Directory of All Things Catholic Online

Iglesia

The Terror Watch

Robert Spencer's Jihad Watch filled with interesting stories, including one about the arrest in California of two planning a September 11 attach in 2005.

Tim Drake's Onsite Coverage of WYD

Including some interesting stuff on Archbishop Dolan who he interviewed today for the National Catholic Register. Archbishop's latest book Called To Be Holyis a "must read"...Young and Catholic

Nun Upstages Hanks

Amy was on CNN last night doing her own protest of sorts:

VARGAS: Author Amy Welborn, who's book De-Coding Da Vinci: The Facts Behind the Fiction of The Da Vinci Code refutes "The Da Vinci Code, gave advice to the Sony Studios marketing team.

AMY WELBORN, AUTHOR, "DE-CODING DA VINCI": The major concern was, you know, what can they do not to make everybody really made and not inspire a boycott of this film or the studio or anything like that. And it's really a very delicate situation. They don't want to alienate the core audience.

From the Mail online Mail - news, sport, showbiz, health and more How a Catholic nun upstaged Tom Hanks:

"Sister Mary Michael, 61, knelt in prayer outside the building where scenes for
the blockbuster starring Tom Hanks are being shot.

She believes the book
by author Dan Brown contains heresy.

Asked if she thought the people
making the film would care about her protest, she said: "I don't suppose they
do, but that doesn't matter tuppence to me. It matters to me what God thinks,
not what the film crew think.

"When I face Almighty God, at my final
judgment, as we all will, I can say, I did try my best, I did try my best to
protest."

Sister Mary, a former Discalced Carmelite who now belongs to
Our Lady's Community of Peace and Mercy in Lincoln, said a storyline that Jesus
married Mary Magdalene and that she bore him a child was based on a gnostic
heresy that she first became aware of 50 years ago.

"It is an old error,
derived from the mystery faiths of the east. It is not a new story," she said. "

Amy on Paula Zahn Now Tonight

CNN Programs - Paula Zahn Now:

Based on this description, I believe tonight is the night that Amy will be on:

Monday's show

The "DaVinci Code" movie is already just as intriguing as the book. But why it is under a shroud of secrecy?

Fight Breaks Out At Catholic Shrine

I make frequent pilgrimages to this shrine in Carey, Ohio...hard to imagine anyone taking on the pilgrims there...ONN. Ohio News Now: Fight Breaks Out At Catholic Festival:

"The faithful chased the street preachers out of town says Rev. John Raphael,
pastor of The Shrine.

'They show up with video cameras, send threatening
faxes, and are there to cause problems,' Rev. Raphael tells WNWO. 'I instruct my
staff and those faithful who show up to ignore them.

'They go to other
places and do the same thing. I tell my staff to pray for them.' "

Update on What Happened...8/16/05

Feast of the Assumption of Mary

A Reflection on the Feast of the Assumption, Contemplating the Ritzos Icon:




And Pope Benedict's Reflection from his Angelus today:

On today’s feast of the Assumption, we contemplate the mystery of the passing of Mary from this world to Paradise: we may say we celebrate her “Easter”. Just as Christ rose from the dead with his glorified body and ascended into heaven, the Blessed Virgin, fully associated with him, was taken up into heavenly glory in her whole person. Even in this, the Mother followed her Son more closely and went before all of us. By the side of Jesus, the new Adam, who is “the first fruits” of the resurrected (cfr 1 Cor 15:20-23), the Madonna, the new Eve, appears as the “first fruits and image of the Church” (preface), “a sign of sure hope” for all Christians on earthly pilgrimage (cfr Lumen gentium, 68).

The feast of the Assumption, so dear to popular tradition, is for us believers a useful occasion to meditate about the true sense and value of human existence from the perspective of eternity. Dear brothers and sisters, heaven is our final home. From there Mary encourages us with her example to welcome the will of God and not to allow ourselves to be seduced by false calls of all that is ephemeral and transient, not to give in to temptations of egoism and evil which snuff out the joy of life in the heart.