval of others. And so if someone comes along who confronts them with their sinful practices, and who calls them to biblical repentance, and to walks of obedience to the Lord, and who can see through their façade, they may find a way to try to discredit those people.

Now the people being spoken of here are not generally those who make no professions of faith in Jesus Christ, but they are among those who profess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior of their lives, and some of them are pastors. Some of them know the Scriptures well, and were and/or are teachers of the Scriptures. But they are those who look at their own characters, as talked about in the word of God, and at what they should be like, instead, but then who just walk away and willfully choose to forget what they look like.

They know the right way. They know that they are not walking on the right path. But because they do not want to let go of their sins and their pride and their sinful rebellion against God, they willfully choose to play ignorant. But they are not ignorant. They just choose to block out what they do not want to accept, like the man who sees what he looks like but then who just walks away and willfully chooses to forget the truth about himself, so that he can keep on living in deliberate and habitual sin against God and other people.

So, what is this perfect law that we are to look into? It is the law of God’s grace and mercy which sent Jesus to the cross to die. But in his death he put our sins to death with him so that, by faith in him, we will die to sin and we will now obey him and his commandments. For this is not liberty to now live however we want, without punishment, but this is liberty from our slavery to sin so we will now serve God with our lives. We are now to be those who listen and who obey, who not just hear, but who do what God requires.

[Matthew 7:13-14,21-23; Luke 9:23-26; John 1:12-13; John 6:44; John 10:27-30; Acts 26:18; Romans 2:6-8; Romans 6:1-23; Romans 8:1-14; 1 Corinthians 10:1-22; Galatians 5:16-24; Ephesians 2:8-10; Ephesians 4:17-32; Ephesians 5:3-6; Titus 2:11-14; Hebrews 3:1-19; Hebrews 4:1-13; Hebrews 12:1-2; 1 Peter 2:24; 1 John 1:5-10; 1 John 2:3-6; 1 John 3:4-10]

My Sheep

Based off John 10:1-30 NIV
An Original Work / June 24, 2012
Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love

My sheep hear me. They know me.
They listen to my voice and obey.
I call them and lead them.
They know my voice, so they follow me.
They will never follow strangers.
They will run away from them.
The voice of a stranger they know not;
They do not follow him.

So, I tell you the truth that
I am the gate, so you enter in.
Whoever does enter
Will find forgiveness and will be saved.
Nonetheless whoever enters
Not by the gate; other way,
He is the thief and a robber.
Listen not, the sheep to him.

Oh, I am the Good Shepherd,
Who laid his own life down for the sheep.
I know them. They know me.
They will live with me eternally.
The thief only comes to steal and
Kill and to destroy the church.
I have come to give you life that
You may have it to the full…

They know my voice, so they follow me.

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Hearers Who Delude Themselves
An Original Work / July 15, 2025
Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love

Please strong prayers for my doctor. His name is John. He is very ill and we are very worried about him. Please pray for healing and for his stress. Also please pray my husband comes home safe and my son has a good happy night. Thank you and God bless you. I ask in the name of Jesus and if it is God's will. Carmen

St. Catherine of Siena is counted among the thirty-seven Doctors of the Church and is one of the most respected and revered woman in all church history. She was a mostly-illiterate laywoman, a third-order Dominican who worked among the sick and poor. She is revered not only for her deep piety and spiritual wisdom, but for using her supernatural skills of persuasion to mediate conflicts among the most powerful men of the 14th century, ultimately persuading the Pope Gregory XI to return the seat of the church from Avignon to Rome. She lived only 33 years, but in that time exerted and outsized influence on the church, and continues to inspire through her Dialoguesand letters.

Here's her head.

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It is 2008, it is my 16th wedding anniversary, and I am walking into the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception to pray for a miracle. I am about to turn in my letter of resignation from a dream job in Washington, DC. I am about to give up a forty percent raise, wonderful friends, and the best parish I have ever joined. So, I make my way past various side chapels until I find the statute of Our Lady of Sorrows. I kneel down. I am in tears. I pray for a last-minute miracle.

Why am I resigning? As much as I love DC, my wife hates DC. So, months ago, I began to pray that God somehow would change her mind. I’m praying, praying, but nothing changes at all.

Eventually, after a couple months with no results, I say to my wife, “Honey, I’ve been really praying for you that you can grow to love Washington DC. I just want to let you know. I’ve been praying every day for that.” And she says, “Well, that’s interesting. Have you asked God what God wants?” My first thought was, “No. I haven’t done that.” Next, I thought, “I don’t want to ask God what God wants. What if God wants me to go back to Los Angeles? That’s the last thing I want.” I was afraid to pray. But after maybe three weeks, I thought, “God is all knowing and all loving, and maybe I should check-in with God just to see.”

So, I finally prayed to ask God what God wanted. I pretty much came to conviction right away that my family ought to move back to Los Angeles.

I’d like to tell you that when I got back to Los Angeles, I was a happy camper, and that everything was going great. But that would be a lie. In fact, I was miserable and dejected, missing my friends and missing lots of things about DC.

So, I did what every scholar would do with a serious question. I googled, “how to be happier.”

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LONDON (AP) — Scarlet uniforms flashed against the riverbank. Wooden skiffs glided in formation. A young swan, gently lifted from the water, was measured, inspected and released.

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St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore — founded 1791 — is helping its seminarians become the best priests they can be.

St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore — founded 1791 — may be the oldest seminary in the country, but its approach to helping its seminarians become the best priests they can be is very new.

