NEW FLAG APPROVED JPEG
NEW FLAG APPROVED JPEG

Lex Cordis Caritas - The law of the heart is Love

Filter media by:
March 08, 2020
It is not uncommon today to hear people criticize organized religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular as being too preoccupied with rules rather than love. What such critics fail to realize, however, is that rules help to specify how a loving person is supposed to behave. Without rules, love is empty sentimentality. Without love, rules are simply cold and arbitrary regulations.
February 23, 2020
In an article entitled, “The Dangerous Denial of Sex,” published in the February 14, 2020 issue of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, Colin M. Wright and Emma N. Hilton argue that “transgender ideology harms women, gays—and especially feminine boys and masculine girls.” It should be noted that Colin Wright is an evolutionary biologist at Penn State and Emma Hilton is a developmental biologist at the University of Manchester. They point out, “In humans, reproductive anatomy is unambiguously male or female at birth more than 99.98% of the time. . . . No third type of sex cell exists in humans, and therefore there is no sex ‘spectrum’ or additional sexes beyond male and female. Sex is binary.”
February 09, 2020
A little-known fact of Illinois trivia is that the southern tip of the State of Illinois is closer to the State of Louisiana than to Chicago. This may be true in terms of shared values as well as in geography. While politicians from Chicago are trying to make Illinois the most abortion-friendly state in the Union, government officials in Louisiana are actively seeking to bring the murderous practice of killing unborn babies to an end in their state.
January 26, 2020
We are celebrating Catholic Schools Week this year from Jan. 26 to Feb. 1. This year’s theme is “Catholic Schools: Learn. Serve. Lead. Succeed.” All schools seek for their students to learn, but Catholic schools aim for their students to learn the truth. In our relativistic world today, claims to knowing the truth are often met with skepticism by those who believe that you can have your truth and I can have my truth, but there is no such thing as “the truth.” However, Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). People of faith know this truth. Public schools cannot teach this. Catholic schools exist precisely to teach the truth about Jesus, so that students of Catholic schools will learn that Jesus is the way and the truth and the life, and that the path to eternal happiness with God the Father in heaven is through Jesus.
January 12, 2020
So why should you come to Mass every week? First and foremost, being a Christian is about a relationship, namely, our relationship with Jesus as Our Lord and Savior. That means that Jesus loves us and cares deeply about us. In return, he asks us to love him and care deeply about him as well. Most of us have no problem with that.
December 22, 2019
What does Christmas mean to you? Did it start with shopping on Black Friday, or Cyber Monday, or even sooner? Are there long lists of gifts to buy? Does this season involve spending lots of time putting up Christmas decorations? Is there a stream of holiday parties to attend? Do you send many greeting cards, either by postal service or email or both? Christmas means many or all of the above for most of us. But the most important question about the meaning of Christmas is this: Will you attend Mass on Christmas? Because that is the essence of Christmas: Christ’s Mass.
December 08, 2019
After putting in many miles of training to prepare for the Route 66 Marathon in Tulsa on Nov. 24, it was disappointing to settle for only 13.1 miles instead of the usual 26.2. This was the first time in 25 attempts that I was not able to finish the full marathon. I was running strong for six miles when I suddenly felt sapped of energy, apparently due to the lingering fatigue of a cold that I had been fighting for several days. Little did I know going into the race that this would officially be my first half-marathon! Apparently my plans were not God’s plans that day! In several ways, it was a challenging weekend in Tulsa as I took part in activities of the LIFE Runners, a pro-life running group with almost 14,000 members world-wide. As is our usual practice, the LIFE Runners had a booth at the Marathon Expo, where we display a large “Remember the Unborn” banner, sign up new members, and distribute LIFE Runners gear. Unfortunately, the Tulsa Expo director was not very welcoming to us despite our having paid a fee to host a booth, just as other Expo sponsors had. One woman, who appeared to be a grandmother, removed the LIFE Runners’ “Remember the Unborn” sticker from her grandson’s clothes, telling him we were “anti-choice.” It is sad that an adult would abuse the power of language to communicate a hateful message to a child about those who are sincerely trying to protect the lives of unborn babies.
November 24, 2019
My topic today is a modern tale of David and Goliath — excellence vs. philistine. The modern-day David of this true story is David Daleiden, who is taking on the contemporary Goliath, Planned Parenthood and their giant abortion industry. Daleiden is a citizen journalist who has conducted investigative research on the abortion industry. He is the young mastermind behind the sting operation that released undercover videos in 2015 exposing Planned Parenthood’s trafficking in human fetal tissue and organs, including an abortionist at a Planned Parenthood abortion facility in Pasadena, Calif., who was shown in the videos haggling over the price of aborted baby body parts and quipping that she wanted to make enough money to buy a Lamborghini.
November 10, 2019
Recently, I administered the sacrament of confirmation at a small parish church in our diocese that is very beautiful, except that the windows were covered with contact paper decorated with various patterns in pastel colors. I was told that the pastor in the 1970s had removed the stained-glass windows and smashed them to pieces. Thankfully, the current pastor hopes to raise funds to restore stained-glass windows to the church. Unfortunately, it appears that the iconoclasts made their way into the Amazonian Synod in Rome, which concluded on Oct. 27, seeking to shatter some long-standing Catholic practices, such as priestly celibacy and the doctrine understood and accepted since the time of Christ about whom the church is authorized to admit to the sacrament of holy orders. Reports from the synod also indicate that the commitment to the evangelical goal of missionary activity as bringing people to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior is being diminished or abandoned by some.
October 27, 2019
Halloween means different things to different people. For some, it means an innocent custom of dressing up in costumes and visiting homes requesting a “trick or treat.” The “treat” is usually a gift of candy. The “trick” refers to a harmless prank of some sort if no treat is given. Since most people are prepared to give a treat, it is rare to see a trick performed instead.