When Sulpician Father Phillip Brown took leadership of the seminary as rector in 2016, he came on a mission to revamp the way it trains priests. After a period of thorough observation, seminary leadership realized that St. Mary’s had a problem. While — true to its reputation — its academic programs were strong, they concluded that an overemphasis on study was causing other important aspects of the seminarians’ training to fall by the wayside.

While courses on Scripture, moral theology, and Church history are essential to make priests effective teachers and witnesses to the Gospel, knowledge alone is not enough. Father Brown recognized that the seminary could be doing more to raise up priests who are holy, well-adjusted and able to care for their people.

Seminarians from dioceses like Buffalo, Louisville, Richmond, and even Kumbo, Cameroon, spend their final four years before ordination at St. Mary’s. The new approach has resonated with them.

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Genesis 1:1
Gen. 1:1
Gen 1:1
Gn. 1:1
Gn 1:1

Revelation 1:1
Apocalypse 1:1
Apocalypse of John 1:1
Apoc. 1:1
Apoc 1:1

Psalm 50:1
Psalm 50:1 KJV1611
Psalm 50:1 LXX

Wisdom 1:1 NRSV
Sirach 1:1 RSV
Ecclesiasticus 1:1 NRSV
Tobit 1:1 VULG
Baruch 1:1 DRC
Psalm 151:1 NRSV
Psalm 151:1 LXX
Prayer of Azariah 1:1 NRSV
Prayer of Azariah 1:1 KJV
3 Kingdoms 1:1
4 Kingdoms 1:1 LXX
1 Maccabees 1:1 NRSV
2 Maccabees 1:1 NRSV
3 Maccabees 1:1 NRSV
4 Maccabees 1:1 LXX

1 John 5:7
1 John 5:7 YLT

Song of Solomon 1:1
Canticle of Canticles 1:1
Song of Songs 1:1

Ezra 1:1
Esdras 1:1
1 Esdras 1:1 NRSV
2 Esdras 1:1 NRSV

1 Pet 4:6 " Because it was for this that the good tidings were proclaimed to the dead, that though judged in flesh according to human beings they might live in spirit according to God"
This passage is talking about non believers who had died, but the good tidings, or gospel was proclaimed to them so that they might live in spirit according to God.
Why would God allow the preaching to the dead if they could not respond? Does God just tease them knowing that their fate is sealed?
Can the death of the mortal body not be the end of the story for those who never saw Jesus for who he really is?

While Pope St. John XXIII National Seminary specifically caters to older vocations, many other seminaries have a significant portion of their seminarians made up of older vocations.

Deacon Brian Delaney has begun his final year at Pope St. John XXIII National Seminary in Weston, Massachusetts. He hopes to be ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Boston in 2025.

While serving in the U.S. Navy, he first felt the call to become more involved in the Church — and eventually decided to “get rid of everything” and enter seminary. His time there has been “absolutely wonderful,” he told the Register. As a priest, he wants “to be the best spiritual father than I can be.”

While Deacon Delaney’s enthusiasm and desire to serve may be common among many seminarians, his personal journey is somewhat less so: He’s a widowed 63-year-old with an adult daughter who decided to enter seminary after retiring from a 40-year career in the military and defense industry.

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I came across this short daily devotional on YouTube that is great for starting your day before work. I listen while I am getting ready and having coffee. It prepares my heart before my quiet time with God.


The prayer offers a time of peace and meditation on God's word and how it impacts your life. Let me know if you guys have any other recommendations! I'd love to try anything!

House GOP blocks Dem maneuver to force release of Epstein files​

What happened: The House Rules Committee, which prepares legislation for votes on the House floor, voted 5 to 6 against attaching Khanna's amendment to a procedural measure related to the GENIUS Act and a defense funding bill.

• The measure would have forced Attorney General Pam Bondi to publish all documents related to Epstein on a "publicly accessible website" within 30 days of procedural measure being enacted.

...
In a rare move, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) crossed over and voted with the panel's four Democrats in favor of attaching the amendment.

• He told Axios earlier on Monday: "The public's been asking for it. I think there are files. All of a sudden not to have files is a little strange, We'll see how it plays out ... I think the president will do the right thing."

FALL RIVER, Mass. (AP) — Flames roared through an assisted-living facility in Massachusetts, killing nine people and trapping residents inside, including some who leaned out of windows and screamed for help, authorities said Monday. At least 30 people were hurt.

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Michelle Obama was recently pontificating on her podcast about the alleged difficulty of being a woman in the modern world:

“We weren’t raised with the certainty of maleness… That kind of confidence that young men in their 30s have, which they haven’t earned. They just have it.”

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But men weren’t “raised with” confidence either. Rather, there is a certain amount of assertiveness that comes naturally to men. They have a hormonal framework that is different, as is the way that men think. It is a mistake to reduce nature to mere “social construct,” as if every difference between men and women is imposed by a meddling society that yearns to oppress women. We therefore err when we claim that men are more assertive because they have been raised to be such, and imply that women in the modern age were either deprived of such ‘training’ or were taught to display doubt, indecisiveness, and anxiety.

Michelle went on to claim that society “discourages” women from expressing confidence, even when their experience level would justify it. There’s a conflation happening here. It is widely agreed that exuded confidence is attractive to both sexes. What is actually “discouraged by society” is acting rudely or overbearingly, including when one thinks themselves better than others because of real or imagined accomplishments. Likewise, women over-compensating with misplaced aggression when in traditionally male roles is discouraged albeit common (that female police officer isn’t giving you a warning).

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